Banned Scholars Project Announces February Residency

The Banned Scholars Project is pleased to announce our third residency in February 2025, featuring two scholar-activists, Charisse Burden-Stelly, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University, and Jodi Dean, Professor of Politics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Housed in the Department of African American Studies and funded by generous grants from the Mellon and Spencer Foundations, the Banned Scholars Project highlights threats to academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the teaching of race and gender around the country. The initiative defends public education and the teaching of social movements dedicated to justice and liberation through week-long residencies with scholars facing political persecution, public events and conversations, and a partnership with the African American Studies Department at Berkeley High School. 

Burden-Stelly and Dean join the Banned Scholars Project as educators, authors, and organizers steadfastly committed to radical education and anti-capitalist organizing both inside and outside of the university. Their week long-residency in the Department from February 10th through 14th will include two public events organized around the theme "Organize, Fight, Win," inspired by their co-edited book, Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writings, as well as a class visit in the Department and a visit to the African American Studies Department at Berkeley High School. The programming will focus on the historical and present connections between anti-Black, anti-communist, and anti-Palestinian repression and the project of international solidarity in authoritarian times. In a talk on February 11th at 12 pm in the Social Sciences Matrix, "Organize, Fight, Win: Combatting Repression, Building Power," Burden-Stelly and Dean will present their research and writing on anti-communist repression, the links between anti-Blackness and anti-communism, and Dean's new work on neofeudalism. At a public roundtable on February 13th at 6:30 pm at the EastSide Arts Alliance in Oakland, "Organize, Fight, Win: Beyond the Election Cycle," Burden-Stelly and Dean will bring together activists and scholars Rupa Marya, Steven Osuna, and Derecka Purnell to discuss organizing and building power beyond the election cycle. Please join us at these events as we build solidarity in defense of Black Studies and public education.