Dispatches from the Academic Blacklist: Free Speech, Neoliberalism and the University Under Attack

The university is under attack. This much was clear during the presidency of Donald Trump, whose "alt-right" acolytes sought to spread hatred, provoke clashes and recruit on campuses nationwide. But the attack has been going on for far longer. Geo Maher discusses his own targeting at the hands of the far-right, which eventually pushed him out of academia entirely while situating the crisis of the university today within a longer neoliberal offensive that has weakened faculty, students and workers while sowing the seeds of white supremacy, violent misogyny and fascism.

About the speaker: 

Geo Maher is an organizer, writer and radical political theorist based in Philadelphia. He has taught previously at Vassar College, Drexel University, U.C. Berkeley, San Quentin State Prison and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas and held visiting positions at the Decolonizing Humanities Project at the College of William & Mary, NYU's Hemispheric Institute and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and has. He holds a BA in Government and Economics from St. Lawrence University, a BA Hons. and MA in Social and Political Sciences from St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, and an MA and PhD in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley. He is the author of five books: WE CREATED CHÁVEZ: A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE VENEZUELAN REVOLUTION (Duke University Press, 2013), BUILDING THE COMMUNE: RADICAL DEMOCRACY IN VENEZUELA (Jacobin-Verso, 2016), DECOLONIZING DIALECTICS (Duke, 2017), A WORLD WITHOUT POLICE: HOW STRONG COMMUNITIES MAKE COPS OBSOLETE (Verso, 2021) and ANTICOLONIAL ERUPTIONS: RACIAL HUBRIS AND THE CUNNING OF RESISTANCE (University of California Press, 2022). He is co-editor of the Duke University Press book series RADICAL AMÉRICAS.

This event is organized by the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies' Anti-Racism Committee.