Abolition Democracy Initiative

Department of African American Studies, UC Berkeley

The summer of 2020 gave rise to renewed calls to defund the police, sparked by waves of uprisings across the U.S. in response to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. These uprisings, fueled by the mantra that Black Lives Matter, call onus to think critically about how institutions and systems can support an abolitionist future and affirm Black lives. Launched in Fall 2020, the Abolition Democracy Initiative responds to these calls by centering Berkeley’s Department of African American Studies, an institutional space built in the spirit of Black freedom dreams and Black radical imagination; a space that has long been grappling with how to reimagine not only policing, but how our societal institutions more broadly can ensure the optimal health and well-being of Black communities.

Thanks to generous funding from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor, the Provost, and the Chancellor’s Office at UC Berkeley, over the next three years the Abolition Democracy Initiative (ADI) aims to provide models of rigorous anti-racist and interdisciplinary research that centers Black humanity and critical epistemologies, including Black radical and Black feminist traditions, that can help us reimagine the future of community safety and support the wellbeing of historically marginalized communities.The ADI is directed by Nikki Jones, H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair in African American Studies. Professors Leigh Raiford, Tianna Paschel, and Ula Taylor are members of the ADI’s leadership team. The ADI built around five key objectives:1)Elevate the profile of the Department as a national leader in conversations related to racial justice; 2) Increase philanthropic support for the Department;3) Strengthen the foundation of the department through participation in successful new hiring initiatives; 4) Generate and amplify important, timely ideas centered in Black humanity; and 5) Create opportunities for joyful and generative engagement among Black faculty, students, and staff at UC-Berkeley and the surrounding community.As such, the ADI is sponsoring the following key Department initiatives:

1) The Critical Conversations Speaker Series brings together academics, activists and artists for public facing talks that explore the lessons of the Black feminist, Black radical, and Black intellectual traditions and the role of Black Studies in building more just futures.Our 2020-21 series honored the life and legacy of Dr. Barbara Christian, an architect of Black feminist criticism, a founding member of our department, a gifted writer and teacher and the first Black woman to earn tenure at Berkeley. The 2021-22 speaker series is organized as a celebration of the life and legacy of June Jordan, a gifted and prolific writer, a powerful activist, an innovative teacher and a longtime member of our Department. Fall 2021 will be devoted to Jordan’s activist work, her prose and her architectural imaginary, and Spring 2022 will be devoted to her work as a poet and teacher.More info and registration HERE.

2) The Vèvè Clark Institute for Engaged Scholars of African American Studies prepares a small cadre of undergraduate students majoring in the discipline of African American Studies to meet the rigor and intellectual demands of top research university graduate programs, professional schools and postgraduate careers. Clark Institute scholars attend monthly seminar meetings and weekly workshops and gain access to a variety of resources to support their academic development, including working closely with African American Studies faculty and graduate students. More information HERE.

3) Research for Reimagining Community Safety provides research-based recommendations to organizers who are on the frontlines of building community-led visions of safety, well-being, and justice in the Bay Area. The project is led Nikki Jones and James Burch, Anti Police-Terror Project Policy Director and inaugural member of the City of Oakland’s “Reimagining Public Safety Task Force,” and supported by the Spencer Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation, in addition to the ADI. At Berkeley, Professor Jones leads an interdisciplinary group of graduate and undergraduate students working to generate research-based recommendations on alternative responses to community safety and programs that address the root causes of violence in the Bay Area and across the country.

4) The Black Panther Party Elders Project, led by Professor Ula Taylor, will interview former members of the Black Panther Party and activist elders living in the Bay Area. Undergraduates will be trained to conduct interviews and create an archive of completed interviews, housed at Doe library. Professor Taylor, along with History Professor Waldo Martin, will also lead The Black at CAL Student, Faculty, and Staff Project, which will bring together the historical artifacts of Black life and culture at Berkeley. Contributing to the Chancellor’s commitment to researching the history of slavery and settler-colonialism at Cal, undergrad and graduate students will produce a pamphlet documenting and detailing the complexity of these histories and experiences.

5) The Abolition Democracy Reading Group brings together an interdisciplinary group of graduate students to discuss recent and canonical texts in the area of abolition democracy, led by Professors Nikki Jones and Tianna Paschel and supported by the Social Sciences Division’s Advancing Faculty Diversity Initiative. The group’s focus on abolition democracy stems from the canonical work of W.E.B. Du Bois, who identified the failure of Reconstruction as a failure of the nation to provide the types of social institutions post-emancipation that could actually guarantee equality, safety and security for all in a multi-racial democracy. More recent work from emerging scholars and activists helps us to identify the ways that Du Bois’ early critique of white supremacy connects with emerging scholarship on abolition, anti-blackness, and the afterlives of slavery.

