Thoughts on solidarity and supporting student activists to #EndSexualHarassment

A corrupt university system with administrators that are deeply complicit in perpetuating a culture of sexual harassment and faculty predatory behaviour surveils, hounds and punishes student activists for bringing the sexual harassment to light and for speaking up against sexual harassment.

For all its PR speak about remedies, it is this truth that we must hold close, and continue to agitate to dismantle the culture of sexual harassment. We must also organize to protect those, especially student activists, whose bodies are on the line.

A corrupt system that is deeply complicit in perpetuating sexual harassment blames me, the CCA, and CARE for teaching students to organise on sexual harassment. It gives us and the CCA too much credit.

And most importantly, deeply complicit in technocratic authoritarianism, it fails to see the agentic capacity of students.

It is the role of Ministry of Education and the Minister of Education specifically to protect student activists that bring sexual harassment to light from retaliatory behavior.

Parents and taxpayers must hold the Minister and the Ministry accountable for any retaliatory behavior.

Any administrator that retaliates against a student must RESIGN or must be made to step down.

Public activism and participation are vital to hold the state accountable to bringing about changes to cultures of sexual harassment. Parent activism as public activism is vital to safeguarding our future generation and in nurturing their right to voice.

It is vital that parents speak up and organise in the face of university repression targeting students. It is vital that journalists closely attend to instances of retaliation and build public registers to document these instances.

It is only with multi-pronged activism and advocacy that we will see change in entrenched cultures of sexual violence.

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...

Upper caste Indian women in the diaspora, DEI, and the politics of hate

Figure 1: Trump, Vance and their partners responding to the remarks by Mariann Edgar Budde Emergent from the struggles of the civil rights movement , led by African Americans , organized against the oppressive history of settler colonialism and slavery that forms the backbone of US society, structures around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) formed an integral role in forging spaces for diverse recognition and representation. These struggles around affirmative action, diversity, equity and inclusion were at the heart of the changes to white only immigration policies, building pathways for migration of diverse peoples from the Global South. The changes to the immigration policies created opportunities for Indians to migrate to the US, with a rise of Indian immigration into the US since the 1970s into educational institutions, research and development infrastructures, and technology-finance infrastructures. These migratory structures into the US were leveraged by l...

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Search This Blog