Ebony Tower: Recent Episodes
Ebony Tower
What responsibility does academia have to social justice? How is academia implicated in the history of white supremacy and anti-blackness? How does it continue to uphold racism and colonialism? The Ebony Tower: Racial Justice Podcast explores these questions through a series of daring conversations with Columbia University faculty, students, and community leaders. Each episode examines race and racism across academic departments, the nexus between power and the production of knowledge, and ways in which the discipline can take actionable steps to end complicity and usher in racial equity. Ebony Tower is a student-led initiative nested within the Columbia School of Social Work Action Lab for Social Justice.
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Gary Okihiro, who is currently a visiting professor of American Studies at Yale University. He is also Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Professor Okihiro shares his journey through academia in an effort to illuminate the power dynamics present at Columbia, UCLA, Yale, and other institutions. We discuss the studies of power and knowledge production, as well as how these processes can be exploited and, yet, underutilized. Listen through to learn more about the challenges of complacency in the current structures of epistemology in the academy and how we may derail from this to strive toward action.
How does racial and gender bias shape the experiences of students and professors in STEM? Dr. Kuheli Dutt, the assistant director for academic affairs and diversity at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, joins us for the third episode of Ebony Tower. Dr. Dutt discusses how Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work has changed over the course of her twelve years at Lamont.
What responsibility does academia have to social justice? How is academia implicated in a history of white supremacy and anti-blackness? How does the university continue to produce knowledge and reproduce structures that uphold racism and colonialism? Ebony Tower is a podcast dedicated to examining race and racism across academic disciplines, from data science to ethnic studies and environmental science. Each episode, your hosts Kambi Gathesha and Sunny Chen will be speaking with a Columbia professor about the nexus between power and the production of knowledge in their discipline.
Episode 1 of Ebony Tower is dedicated to Social Work and features Professor Ovita Williams and Professor Susan Witte from the Columbia School of Social Work. What does teaching social work, at Columbia, an institution that is actively gentrifying Harlem look like? What does “decolonizing social work" mean? Dr. Williams and Dr. Witte discuss how social work has historically projected an exclusive idea of a "good family" onto communities of color.
Ebony Tower is supported by the Action Lab at the Columbia School of Social Work.
What does it mean to be an activist within the university system? What is Columbia's position and responsibility to social justice? What does “decolonization” really mean in our individual, daily lives? Episode 2 of Ebony Tower features the filmmaker and activist Frances Negrón-Muntaner, who is also the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Columbia University, as well as a professor of Comparative Literature. Dr. Negron-Muntaner discusses her commitment to interdisciplinary and multi-media work within and outside of the university-- and her commitment to a non-hierarchical, collaborative, educational community. She introduces her concept of “decolonial joy” as it fuels her community-based work in Puerto Rico and New York City.