Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

At a time when COVID-19 makes protesting in person even more dangerous than usual, international activists from Cape Town to Palestine have loudly proclaimed their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Similarly, BLM activists have proclaimed their support for international allies who are protesting racial injustices and police violence across the world. This symposium brings together transnational scholars and students to interrogate how solidarity for Black Lives functions across differences in societies and regimes.

Maina Kiai (Keynote 9 am Jan 28) is a premier legal scholar and political activist who has campaigned for human rights and constitutional reform in Kenya. He is Director of Global Alliances and Partnerships at Human Rights Watch and a former Special Rapporteur for the Freedom of Assembly and Association at the United Nations. Kia was the Chairman of Kenya’s National Human Rights Commission and the Executive Director of the International Council on Human Rights Policy, a Geneva-based think-tank that produced research reports and briefing papers with policy recommendations. Mr. Kiai was also the Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Programme (1999-2001), and the Africa Director of the International Human Rights Law Group (now Global Rights, 2001-2003). He has held research fellowships at the Danish Institute for Human Rights in Copenhagen, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, and the TransAfrica Forum in Washington. Kia has also produced a number of compelling documentaries including Slow Torture and Independence Without Freedom.

Noura Erakat (Keynote 11 am Jan 28) is a human rights attorney and an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and in the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). Her current research seeks to examine the activist praxes in contemporary renewals of Black-Palestinian solidarity as well as technologies of surveillance and counter-surveillance in greater East Jerusalem. Noura served as Legal Counsel for the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives from 2007-2009. Prior to her time on Capitol Hill, Noura received a New Voices Fellowship to work as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Noura has appeared on CBS News, CNN International, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, BBC, and Democracy Now. Her publications have appeared in scholarly journals as well as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Review of Books, The Nation, USA Today, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and Jadaliyya.

Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez (Keynote 1:30 pm Jan 28) is Associate Professor of Global Afro-Diaspora Studies in the department of English at Michigan State University. Her first monograph, Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature (Northwestern University Press, 2020), examines the textual, historical, and political relations between diasporic Afro-Puerto Rican, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Dominican, and Equatoguinean poetics. Her second major project, Archive of Disappearances: Afterimages of Afro-Puerto Ricans at the Edges of Empire, examines the disappearances and excesses of Afro-Puerto Rican island and diasporic peoples through the study of archival histories, photography, visual art, and film from the late 19th century to the present. Her published scholarly and creative work can be found in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, The Journal of Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, CENTRO Journal, Small Axe, Frontiers Journal, Hispanofilia, and SX Salon.

Register at bit.ly/BLMSymposium2022

Sponsors: The Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Department of English, the Working Group for the Study of Critical Theory, the UF International Center, Center for African Studies, Latin American Studies, and the African American Studies Program