Scholasticide and solidarity: The mind and memory of Gaza
Release Date: 05/15/2024
Labour Fair 2025: Labour now: Union responses to the polycrisis
Needs No Introduction
In episode eight, we return to the George Brown College Labour Fair and a discussion with Ontario Federation of Labour president Laura Walton and chief steward and second vice president of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 556 Jeff Brown. We discuss the multiple issues facing the labour movement, union priorities and, in this age of polycrisis, what exactly we are working for. Speaking to the upcoming federal elections, Walton says: “I think we all can agree it's not going to be an NDP federal government. It's either gonna be Liberals or Conservatives. And I call them cancer and chemo; one's gonna kill you,...
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Labour Fair 2025: Building a workers' first emergency response to the tariff crisis
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In episode seven, we are pleased to feature executive director of the Workers’ Action Centre, Deena Ladd. In her keynote address for the 33rd annual Labour Fair at Toronto’s George Brown College, No One Left Behind: Building a Workers’ First Emergency Response to the Tariff Crisis that Unites Us, Ladd discusses the current trade war, the dangers facing workers and a solidarity-driven plan that puts workers first. Reflecting on what’s needed in a workers’ first approach to the tariff crisis, Ladd says: “Our communities are already in trouble. And we know that the tariffs imposed are...
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Labour Fair 2025: The critical need for labour education
Needs No Introduction
In episode six, we feature the opening discussion of the at Toronto’s George Brown College. Under this year's theme, What Are We Working For? JP Hornick, president of OPSEU/SEFPO, (Ontario Public Service Employees Union), speaks on the critical need for labour education, labour organizing amid the changing nature of work and the crisis facing Ontario colleges. Reflecting on the need for labour education Hornick says: “These are the spaces where we learn how to organize, where we learn how to build community – it provides the critical analysis that people need to understand why there are...
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Rebranded fascism, higher education and the burden of conscience
Needs No Introduction
In episode five, we are pleased to welcome back Henry Giroux, scholar, cultural critic and author, most recently of The Burden of Conscience: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence. We discuss the rise of authoritarianism in the US and around the world as an updated fascism, its attack on democracy and higher education and the urgent need for solidarity, critical pedagogy and resistance in the face of the unspeakable. Reflecting on the necessity of higher and critical education in these times, Giroux says: “Education is the glue. Education is the bridge that stands between fascism and...
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George Brown College’s 25th annual Mental Health Conference: Decolonizing learning and creating conditions for student well-being
Needs No Introduction
In episode 4, we focus on the upcoming at George Brown College in Toronto and this year’s theme, Thriving Together in the Classroom: Creating the Conditions for Student Well-Being. Author, storyteller, Indigenous academic and conference keynote speaker Carolyn Roberts; dean of the Centre for Preparatory and Liberal Studies, Susan Toews; and director of Student Well-Being and Support, Alex Irwin discuss this year’s conference and its focus on teaching, the mental health and well-being of post-secondary students, decolonizing learning and Indigenous resurgence through education....
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Oxfam Inequality Report 2025: Billionaire colonialism in Canada
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In part two of our focus on Oxfam’s latest report: , we welcome associate professor and faculty chair of the Indigenous Relations Initiative at McGill University, Dr. Veldon Coburn. Reflecting on his 2022 book (co-edited with David Thomas) , we speak of the growth of billionaire colonialism and corporate power in Canada and the ways in which this is anchored in Canada’s continuing history of settler colonialism. Reflecting on corporate extraction and dispossession of Indigenous resources, Coburn says: “It's easier to steal and to take what's existing there, exactly what the Oxfam Report...
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Oxfam Inequality Report 2025: The takers not makers of billionaire colonialism
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In part one of this discussion, executive director of Oxfam Canada Lauren Ravon returns to discuss Oxfam’s latest report: . Ravon and Resh Budhu explore the extreme wealth and power of the billionaire class, this era of “billionaire colonialism” and what it will take to decolonize economies in Canada and throughout the world. According to Ravon: “I would say the highlight of this year's report is really well captured by the title Takers Not Makers, because we're focusing not just on this extreme and I'd say obscene wealth accumulation, not just the amount of wealth that's being...
