Mini-Series: Activism and Academia

May 25, 2023

EP79: Learning for Liberation: The Life & Legacy of Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire offers activists and academics everywhere a lesson in what it means to be a radical intellectual. He is known as the founder of critical pedagogy, which asks teachers and learners to understand and resist their own oppression. On this episode, we look at the life and legacy of Freire.
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March 13, 2023

EP75: The Hippie High-Rise

From 1968 to 1975, one eighteen story high-rise was the heart of Canada's counterculture. Rochdale College in Toronto was jammed full with leftist organizers, hippies, draft dodgers, students, artists, and others just looking for a good time. Rochdale wasn't really a "college." It was something much bigger: it was a radical experiment. However, was this an experiment worth doing? We investigate.
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February 14, 2023

EP73: Drafts & Letters — Vietnam War Resisters Come to Canada

The idea of moving to Canada figures prominently in the imagination of many disaffected Americans. Between the mid-60s and early-70s they really did come--and in the 10s of thousands. Yet, when these Americans made their way, they did not always find the Canada they expected.
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February 7, 2023

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

Our host Gordon and producer Marc join Evan MacDonald of Kino Lefter to discuss our latest episode - a retrospective on the 2004 documentary "Discordia".
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January 30, 2023

EP72: Discordia Revisited — The Meaning of the Concordia Netanyahu Riot (ft. Yves Engler, Ben Addelman, Samir Mallal & more)

We revisit the extraordinary National Film Board documentary Discordia, directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal. The film covered the 2002/03 school year at Concordia University in Montreal, QC. Pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police, and this event came to be know as "the Concordia Riot."
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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.

Mini-Series: Activism and Academia

EP79: Learning for Liberation: The Life & Legacy of Paulo Freire

EP75: The Hippie High-Rise

EP73: Drafts & Letters — Vietnam War Resisters Come to Canada

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

EP72: Discordia Revisited — The Meaning of the Concordia Netanyahu Riot (ft. Yves Engler, Ben Addelman, Samir Mallal & more)