Student Movements and Social Justice: Histories and Futures
The conference will feature four panels and a keynote conversation. Two panels will bring together student organizers from struggles outside the US. The first looks at historical struggles, including the 1999 UNAM strike in Mexico City, Fees Must Fall in South Africa, and the 2012 Quebec student strike. The second focuses on contemporary struggles in Bangladesh, Italy, Nepal, Serbia, and Sri Lanka. There will also be a panel on campus policing and abolitionist university studies, historicizing the present conjuncture. Finally, a panel on CUNY struggles from 1969 until today will root the conference in our local surroundings at the largest urban public university in the nation. Our keynote conversation will focus on the state of Palestinian universities and ways American students and academic workers can stand in solidarity with our colleagues in Gaza and the West Bank.
This conference is fully open to the public, and we invite all students, faculty, staff, community organizers, and wider publics to join us.
Coffee and light snacks will be provided, and we will share nearby lunch options for you to gather together!
Conference Program
10:30–11:30 — Student Strikes and Fallist Fights: Global Student Movements in History
Speakers: Ximena Goldman, Philippe Lapointe, and Leigh-Ann Naidoo, facilitated by Robyn C. Spencer-Antoin
The conference will begin with a grounding in the global history of student movements. Comrades who took part in the UNAM strike in Mexico City in 1999-2000, the student strikes in Quebec in 2012, and the Fees Must Fall movement in South Africa in 2015-16. The conversation will explore the relationship between campus struggles and larger social movements, questions of organizing strategy and structure, and manifestations of police repression against militant mass movements.
11:45–12:45 — Connected Struggles: Student Organizing Today
The day will continue with a discussion of the state of student organizing today. We will hear from comrades in multiple countries, allowing us to think across those disparate geographies about the particularities of place-based organizing and the continuities that define student movements in our current political moment. Questions for discussion include how to organize effectively in the neoliberal academy, particularly in universities subjected to decades of structural adjustment, as well as the role of internationalism, anti-imperialism, and solidarity in the movement today.
1:45–2:45 — Sumud in the Face of Scholasticide: The Ongoing Struggle for Education in Palestine (Keynote)
Speakers: Dr. Ahmed Abu Shaban, Dr. Sundos Hammad, Dr. Abed Takriti
Our keynote conversation will feature scholars and organizers from universities across Palestine, as well as solidarity activists from abroad, including members of Isnad and the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza. The discussion will focus on the state of Palestinian universities and the violence and repression they face, including the scholasticide underway in Gaza as part of the US-backed genocide, and the steadfast resistance of Palestinian teachers, scholars, and students who continue to study under impossible conditions. The conversation will also touch on how US-based students and academics can stand in solidarity and build partnerships with Palestinian universities and the Palestinian academic community.
2:45–3:45 — Towards an Abolitionist University: From Cops Off Campus to Collective Liberation
Speakers: Erica R. Meiners, Eli Meyerhoff, Yalile Suriel, and David C. Turner III, facilitated by Davarian Baldwin
The conference will continue with a discussion of abolitionist organizing in the university. Scholars from collective formations such as the Cops Off Campus Research Project and Million Dollar Hoods will share their methods of studying the university’s policing apparatus and the ways that it is violently wielded against surrounding communities, student protesters, and union activists. They will also discuss the robust movement to get cops off campus, from the George Floyd Rebellion to the Palestine solidarity encampments to the resistance to ICE taking place in Minneapolis today.
4:00–5:00 — Pedagogy and Praxis at CUNY: Building the New York Liberation School
Speakers: Vani Kannan, Jorge Matos, and Conor Tomas Reed, facilitated by Lucien Baskin
Our day will conclude with a conversation rooted in the place-based struggles at the City University of New York, with particular attention to the internationalist, diasporic, and community-focused currents of CUNY movements. We will dive deeply into CUNY’s expansive histories of student struggles, ethnic studies pedagogies, and feminist praxes of liberation. This panel will weave together past, present, and future, as three CUNY organizers, teachers, scholars, and archivists discuss the role of movement histories in classrooms and political education spaces to anchor ongoing organizing.
If you are a student or currently organizing on campuses and are interested in attending a student-focused workshop on Monday, March 9th, focused on praxis-oriented political education, please email lbaskin@gradcenter.cuny.edu.
This event is free and open to the public. The conference is organized by the Center for the Humanities and cosponsored by the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and Scholars for Social Justice.