Tag Archives: solidarity

Transnational Solidarities, Diplomatic Endeavors, and International History

This academic year the Aydelotte Foundation launched a program to support the promotion of significant scholarly works by our faculty and staff. We are pleased to co-sponsor the first event that is tied to this initiative:

Transnational Solidarities, Diplomatic Endeavors, and International History: A Roundtable on Researching and Writing Histories that Cross Borders

This roundtable, thematically linked to Professor Megan Brown’s recent book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community, will focus on transnational movements, international solidarity, diplomacy, and more.

Event Details:

Location: Scheuer Room
Roundtable: Thursday, February 9th, 4:30-6pm
Reception to follow until 7pm

Panelists:

Dr. Megan Brown is Assistant Professor of History at Swarthmore College, specializing in modern Europe with a focus on France. Her book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard), was published in 2022.

Dr. Cindy Ewing is the Assistant Professor of Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto. She specializes in histories of decolonization and the Cold War in South and Southeast Asia. Her in-progress book examines how Asian and Arab diplomats imported indigenous ideas about rights and sovereignty into the burgeoning international human rights system at the United Nations.

Dr. Kesewa John is a historian of Caribbean radicalism and intellectual history particularly interested in the intersections of Black feminist and Black radical histories of early twentieth century Caribbean activism. Dr. John is a Lecturer in Caribbean History in the Institute of the Americas at University College London and the current Chair of the Society for Caribbean Studies, the UK’s only learned society focused on promoting scholarship about the Caribbean and its diasporas.

Moderator:

Dr. Angela Zimmerman is professor of history at George Washington University. She is the author of Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, 2010) and the editor of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Civil War in the United States (International Publishers, 2016). She is currently writing a history of the Civil War as an international anti-slavery revolution with roots in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. It will be called “A Very Dangerous Element.” 

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Sponsored by the Aydelotte Foundation and the Swarthmore College Libraries.

Co-Sponsored by the Asian Studies, Black Studies, French, Global Studies, History, Peace and Conflict Studies, and Political Science Departments at Swarthmore College

Redefining Revolution & Nonviolence: Re-imagining Solidarity Across Race

As part of Black History Month activities, Matt Meyer, organizer, author, and editor of We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism (PM Press) discussed revolutionary nonviolence, privilege, solidarity, and alliance building in higher education.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016
7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Scheuer Room in Kohlberg Hall at Swarthmore College
This event was free and open to the public.
Download a flyer at http://bit.ly/meyerflyer
Matt Meyer flyer
photo credit: Consuelo Kanaga

Video of the event is now available.

Audio of the event is now available.

A native New York City-based educator, activist, and author, Matt Meyer is coordinator of the War Resisters International Africa Support Network, and a United Nations/ECOSOC representative of the International Peace Research Association. The founding Chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association and former Chair of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED), Meyer has long worked to bring together academics and activists for lasting social change.
Matt Meyer at Swarthmore College
Matt Meyer spoke in the Scheuer Room on February 10, 2016

Meyer’s work in K-12 public education and teacher training included ten years of service as Multicultural Coordinator for the NYC Board of Education’s Alternative High Schools & Programs, as well as a stint as Union Leader of a local section of the United Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO. He helped found and direct a mini-school in collaboration with St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital’s Child and Family Institute (CFI), and led a psycho-educational CFI research delegation on re-integration and treatment of child soldiers in West and Central Africa and related work in “inner-city” USA; he also helped in the early development of the Harvey Milk High School, the first US “safe space” school for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. Twice-decorated as “teacher of the year” by two Community School District Superintendents, Meyer’s continuous efforts as a high school-based historian and peace educator have spanned over 30 years.

Matt is an outstanding scholar-practitioner and leader in the field of peace and justice studies and is an accomplished Africanist scholar and educator, and has done much to bring critical race theory into dialogue with peace and conflict studies. You may read his recent co-authored piece “Refusing to Choose Between Martin and Malcolm: Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, and a New Nonviolent Revolution” at Counterpunch.org.

We Have Not Been Moved

Co-sponsors: Peace and Conflict Studies, President’s Office, Black Cultural Center, Black Studies Program, Intercultural Center, History Department, Educational Studies Department, Sociology and Anthropology Department

This event builds on a theme the Peace and Conflict Studies program initiated last semester with the American Friends Service Committee poster exhibit in McCabe Library, “All of Us or None: Responses & Resistance to Militarism.”

AFSC Exhibit Fall 2015