This episode is hosted by Frann Michel and includes these segments:
Campus Free Speech Controversies
On December 5th a US Congressional committee grilled three prominent university presidents—Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania (who has since resigned), Sally Kornbluth of MIT, and Claudine Gay of Harvard in a hearing on “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.” Jan Haaken talks with Jennifer Ruth about the hearing and the political dynamics driving the interrogation of these administrators. Ruth is a professor of Film Studies and associate dean of the College of the Arts at Portland State University and has published extensively on campus politics, free speech issues, and academic freedom. She is co-author of It's Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (2022) and co-editor of the forthcoming The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right Wing Attack on Academic Freedom. She and co-author Michael Bérubé published a commentary on the hearing in The New Republic, December 18, 2023.
Movie Moles: How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022)
The film How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022, by Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, Jordan Sjol, Daniel Garber) is loosely inspired by Andreas Malm's 2021 book of the same title. The book is not an instruction manual, and does not actually call for blowing up pipelines, but does argue for greater militancy in the climate movement, chiefly in the form of blockades, occupations, climate camps, and similar mass direct actions. The film takes from the book the provocative title and the general idea that causing property damage is morally justified in the fight against climate change. It's a fictional thriller, using the genre of the heist film, showing a rag-tag group of outsiders coming together to pull off one big action. Movie moles Joe Clement and Frann Michel discuss. (Includes a longer version of the conversation.)
How Portland Metro Chamber and Business Lobbyists Undermine Ballot Initiatives
Oregon’s citizen-initiated ballot measure process is a tool of grassroots democracy, allowing collective action by an organized majority of the population. However, time and time again, those with vast resources have impeded attempts to make the city more equitable and safer for all. In this segment, Guest Mole Lauren Goldberg examines how business lobbyists have undermined citizen-led ballot initiatives (including PCEF, Preschool for All, Measure 110, City Charter reform, and more) – both before and after they were voted into law – to stop our elected officials from fully implementing the programs voters fought for, in favor of protecting capitalist interests. (Includes transcript.)
- KBOO