From Berkley Street to (UC) Berkeley: Celebrating the Career of Stephen Small

Join the Department of African American Studies and the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues at UC Berkeley to celebrate Professor Stephen Small’s 30-year campus career. The retirement party will include a family-style lunch; panel discussions with and about Professor Small’s scholarship, teaching/mentorship, and contributions to campus administration; and a closing reception.

Please RSVP to attend:

For our in-person program
Or our Zoom webinar. Note: the Zoom webinar will only cover the 1:00 – 3:00 pm PT program.

Program

11:30 am – 12:30 pm: Lunch in 650 Social Sciences Building, the African American Studies Albert Johnson Conference Room
1:00 – 3:00 pm: Panel discussions in 820 Social Sciences Building, the Social Sciences Matrix
3:00 – 4:00 pm: Reception and toasts in 650 Social Sciences Building, the African American Studies Albert Johnson Conference Room

Please add a note to our virtual KudoBoard/retirement card for Professor Small!

This event is co-organized and sponsored by the Department of African American Studies (AAS) and the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) at UC Berkeley.

If you require an accommodation for effective communication or information about accessibility to fully participate in this event, please contact Barbara Montano at bmontano14@berkeley.edu or 510-664-4324 with as much advance notice as possible.

Stephen Small, Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAS) and Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI), is retiring in December 2024 after 30 years as a faculty member at UC Berkeley. Born and raised in Liverpool, England, Professor Small came to Berkeley in 1984 as a graduate student in Sociology, where he became a graduate student trainee at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, now ISSI. After completing his PhD in 1989, he briefly left Berkeley for teaching positions in the UK and at U-Mass Amherst, and then returned as a faculty member in AAS in 1995. Over the past 30 years, he has taught thousands of undergraduate students in courses like Race, Class and Gender; Social and Political Thought in the Diaspora; Qualitative Research Methods; People of Mixed Race; and Globalization and Minority Communities in the United States. He has taught more than 200 graduate students in courses including Theories of Race and Ethnicity, Qualitative Research Methods, the African Diaspora. In addition to other formal and informal mentoring roles for graduate students, he has chaired six dissertation committees and been a member of at least fifteen dissertation committees.

Professor Small has maintained an active research program organized around the social scientific analysis of contemporary racial formations, addressing links between historical structures and contemporary manifestations of racial formations in the United States and elsewhere in the African Diaspora. Axes of stratification shaped by gender/race intersections, and by class and nation are central to his work. He is author, co-author, or co-editor of eleven books. His most recent book is In the Shadows of the Big House: 21st Century Antebellum Slave Cabins and Heritage Tourism in Louisiana (University Press of Mississippi, 2023). His next book, Black Liverpool is the Real Thing: African and African Diaspora Culture at the End of the 20th Century, will be published by Liverpool University Press in 2025. His contributions to scholarship also include over 40 sole-authored articles and book chapters, in addition to many co-authored pieces.

Professor Small has served as a campus leader in numerous roles, with two notable examples being as Chair of AAS and Director of ISSI. The international scope of his scholarship is mirrored in a set of UC Berkeley leadership positions he took on related to promoting international research and study, especially for students. He served as Associate Director of the Institute of International Studies and led study abroad programs in Spain, France, Brazil, and Zimbabwe. His commitment to cross-national and global perspectives can also be seen in his role as a faculty member for the Black Europe Summer School since 2007, his frequent stints as a visiting faculty member around the world, and his mentorship of visiting graduate students and postdoctoral scholars here at Cal.
To his teaching, research, and leadership roles, he has brought his keen intelligence, deep commitment to social justice, a warm collaborative style, as well as a droll sense of humor. Fortunately for UC Berkeley and the academic community beyond Cal, Professor Small will become Professor of the Graduate School after his retirement, and in this new role, he will continue his research, mentorship of graduate students, and university and academic service.

VÈVÈ CLARK RECRUITMENT FLYER

400 Years of African American History Symposium

This day-long symposium will kick off a year of events at UC Berkeley to mark the 400 year anniversary of the beginning of slavery in North America. The events are being co-organized by the Haas Institute, the African American studies and history departments, the African American Student Development Center, and the Black Staff & Faculty Organization.

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Abolition Democracy Initiative