Pt. 2: the role Of Black university in African/a resistance w/ Josh Myers

Africa World Now Project

[produced and aired, 2016...note...our production is getting better...: )]

In a 1968 in the March edition of Negro Digest titled, the Nature and Needs of the Black University, Gerald McWorter [Abdul Alkalimat] writes…and I must quote in its entirety here: “Revolutionary change for the liberation of a people from oppressive social structures is not the special function of one course of action, but, more likely, the result of several. And while education is generally hoped to be a liberating force on our minds and bodies, often it has been used as a debilitating tool in the interests of an oppressive society."

Quoting Kwame Nkrumah, from his work Consciencism, McWorter, compares the colonial student who is educated for "the art of forming not a concrete environmental view of social political problems, but an abstract `liberal' outlook," with the revolutionary student who is "animated by a lively national consciousness, (who) seeks knowledge as an instrument of national emancipation and integrity."

The university is alive for people in the world (including all of the socioeconomic and political contradictions involved), and so must meet the challenge of responding creatively to whatever needs exist now for those people…

I wanted to highlight this one article of a series articles that was printed in the Negro Digest from 1968 to 1969, primarily to show the continuities and salience of the questions that were overtly presented then.

To be clear, the center of this historically-bound, contemporary discussion with a long genealogy in attempts to solidly build responses to expanding notions of justice and equality in a highly racialized society still asks: What is the role, in this present moment, of Diasporic institutions in African world resistance? In part 1 of this series, we explored the intellectual praxis of Diasporic thinkers…

Today, in part 2…We will explore, more deeply, the ideas presented those historical conversations about nature, function, and role of the Black University with Josh Myers.

Dr. Josh Myers is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. In addition to serving on the board of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations and the editorial board of The Compass: Journal of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, he works with a numbers of community-based social justice and cultural restoration organization. His research interests include Africana intellectual histories and traditions, Africana philosophy, and critical university studies. His work has been published in The Journal of African American Studies, The Journal of Pan African Studies, The African Journal of Rhetoric, The Globalization and Human Rights Law Review, Liberator Magazine, and Pambazuka, among other literary spaces. His current book project is a history of the Howard University student protest of 1989.

Enjoy the program!