Banned Scholars Project

Banned Scholars Project Announces February Residency

January 30, 2025

Barbara Montano

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...

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Banned Scholars Project

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.

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Children of the Plantationocene

April 16, 2024

Alisha Gaines, a professor of English at Florida State University

Location: 820 Social Sciences Building, Social Science Matrix at UC Berkeley

Join the Department of African American Studies for a talk from our first...

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Alisha Gaines and Robin D. G. Kelley in Conversation

April 19, 2024

Alisha Gaines, a professor of English at Florida State University

Location: 820 Social Sciences Building, Social Science Matrix at UC Berkeley

The Department of African American Studies...

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Lunch and Learn with Geo Maher

September 15, 2024

Barbara Montano

Monday, September 16, 12:00 - 2:00 pm

675 Social Sciences Building, Erskine A. Peters Reading Room, Department of African American Studies

Join the Department of African American Studies for an informal lunch with Geo Maher, Coordinator of the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction. All UC Berkeley students are invited to discuss abolition, political organizing, and more with Geo.

Lunch will be provided, vegetarian and vegan options will be available. Please contact Barbara Montano at ...

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Reading Black Reconstruction Today with Geo Maher

September 18, 2024

Barbara Montano

We stumble through 2024 in search of new political coordinates. Long gone is the myth of the end of history, and today we instead confront sharp questions about the fraught tangle of race, class, and gender. Explosive struggles against racist police brutality and colonial domination worldwide remind us that the work of the past remains largely unfinished. Our moment needs urgent decoding, and we have no Rosetta Stone better suited to the task than W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction. This presentation, the product of a forthcoming collective volume on Du Bois' text, provides a...

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Movement Roundtable: Abolition, Decolonization, and Education

September 19, 2024

Barbara Montano

Join the Department of African American Studies and EastSide Arts Alliance for a conversation on abolition, decolonization, and education with local and international movement activists.

Arrive early to check out Bandung Books and the latest exhibit in EastSide's gallery. Geo Maher's books will be available for purchase at Bandung...

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Creating a Refuge for Banned Scholars

March 27, 2024

Barbara Montano

From the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation:

By Anthony Balas

March 26, 2024

The University of California, Berkeley, is making a hopeful case for African American studies amid attacks on academic freedom.

Critical as they are to a healthy democracy, open conversations at public universities on race, history, and freedom are increasingly threatened by an array of attacks—from cuts to funding for humanities departments to...