It’s been one year since the murder of George Floyd led hundreds of thousands of people to the streets. The massive #BlackLivesMatter protests started in the USA, but quickly people all over the globe partook in the demand for justice, including people in Nijmegen and several other places in the Netherlands.
To reflect on the past year of protests, the Radboud University Anti-Racism Collective and the Race Religion Research Team has invited American philosopher Lewis Gordon and Suus te Braak, organiser of the Nijmegen BLM demonstration, for an online lecture and conversation on Thursday 3 June.
This event is free of charge and will take place on Zoom. When you click on the ticket button (‘Koop Tickets’), you can register for a free ticket. You will receive an email with the link to the Zoom meeting. The program starts at 8.00 PM.
Eight years after the start of BLM, and one year after the huge worldwide protests, police violence continues to take lives. Floyd’s convicted murderer has already demanded a re-trial. Racial justice is still being denied to people across the globe, as it has been for centuries. Lewis Gordon will begin the evening by sharing his political and philosophical reflections on BLM in relation to this larger global and historical context. How do different forms of oppression intersect globally? How can we better grasp these global entanglements from a local level? How can and should we think, conceptualize, and achieve freedom and justice? How does the American context connect to anti-racism movements in the Netherlands, and to Nijmegen specifically.
We will engage these and other questions with Lewis Gordon, whose life and works demonstrate an inspiring commitment to a more just world, and Suus te Braak, one of the initiators of Nijmegen-based collective Dare To Decolonize. Lema Salah will moderate the conversation. At the end of the evening, there will be plenty of space for the audience to ask questions and engage in the discussion.
About the speakers
Lewis R. Gordon
Lewis R. Gordon is a philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician. Gordon’s research in philosophy is in Africana philosophy, philosophy of existence, phenomenology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of culture, race, and racism, aesthetics, philosophy of education, philosophy of science and technology, philosophy of human sciences, philosophy of psychiatry, and philosophy of medicine, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.
As a public intellectual, Gordon has written for a variety of political forums, newspapers, and magazines, and has lectured and organized workshops and political meetings across the globe. He is Professor and Head of the Philosophy Department at UCONN-Storrs, where he also has affiliations in Judaic Studies, Caribbean and Latinx Studies, Asian and Asian American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Global Studies. His visiting appointments include Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, and Honorary Professor in (UHURU) the Unit for the Humanities at the university currently known as Rhodes in South Africa, where he was formerly the Nelson Mandela Distinguished Visiting Chair in Political and International Studies (2014, 2015).
His major works include Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities, 1995), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, , Her Majesty’s Other Children (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), Existentia Africana(Routledge, 2000), Disciplinary Decadence (Routledge, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008), What Fanon Said (Fordham UP, 2015, and, with Jane Anna Gordon, A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006), which was NetLibrary’s e-book of the month in 2007, Not Only the Master’s Tools (Routledge, 2006), Of Divine Warning (Routledge, 2009), and, with Fernanda Bragato Frizzo, Geopolitics and Decolonization (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017). His most recent book is Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021), 论哲学、去殖民化与种族 (“On Philosophy, Decolonization, and Race”), trans. Li Beilei (Wuhan, China: Wuhan University Press), and Fear of Black Consciousness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the USA and Penguin Book in the UK; German translation, Ullstein Verlag in Germany; Portuguese translation, Todavia in Brazil, forthcoming 2022).
He co-edits, with Jane Anna Gordon and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, the Rowman & Littlefield International book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and, with Rozena Maart, Epifania Amoo-Adare, and Sayan Dey, the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World (Routledge-India).
Suus te Braak (they/them)
Suus is a teacher and queer lifestyle coach. They love meeting people and to learn from them. They also love gatherings, cooking, DJ’ing, bringing joy and when needed being the activist that runs upfront to start positive change in society, whether it is on micro, meso or macro level.
In their work as a teacher they try to teach their students more about ethics, diversity and positions in life. Suus thinks it’s important that students realize and learn that being able to study is a privilege and that you can choose your own methods how to work with that.
As a coach they want to be the person that you can trust and knows the language and different worlds we live in. Living in a binary normative western white society can be challenging. Instead of learning how to adapt to that society, Suus wants to talk and coach their clients in how they can be themselves and let society find a way to adapt to them. We are enough.
Lema Salah (she/her)
Lema Salah is a historian and diversity and inclusivity expert. In addition to a RMA in Historical, Literary & Cultural Studies (RU), she has completed a RMA minor in Gender Studies (Utrecht University). She is specialized in gender politics, military history, conflict studies and UN gender policies. Currently she is associated as a Ph.D. candidate with the Radboud University Nijmegen and the Netherlands Defense Academy. Her current research is focused on military leadership and organizational culture within Defense.
She is a strong advocate for bridging the gap between academia, society and social issues, by engaging in creative ways to make space in academia for larger audiences. But also by bringing the academic work to creative spaces.