Episode 141: Protest Politics with Robin D. G. Kelley

In this episode, Derek and Nathan are immensely privileged to be joined by UCLA historian Robin D. G. Kelley for a discussion of the remarkable and obscene events that took place at the UCLA anti-genocide encampment and an assessment of the encampment movement in the context of the neoliberal university and racial capitalism more broadly. We also talk about the role of sport in protest politics.

Robin D.G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He honestly does not need any introduction from me, but just to gesture to his impact, he is the author of books including,  Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (The Free Press, 2009); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination(Beacon Press, 2002); with Howard Zinn and Dana Frank, Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (Beacon Press, 2001); Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997); Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class  (New York: The Free Press, 1994); Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) [Vol. 10 of the Young Oxford History of African Americans series]; and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Very recently, he is also the author of an astounding appraisal of the events at the UCLA encampment in Boston Review.

 

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