As the long burning genocide against the Rohingya continues to unfold with recent conflagrations of violence in Rakhine State, we are joined on Speaking Out of Place today with prominent Rohingya advocate and writer Nay San Lwin and veteran journalist Chris Gunness, now with the Myanmar Accountability Project. They take us through recent disturbing…

Today, on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by eminent political theorists Michael Hardt and Sandro Mezzadra to talk about their thesis of a global war regime and its relationship with capitalist governments, a significant challenge to dominant conceptualizations of war, and its relationship with the international order. We discuss colonial cont…

As protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, and apartheid repression within ’48 harden into a proliferation of encampments on US university campuses, still more have popped up across the globe—in Asia, Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere. These encampments have been met with brutal repression as many universities hav…

As protests against Israel’s geocidal attack on Gaza and increased dispossession and violence on the West Bank grow into encampments that have sprung up across the globe, they have been suppressed by college administrators and national political leaders alike as being anti-Semitic and harmful to Jewish students. The US House of Representatives has …

Recent weeks have seen a series of strikes between Israel and Iran. Israel's attack on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus, killing seven, followed by Iranian barrage of missile and drone strikes on Israel, killing no one, and then followed by Israeli strikes on Iran in Isfahan all of this occurring, of course, with the continuing unfolding gen…

In the wake of Congressional investigations into a wave of so-called “anti-Semitism” on university campuses, college administrators are bending over backwards to appease Right Wing politicians and wealthy donors at the expense of civil liberties, and free speech and academic freedom protections. They particularly operationalize notions of public sa…

Today on Speaking Out of Place, we have a special extended conversation on the suppression of Palestine solidarity at universities from the U. S. to the U. K. to within Israel itself. We are grateful to be joined by Adi Mansour, a lawyer with Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Neve Gordon, Professor of Human Rights Law at …

Today on Speaking Out of Place we are joined by Noura Erakat and Jeffrey Sachs in a discussion of possible futures for Palestine. Our conversation includes different stances toward a two-state solution, a discussion of international humanitarian law and the laws of warfare, and a deliberation on the practical steps necessary to stop Israel’s devast…

Today we speak with Harvard professor Robin Bernstein about her new book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit. While researching a book to develop her earlier interests in race and childhood, Bernstein came across the case of Afro-Indigenous teenager William Freeman, who in the late 19th century was convi…

Today on Speaking Out of Place, we have a conversation with critical political theorists Adom Getachew and Ayça Çubukçu on the colonial construction of the international system and its organization around the institution of the nation state. Our conversation covers and uncovers so many aspects of the hidden colonial history behind the constitution …

Today we talk with Camilla Hawthorne about her recent edited collection, The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity, and its relation to her prior monograph, Contesting Race and Citizenship: Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean. She explains and elaborates on how Blackness is not singular, but involved in “taking place” in imaginative,…

Since October the 7th we have seen an eruption of support for Palestinian liberation. On university campuses we find both the tremendous growth of activism for Palestine, and repressive and punitive measures that seek to discourage and curtail these activities. One of the most important tasks for activists is to organize broad networks of support. …

Today we speak with Professor Amahl Bishara about her book, Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression. She is joined by Professor Nayrouz Abu Hatoum to discuss the ways that notions of national identity, cultural commitments, and political expression are all complicated when juxtaposing two groups of Palest…

In January, the University of Michigan Faculty Senate passed a resolution calling for “the University’s leadership, including the Board of Regents, to divest from its financial holdings in companies that invest in Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.” The statement highlighted the unprecedented rate of civilian deaths in Gaza, and that Ameri…

Today we speak with publisher Judith Gurewich and translator Luke Leafgren about a remarkable first-person narrative by Nasser Abu Srour, a Palestinian political prisoner who in 1993 was given a life sentence. His memoir, The Tale of a Wall, tells of the author’s decades-long life in multiple prisons, moving through many historical periods and shif…

Ever since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza, global protests have grown exponentially. This is most evident on the streets, and also, very importantly, on college campuses, where activism for Palestinian liberation have often been met with brutal repression. Chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace…

After the International Court of Justice's finding that Israel's war on Gaza was a "plausible case of genocide," Israel smeared the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, claiming that four or five UNRWA employees were affiliated with Hamas. These employees were fired without any proof of wrongdoing, and several countries stopping fun…

