On August 15th, Scholars for Social Justice will host a webinar featuring several speakers. This webinar will take place via zoom at 1-2:30 pm EST. More information will be coming soon! The registration link can be found below.
Speakers include:
– Davarian Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower (forthcoming), Trinity College
– Destin Jenkins, author of “What Does it Really Mean to Invest in Black Communities?”, University of Chicago
– Frank Deale, CUNY Law
– Barbara Vereen, Local 34 | Yale
If you’d like to join us, please register here: https://bit.ly/austerityanduniversities
Who we are:
Scholars for Social Justice is a new formation of progressive scholars committed to promoting and fighting for a political agenda that insists on justice for all, especially those most vulnerable. This organization will mobilize the knowledge, skills and resources of scholars to battle the repressive attacks on marginalized communities, advancing instead an agenda of justice and liberation. Issues impacting immigrants, women of color, people of color, LGBT, Muslims, women, differently-abled, indigenous and poor and working-class communities will be our priority.
Learn more at our website.
Statements/Open Letters From Scholars for Social Justice:
In the midst of the mass protest activity happening across the world, Scholars for Social Justice has released two more statements. The first, a Statement in Response to Racial Justice Uprisings of 2020, is a direct response to the racial justice uprisings of 2020 and reads:
“As Scholars for Social Justice, we mourn and express our outrage at the racist police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a murder that has come to symbolize all that is wrong and dangerous about the current systems of policing and incarceration in this country. Floyd’s vicious murder captured on video followed the police killings of Breonna Taylor of Louisville, KY, and Tony McDade from Tallahassee, Florida. McDade’s murder reveals the particular vulnerabilities and invisibilities of Black trans people. The senseless devaluation of Black life is a call to action…We defend the right to protest. And we urge the schools, colleges, universities, and institutes with which we are affiliated to do the same. This is not a moment for moral agnosticism. This is not a moment to sit on the sidelines”.
The Fire This Time – A Statement from Scholars for Social Justice was penned by members Robyn C. Spencer, Leith Mullings, and Premilla Nadasenand stresses that in a world influenced by COVID-19, protests and calls to action make a return to “normal” seem even more impossible. It further reads:
“As the COVID-19 crisis opened a wedge for unprecedented political possibility, the changes it imposed have also pushed longstanding goals of the left into the mainstream. Decarceration has unprecedented traction as jails reduced their detained populations, in humanitarian releases—demonstrating, in effect, that many people in jails did not need to be there in the first place. Domestic violence and homelessness, likewise, gained new visibility as stay-at-home orders highlighted the precarity of those who could not shelter in place safely. Essential workers, the elderly, people without resources, black, indigenous, and other people of color have been COVID-19’s greatest victims, setting in sharp relief the glaring economic disparities in the United States”.