Month: March 2021

An Afro-Jewish Critique of Jews Against Liberation

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In the Reflections on Racism, Oppression, and Antisemitism series for the University of Notre Dame Keough School of Global Affairs' Contending Modernities blog, Professor Lewis Gordon critiques hegemonic readings of Jewish history and current events that focus exclusively on the concerns represented by Jews who have identified themselves with whiteness. He contend that a true Jewish theology of liberation is one that sides with those who are oppressed and against various forms of idolatry, including the prioritization of the state of Israel in his latest post.

Professor Lewis Gordon speaks on “Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization”

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Lewis Gordon, of University of Connecticut, speaks on "Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization" for the African Studies Virtual Forum: Decoloniality and Southern Epistemologies series at Penn State.

The African Studies Virtual Forum 2020–2021 led by Dr. Sinfree Makoni seeks to decenter hegemonic epistemologies and to decolonize the Western canon to facilitate other ways/waves of knowing. Through a series of online conversations, participants in the Forum will challenge the notion of the “universal truth” and discuss how the only truth that is universal is the truth of complexity. To decolonize knowledge, epistemic perspectives need to be pluralistic in ontologies, cosmologies, and insights, and the emergence of Southern Epistemologies is one such response to the decolonial turn.

Joining from around the world, speakers will discuss the multiple approaches taken in the humanities and social science scholarship to decolonize knowledges by paying attention to complexities, heterogeneities, and multiple ontologies.