Today we speak with scholar Julie Norman about her book, The Palestinian Prisoners Movement: Resistance and Disobedience. She is joined in conversation by her colleague and collaborator Amahl Bishara. Based on extensive interviews with Palestinian prisoners, Norman’s study delineates in detail and depth the centrality of the movement in the broader…

Today, on Speaking Out of Place, we discuss the recent International Court of Justice ruling on the Gaza genocide case, which found that Israel is plausibly engaging in genocide in Gaza. We discuss the case and its implications, as well as the colonial backdrop of the international law behind it, with former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Micha…

Plants show signs of communication and of learning. They produce and respond to many of the same neurochemicals as humans, including anesthetics. They share resources with one another, and when under threat, emit signals of warning and of pain. Today on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined in conversation with eminent Anishinaabe legal theorist Joh…

Today I speak with noted researcher and scholar Ben Franta about two new articles he has written that add to his growing archive of seminal work on climate change. Ben tells us now the fossil fuel industry paid economists to join scientists in denying the true nature of the fossil fuel industry’s destruction of the environment. Economists argued th…

Today on Speaking Out of Place, we talk with artists and activists Isabelle Frémaux and Jay Jordan about their book, We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones Vagabonds/Pluto/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, 2021. They tell the story of a 40-year struggle to preserve 4,000 acres of wetlands from being destroyed…

Today we speak with Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito, whose book, Marx in the Anthropocene , sold over half a million copies. In it, Saito shows how late in life Marx came to a richer sense of production when he realized that there was a law above the economic as he had conceived it—it was the law of Nature. Marx saw how disturbing Nature’s metabol…

For weeks, hundreds of international law and genocide experts have been warning that the situation in Gaza is approaching or has become an active genocide, a conclusion very vociferously rejected by Israel and its allies. Today on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by state crime expert Penny Green and Holocaust historian Omar Bartov to discuss t…

Today on Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by Frédéric Mégret, Neve Gordon, and Nicola Perugini. As the devastation of Gaza is permitted to continue to unfold, and colonial violence also intensifies in the West Bank, we discuss the role and responsibility of international law in enabling and structuring mass violence, the enduring importance of …

Today’s conversation is perhaps one of the most unusually important ones we have had on the podcast. Len and Hwei-ru Tsou are two Taiwanese activists whose main commitment, over a period of decades, has been to discover and disclose the involvement of Asian and South Asian anti-fascists in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Not…

Today I talk with Marthie Momberg, whose book 21 Voices from Israel and South Africa: Why the Palestine Struggle Matters, compiles interviews Momberg conducted over many years. Her interviewees are Israelis and South Africans who have followed different paths to become activists for Palestine. The 21 voices speak about this connection, but about ma…

Today we speak with legendary climate activist Bill McKibben and scholar Caroline Levine. McKibben relates his long struggle to get companies to divest from fossil fuels and for the world in general to act immediately to seriously and substantially address this existential crisis. Levine tells of her efforts to get the giant pension fund, TIAA-CREF…

We recorded this episode of Speaking Out of Place on Saturday the 18th of November, 2023, as Israel’s massive attack on Gaza passed the 40-day mark. Almost immediately after the deadly October 7 Hamas attack, the image of the child, both Israeli and Palestinian, began to dominate the media’s coverage, and appeals to international humanitarian law w…

This is a special project of Speaking Out of Place, meant to collect and amplify the voices of artists, musicians, and publishers from around the world raising their voices in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We will add to this episode as statements come in. Here you will hear James Schamus, Ben Ehrenreich, Judith Gurevich, Raja Shehadeh, …

On Saturday 4th November, 2023, leading scholar activists, anti-genocide campaigners, human rights defenders, and musicians from 20 countries, as well as Rohingya refugees joined Palestinians from the West Bank as a global online show of support for the 2.3 million residents of Gaza, who are currently under Israel’s genocidal onslaught perpetrated …

On Wednesday, 1 November, the Palestine Festival of Literature held an event in New York titled, "But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience." On that occasion, Noura Erakat delivered a powerful and stunning speech entitled “In This Moment,” in which she spoke on the genocide in Gaza from her perspective as a teacher, a legal ex…

Today we speak with Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah. We are recording this interview on Thursday, November 2, 2023, as the State of Israel expands its brutal and illegal collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza—an act of genocidal ethnic cleansing. Health authorities in Gaza report more than nine thousand deaths in a popula…