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Do we need a new progressive alternative in Canada?
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In our season eight premiere, we welcome independent journalist and public historian Taylor C. Noakes, author, political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ricardo Tranjan and welcome back writer, social justice activist and former organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, John Clarke. The group reflects on the current state of progressive politics in Canada, the Liberal legacy and the possibility of a Conservative win. They discuss the need for a new progressive alternative and wonder aloud what this could look like. Reflecting on...
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BRICS, de-dollarization and Canada in a multipolar world
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In our final episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series, season seven, we are joined by author, professor and director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Radhika Desai, and author, professor and Chair of International Relations and Political Science at St. Thomas University, Dr. Shaun Narine. We discuss the shifting balance of power in global politics, BRICS, de-dollarization, the rise of Asia and the Global South, the challenges it poses to the rules-based international order of the Global North and Canada’s place within an inevitably...
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Who’s Hungry? More than ever before
Needs No Introduction
In episode six of the latest season of the Courage My Friends podcast series, co-executive director of Food Secure Canada, Marissa Alexander and executive director of North York Harvest Food Bank, Ryan Noble discuss the alarming outcomes of Toronto’s Who’s Hungry report, the growing food and poverty crisis in Toronto and across Canada and urgent actions that need to be taken by policy-makers and civil society in averting this ever-worsening crisis. Reflecting on reasons for the record number of food banks visits this year, Noble says: “It's not as if there's been a sudden shock over the...
info_outlineFor our fourth episode, Scholasticide and solidarity: The mind and memory of Gaza, we welcome University of Toronto professor, researcher and host of the Liberation Pedagogy Podcast, Dr. Chandni Desai and Mount Royal University professor, author and policy analyst with Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, Dr. Muhannad Ayyash.
Discussing the months-long Israeli military onslaught waged on Palestinians, we focus on the destruction of Gaza’s educational systems, educators and students, the role of scholasticide within genocide and the global solidarity mobilizing across university and college campuses to counter it.
Reflecting on scholasticide and the meaning of education for the Palestinian people Desai says:
“Scholasticide is the systemic destruction of the Palestinian education system, which has been ongoing since the 1948 Nakba…But in this genocide ..we are seeing a complete annihilation of the education system in Gaza…When a people have lost everything, including the land …education has become a really important pillar, not just in terms of preserving a national identity across fragmented borders and fragmented geographies, but also as a central pillar of knowledge that gets passed on in various ways that contribute to the cause for liberation. ”
Speaking on the rise of global pro-Palestinian solidarity, including on university campuses, Ayyash says:
“One of the reasons that the Palestinian struggle speaks to so many people around the world, why we see so many people going on their streets in all corners of the globe, speaking up for Palestine .. [i]t's precisely because the Palestinian struggle makes clear… a yearning for a liberation from the age of colonial modernity that has brought far too much death and destruction for too many around the world …In this moment, the Palestinian struggle is becoming a political consciousness. .. a way for people to make sense of their own systems of oppression.. that oppress and repress their own aspirations for freedom in their own context..”
About the guests:
Dr. Muhannad Ayyash was born and raised in Silwan, Al-Quds, before immigrating to Canada where he is professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University. He is also a policy analyst at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He is the author of A Hermeneutics of Violence, has co-edited two books, and is the author of multiple journal articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces.
Dr. Chandni Desai is an assistant professor in the Critical Studies of Equity and Solidarity at the University of Toronto. Her areas of research, teaching and supervision include: comparative settler colonialisms, Palestine studies, the politics of the Middle East, state violence (carceral politics, militarism and war), cultures of resistance and revolution, political economy, third world internationalism, solidarity, memory, oral history, anti-racism and feminism. She is working on her first book Revolutionary Circuits of Liberation: The Radical Tradition of Palestinian Resistance Culture and Internationalism. Desai also hosts the Liberation Pedagogy Podcast.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute.
Image: Chandni Desai, Muhannad Ayyash / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy); Grace Taruc-Almeda, Karin Maier and Jim Cheung (Street Voices)
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.
Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.
Host: Resh Budhu.