February 7, 2023

EP72.1 BONUS: Kino Lefter & Darts on Discordia (2004) and Student Activism

In this special bonus, we’re sharing the latest episode of Kino Lefter, the socialist film podcast! Our host Gordon and producer Marc join Kino Lefter host Evan MacDonald to discuss our latest episode, a retrospective on the 2004 documentary Discordia. If you liked our episode, you’ll certainly like this one. Marc, Gordon, and Evan talk much more about their experiences with campus activism, where they think things are today, and the lessons they took from the movie.

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This episode was part of a mini-series we produced on the tensions between activism and academia, which you can find in full here.

The relationship between academics and activists has been an historically fraught one. Early social movement theory pathologized activists and dismissed their demands as irrational. Mid-century liberals supported imperial war efforts, and domestic surveillance campaigns against social movements. Later scholars were more friendly, but perhaps not much better. Social movements routinely complain about their time being wasted by useless academics, while their most interesting ideas are taken, rebranded, and institutionalized—to the benefit of the academics, but not the social movements. Should activists just avoid the academy, then? That does not seem right, since the academy has always been a site of radical theorizing, and radical organizing. What’s more, a new generation of activist-scholars has been searching for new ways of supporting social movements. On this series, we look at collisions and collaborations between social movements and the university.

These episodes received funding from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. Our scholarly leads and advisors were Professors Lesley Wood at York University, and Sigrid Schmalzer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sharmeen Khan, Sami McBryer, and Susannah Mulvale provided research support.