How have companies like Uber and Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash and others, changed the nature of work from bad to horrific? Veena Dubal joins me to explain how such companies have exported globally a technique of algorithmic wage discrimination that pays workers based on data to which they have no access. Owners dangle bonuses before workers but tak…

Today we talk with the prolific and wide-ranging scholar Charisse Burden-Stelly about her new book, Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, just out from the University of Chicago Press. The book shows the emergence and conjuncture of two strands of discourse and practice that were used to suppress Blacks in the Un…

In response to the attacks launched against the Palestinian people in Gaza by the State of Israel, on Oct 12 Speaking Out of Place created a special episode on Gaza with legal experts Diana Buttu and Richard Falk. We did so with the aim to address and correct the proliferation of misinformation that the mainstream press was spewing out. We also sol…

Today we talk with Joseph Pierce and Liza Black about the vast number of questions that are opened up when people pretend to be Native when they in fact are not. These cases take on a specific significance when such false identifications allow these people access to privilege and positions of authority. When these falsehoods are found out, they pla…

The volatile situation in Gaza has been grossly distorted in the mainstream western press. By omission, selective editorializing, and misstatement of so-called “facts,” a particular caricature has emerged that has invisibilized the Palestinian people, the history and the nature of the Occupation, and the actual conditions of life in what many have …

On today’s episode we speak with two of the founders of the Polis Project—Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia—about their new book, How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners. We are also deeply honored that the eminent Dalit intellectual, and former political prisoner Dr. Anand Teltumbde is with us as well to lend his …

Amidst great fanfare, Stanford University created the Doerr School for Sustainability, which immediately said that it would accept funding from the fossil fuel industry. A group of students has pushed back, and built an impressive movement to dissociate from such funds. In this episode, we talk to some of the people leading the movement about what …

Attacks on those protesting the Israeli state policies and practices which have maintained the violent dispossession of Palestinians have commonly misrepresented, distorted, and even manufactured disinformation. This has done great damage to the lives and careers of many. As public opinion shifts against the Israeli state, attacks by extreme Zionis…

Today we talk with Liza Featherstone about this huge victory for ecosocialists, and for everybody actually, in New York, that came with the passage of a bold piece of legislation, the Build Public Renewables Act, or BPRA. Featherstone explains the genesis of the bill, and the specific wrk that activists put into its passage. What obstacles did they…

Today we talk with Sara Ahmed about her new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. How and why is it that complaining about sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, is considered impolite? How is civility uncivil, and the mandate to be “happy” a tool for silencing grievances? Sara Ahmed tackles all those questions, and g…

Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with Michael Hardt about his new book, The Subversive Seventies. This expansive study of a broad range of subversive movements across the globe shows us how the 70s were actually ahead of us in terms of confronting key issues and contradictions that remain with us today and shows what we can learn from them. M…

Today we talk with Manijeh Moradian about her book, This Flame within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, which documents the formation of Iranian student activists in the US in the 1970s, and their impact on the Iranian revolution. This Flame Within is not only a book about history, but also a book about memory and the importance of ret…

Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with Dr. Tim Hewlett, co-founder of the international protest organization Scientist Rebellion. With more than a thousand members in more than 25 countries, Scientist Rebellion stages non-violent protests, organizes events and talks, and lobbies other scientists and national leaders to draw attention to the ne…

Today in Speaking Out of Place, we are joined by Anthony Arnove and Haley Pessin, who are the co-editors of a marvelous new volume entitled Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance. This book is not only a beautiful archive of people's struggles in the 21st century, but also a powerful …

Today we are speak with renown scholar, activist, and writer Silvia Federici about her powerful and inspiring collection of essays, Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. These essays, written over the span of several decades, display her abilities to diagnose and indeed predict the most important issues facing us today,…

Today we speak with Emmaia Gelman and Christine Hong, two of the founders of the new Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. They tell us what motivated them and others to take up this project to create a space where the critical study of Zionism could take place in conversation with many other fields. We hear why the organizers wish to separa…

Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with award-winning novelist and activist Susan Albuhawa about a major literary festival she is organizing entitled “Palestine Writes,” which will take place in Philadelphia from Sept 22 to Sept 24. “Palestine Writes” is the only North American literature festival dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural…