Social Justice & Activism - The Creative Process - Activists, Environmental, Indigenous Groups, Artists and Writers Talk Diversity, Equity and inclusion

How can we take inspiration from our love for animals to protect wildlife and change the world? How can we take action and start making changes in our lives? What if we measured success based on happiness and on the health of communities? Stephanie Feldstein leads the Center for Biological Diversity's work to highlight and address threats to endangered species and wild places from runaway human po...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji interview renown scholar, activist, and writer Silvia Federici about her powerful and inspiring collection of essays, Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. These essays, written over the span of several decades, display her abilities to diagnose and indeed predict the mo...

"We live in a diverse world, and we're in a funny time where we sometimes see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. And I think what we need to do is be very strong in wanting to lift the game of each other and ourselves. And so I think that's one of the sort of key things. Particularly, young people should be more demanding that we behave better towards each other and care more about ea...

Our window to adapt to a warming world is narrowing quickly. What it will take to avert the climate crises? Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at The Australian National University and a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since...

"As Arnold Schwarzenegger says, 'We don't have Republican air. We don't have Democrat water. We all breathe the same air. We all have the same water. It's happening to all of us, and it's happening all over the world. And if we just continue to ignore it so that we can put some money in our pockets, or we can get reelected, what are we leaving for the future?' And you know, his devo...

“Why I was different from all the other boys in my town I cannot tell you. I was simply born with the gift of vision.” – ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER Is there any better example of the American Dream than Arnold Schwarzenegger? What does it take to make your vision a reality? How do you cultivate iron focus to overcome any obstacle and realize your dreams? On the publication of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s li...

"Our culture and the way that we carry out capitalism is that we have allowed businesses to create a mess. And then the taxpayers are the ones that pay to clean it up. Corporations need to be held accountable for the environmental harm that they cause. And that way it's not going to be left to us. Corporations are caught in a system and the way that we carry out capitalism now is that profit is ab...

Sue Inches is an advocate, author, and teacher. She has worked in public policy for over 25 years, serving as the Deputy Director of the State Planning Office, and as a Director at the Maine Department of Marine Resources. She is author of Advocating for the Environment: How to Gather Your Power and Take Action, and teaches college and high school workshops on same. Her consulting work focuses on...

"The activists need to pay attention to mass awareness. Political change is a function of gaining political power through mass awareness, mass mobilization, and mass unification. And we're in a period on the left right now, which has happened in history before, where there's a lot of internal focus about the fairness of the processes within NGOs and activist organizations. And the legacy of racism...

How can we effectively communicate that we're moving beyond climate change to a state of climate crisis? The trapped heat energy on Earth is equal to a million Atomic bombs going off every single day. Today we talk to someone who's been mobilizing the public mind for over 50 years. David Fenton, named “one of the 100 most influential PR people” by PR Week and “the Robin Hood of public relations” b...

Wildfire season is starting earlier and lasting longer due to global warming across the world. What will we do to save the world on fire? How can we cure our addiction to fossil fuels which is verging on pyromania? Simon Dalby is author of Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate-Disrupted World and Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University. His other books are Rethinking Environmental...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews award-winning novelist and activist Susan Albuhawa about a major literary festival she is organizing entitled “Palestine Writes,” which will take place in Philadelphia from Sept 22 to Sept 24. “Palestine Writes” is the only North American literature festival dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews journalist., activist, and public intellectual Jeff Chang. Jeff’s most recent book, We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation (Picador), was called by the Washington Post “the smartest book of the year,” and inspired a four-episode digital series adaptation for PBS Indie Lens Storycast. He was na...

In 1980, the synagogue in Paris was bombed, killing four and injuring 40 others. Over four decades later, French authorities settled on one suspect, despite the fact that the perpetrators could have been a neo-Nazi group, which had bombed a Jewish site on that same date years earlier. Canadian academic Dr. Hassan Diab was extradited to France to stand trial. He spent 38 months in near solitary con...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Ching-In Chen & Kate Hao about the cancellation of the Asian American Literary Festival 2023. This August, the Asian American Literary Festival was to take place in Washington, DC.. The longstanding event had been on hiatus because of the pandemic, so this year’s event had generated a lot of buzz.&nbsp...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Jennifer Jacquet, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Director of XE: Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement at NYU. She is also deputy director of NYU's Center for Environmental and Animal Protection. Her research focuses on ani...

"This is a book for anyone who is a student of the craft. More particularly, though, this is a book for younger and newer Black writers in undergraduate and graduate workshops and in absolutely no workshop at all. We hope teachers find these words useful for their students, and we hope students who have yet to find their teachers learn from these thirty-two pieces born out of absolute generosity a...

How do you find your voice? As a writer, how do you take what you know and what you believe to share your stories with the world? How do we let young writers know just how powerful they are and that what they do matters? In How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill Pulitzer Prize winning, and National Book Award finalist author Jericho Brown brings together more than 30 acclaimed w...

Have you ever experienced the feeling of being alone and not having a community? How can we build an atmosphere of inclusion and greater understanding? Brooklyn-based artist Elliot Lee fuses dark pop melodies with edgy vocals and innovative electronic-rock soundscapes to create an unpredictable sound, acting as a voice for the voiceless. Elliot Lee holds an awareness of what music that is unhinder...

"I think so much of acceptance by foreign countries as immigrants, I think, lies with this ideal of assimilation. And assimilation in one respect, it's the negation of your own heritage and your own identity. Because it requires this kind of knowing adoption of a different set of standards and cultural practices, which are alien to you. And in order to assimilate, you have to make them feel as tho...

How can we retell the story of America? In the United States of Amnesia, why does the Western celebrate cowboys but not all people who built this country? What does a Chinese-American hero look like in the 21st Century? Tom Lin is an American writer whose 2021 debut novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu chronicles the story of a Chinese American outlaw seeking revenge during America's railroad boo...

"The Chicago School in the 1970s said: Capitalism has been doing really well. What we need to do is take their training wheels off and get rid of regulation, because they believed this would lift everybody out of poverty. That didn't happen. What happened was, if you don't regulate markets, suddenly all of that money goes to the top. So I'm going to give you an example of how skewed our global sys...

Can we imagine a world where we leave half the earth to the natural environment and use the other half for ourselves? Can we change history and protect the Indigenous, the vulnerable, and the very poorest in society? Mark Maslin is a Professor of Earth System Science at University College London. Maslin is a leading expert in understanding the anthropocene and how it relates to the major challenge...

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu interviews Cynthia Franklin about her new book, Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea. Taking on pivotal historical moments like the murder of George Floyd and the emergence of #BlackLivesMatter, the on-going struggle of the Palestinian people against the ethno-nationalist...

"I think young people should not panic. I think we are in a very difficult situation. But we do have amazing technology. We do have a way to invent more technology. And as an economist, I believe that we should remain optimistic. I think there are many things we can do, both in terms of taxing dirty production, but also subsidizing clean production, and investing in infrastructure, that itself can...