Pt. 6, Symposium: Silencing the Academics: ‘Mainstream academic Constraints on African-American studies’

In this talk, Professor Jared Ball discusses the context in which the field of Black-Africana studies is situated within the Western academy and the challenges and various pressures exerted upon academics at traditionally black colleges in the United States. How is academic discourse at present affected by strange paradoxes? He presents a perspective that is hardly broached about a field of study that had emerged as an officially unsanctioned intellectual bloc of the black liberation struggle which has since become elemental to the sanctioned effort by the state to suppress collective memory of that struggle. The talk deconstructs keywords such as “colonisation”, “insurgency”, “empire”, and “citizen” to bring clarity to W.E.B. DuBois' concept of the “propaganda of history”. Jared can be found @imixwhatilike on most social media, and his decades of emancipatory journalism, media, writing, and political work can be found at imixwhatilike.org.