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There’s a certain set of conceits around academic freedom that limit its functionality and its practice, and those conceits often have to do with critiques of state power, critiques of colonization, critiques of structural violence. –Steven Salaita

I think using academic freedom as a way to open these more political conversations and more potentially more transformative conversations about Palestine and about labor, and allowing people to see the connections between these issues is really important. –Vincent Lloyd

Organizing around solidarity communities and connecting with allies and creating networks of solidarity in that way is so crucial. We cannot resist in isolation. –Carol Fadda-Conrey

Steven Salaita, Vincent Lloyd, and Carol Fadda-Conrey

How do the precarious conditions of academic labor affect the conversations that are possible in the academy? How does academic freedom protect—or fail to protect—academics from doing politicized work? How do questions of Palestine in particular affect our understandings of academic labor and academic freedom—and vice versa? In episode 26, Steven Salaita, who lost a tenured job offer after writing a series of tweets condemning Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge,” talks about the rhetorical commonplaces of civility in the academy, and the stakes of circulating critiques of state power on various media platforms. Assistant professor of religion Vincent Lloyd, and associate professor of English Carol Fadda-Conrey—who helped to organize a talk by Salaita on SU’s campus this fall—reflect on their academic trajectories and political work, offer suggestions for how young scholars can build networks of support, and remind us to realize the critical potential of our discipline.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 26

The music sampled in this podcast is akaUNO’s “Hidden Leaves,” and “Another Word” by The Left Curve.

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Can’t we find more creative ways to report these stories? The story of Michael Brown is so important, but we get trapped, I think, in this narrow narrative that we’ve been telling for a really long time. —Tessa Brown

Social media and mobile technology has particularly been important for people of color, for working class people, for immigrants, for LGBT people, people who belong to groups who have been traditionally marginalized in the media because they don’t have to not only wait for the media to tell their stories but they also don’t have to wait to have their stories be misconstrued, too, and have their stories misinterpreted. —Sherri Williams

These aren’t just flukes, these aren’t just accidents, these aren’t just deviations from an otherwise decent society. The whole society is bankrupt, its corrupt, its racist, its sexist, its homophobic, and ablist and because this is an entrenched deep issue it is going to have to be an entrenched long-term kind of movement to fight those kinds of things. —Nikeeta Slade

The image shows a screenshot of The Root's tweet featuring an image that went viral during Ferguson protests. The image features a black man with his back to the camera, hands in the air. Facing us are approximately 10 police officers in full riot gear, at least 4 of whom are actively pointing guns at the unarmed citizen.

Tweet from The Root, Aug. 12: “Days after #MikeBrown’s death, #Ferguson looks like a war zone (via @micnews): bit.ly/1orU2GF

Episode 24 focuses on media representations of Ferguson, Missouri after the killing of Mike Brown. As Ben notes in the introduction, This Rhetorical Life focuses on the practice, pedagogy, and public circulation of rhetoric. By focusing on Ferguson, we connect all three: how rhetoric circulates around Ferguson, how our public texts work to either create and sustain or to challenge and resist unjust systems, and how we as writing instructors can help students analyze and flip unjust systems. This episode features interviews with three Syracuse graduate students: Tessa Brown, Sherri Williams, and Nikeeta Slade.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 24

The music sampled in this podcast is “Strange Arithmetic” by The Coup, “Note Drop” by Broke For Free, “EMO Step Show” by The Custodian of Records, and “This is the End” By Springtide.

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[T]he danger of [sharing posts] is getting swept up when there’s this frantic information exchange, and you find yourself endorsing values and agendas that you would not normally agree with, and that’s a little bit scary. But I think there’s also potential there. This is not to demonize social media as a site of exchange—I think it has tremendous potential. The question here is how to have meaningful conversations. —Yanira Rodriguez

Image of "The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night" blog post--shows image of San Cristobal on fire and the first two paragraphs of the post.

“The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night” via Caracas Chronicles

Episode 22 features a conversation between Ben Kuebrich and Yanira Rodriguez about the representations of the Venezuela protests earlier this year, focusing particularly on how the protests and political situation was represented through the February 20th blog post, “The Game Changed in Venezuela Last Night – and the International Media Is Asleep at the Switch.” Kuebrich and Rodriguez raise questions about international news coverage, the representation and circulation of news on social media, and how we can read news articles more critically.

To access a PDF of the full transcript, please click here: Transcript for Episode 22

The music sampled in this podcast is “As Colorful as Ever” by Broke for Free, “Adventure, Darling” by Gillicuddy, and “Y por qué no hacer una canción de Facebook y cantarla en un camión?”

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