Guerrilla History - Save the History of Africa & the African Diaspora MRes! w/ Hakim Adi

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

In this pressing episode, we bring on the esteemed Professor Hakim Adi to discuss the MRes History of Africa & the African Diaspora program, and the University of Chichester's efforts to shut down the program and make Professor Adi redundant.  This is an incredibly important issue that we take up, so listeners, take action.  Sign this petition NOW to tell the University of Chichester to preserve the MRes program and maintain Professor Adi in his role, then write a comment on the petition and forward it to 5 comrades!  Tag us in any tweets you make about the petition, we will boost your message!  Once again, sign and share the petition at https://www.change.org/p/stop-university-of-chichester-s-axing-of-the-mres-history-of-africa-the-african-diaspora. Hakim Adi is Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at University of Chichester, and the founder of History Matters and its affiliated journal.  He has authored numerous books, and has written many articles which can be found on his website hakimadi.org.  You can follow him on twitter @hakimadi1 Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on. and welcome to Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined unfortunately by only one of my usual co-hosts. We are joined by Professor Adnan Hussein,

historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? Hi, Henry. I'm doing well. It's great to be with you. Yeah, nice to see you, as always. And unfortunately, we're not joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast, but we're hoping that he'll be back with the next conversation that we'll be having. And, of course, we always look forward to getting to talk to him. Before I introduce our guest and our very pressing topic, I just want to remind the listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue, do what we do by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history with gorilla being spelled at G-U-E-R-R-R-R. I-L-L-A history, and you can keep up with our latest releases by following us on Twitter or whatever the website is called at the given time by looking for at Gorilla underscore Pod. Again, Gorilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod. As I said, we have a very pressing topic today

and a fantastic guest, really. This is a dispatch episode of guerrilla history and kind of a call to action of sorts. So listeners, as we go through the conversation, in the show notes, you will find a petition on change.org. While you're listening, I implore you to go and sign on to that petition. So our guest today is Professor Hakim Adi, who is a professor of history of Africa and the African diaspora at University of Chichester in England. So hello, Professor. It's nice to have you on the program. It's wonderful to be here. Great to be here. Thanks to invite. So as the conversation unfolds, I'm sure the listeners will figure out why this is such a pressing topic and why they need to be signing onto this petition that we have linked in the show notes. But before we get to

the topic at hand professor, would you mind sharing a little bit about your background and the foundation of the program that you run at University of Chichester, which will then be talking about throughout the conversation? Sure. I'm, as you said, I'm a professor of the history of Africa and the African diaspora. I was actually the first person of African heritage in Britain to become a history professor. And I'd be, you know, teaching this history, history of Africa and the African diaspora for quite a few years now. I mean, I don't know how many years, maybe 40 years in total. At university level, that community college level, adult education, prison, you name it. it's done it, say, in one form or another.

I should explain that the particular master's program that we're going to talk about originated from a conference that we held in London in 2015 called a History Matters conference. That was held in response to a particular problem that we have in Britain, although it exists in some of the countries as well. That is that

at community level here you find that people are very interesting history this is due to I guess the sort of Eurocentrism which is attempted to hide Africa from history and hide people of African descent from history the views of

you know people like Hegel and others we said Africa has no history and so on. And in response to that, I think people who are of African heritage globally are in nearly every country in the world, very, very concerned about history and their history or our history and being excluded from it and so on. So you find that a community level here, there's lots of interest in history in various ways in heritage warps and projects and talks and so on. But what we found was that at academic level, that's at school and university level,

Young black people, young people here of African and Caribbean heritage were kind of bit alienated some history. They don't really appear very much in the figures. We found that at university level, young, for young black undergraduates, history was the third most unpopular subject. Only agriculture and veterinary science were more unpopular than history, which is, you know, just the facts of the case. And there were other issues. we found that very few young black people who are only trained as history teachers teaching schools. In this country there are about 16,000 high school teachers,

only something like 230 at that time was African or Caribbean heritage. And in fact, it was such a problem that there was a leading newspaper that had a headline which showed that the previous year only three black trainee teachers, trainee history teachers were, you know, trained to be teachers. So we thought this was myself and a few others.

We thought this was a kind of scandalous situation. We tried to contact various people we thought might be concerned about it and nobody was. So we decided to hold our own confidence and explore the issue. That conference, which we called the History Matters Conference, was held in April 2015. it was mainly addressed by students, school students, older graduates, most graduate students, some teachers, and a few other people. And it discussed the problem and tried to find solutions to it.

One of those solutions was to set up a university level course for slightly older students, what in this country would call mature students. People who have been put off history at school, but then as adults, you know, had embraced it, were enthusiastic about it, wanted to come back into education, wanted to carry out some research, and needed to be trained to carry out that research, to get the necessary skills, and to get a qualification at the end of the course, and hopefully to encourage them maybe to embark on a career as historians, to go on to do PhDs, or just to continue researching. So that was one of the recommendations of that conference, which,

was attended by over 100 young people and others, other concerned individuals. So one of the things that I did was take the initiative to try and develop such a course at the University of Chichita where I was employed. And I have to say that at that stage, the university was very supported. They had supported the conference. The course was validated.

And it first began life in January 2018. it was aimed as I indicated mainly at those of African and Caribbean heritage but obviously it was open to everybody over the last five years it has done what it says on the tin it has mainly recruited students of African and Caribbean heritage

mainly mature students but not solely it has recruited from Britain the US Canada Caribbean Africa and even in Haitian. It has produced seven PhD students. Seven have gone on to do PhDs. All of

African and Caribbean heritage. Six of them at the University of Trichester. One of those received a PhD about a month ago. She's our first graduate from the M-RES to go on to do a PhD successfully. So

we think it was very successful. So that is really the the kind of background to the course. The only thing I would add was that because it was a course aimed at a particular, a particular type of student, if I can put it in that way, we thought, or I certainly thought, it needed particular kind of publicity of advertising.

He couldn't just put it in a prospectus at the University of Tristan because nobody's ever heard of the University of Tristan. nobody would suddenly think, oh, let me go and look at a prospectus to see if I can find a cause about the history of Africa and the African diaspora. Nor could you just put it on the website of the university, because again, nobody would search it there. So we, I continually argued it needs more promotion, needs more publicity, but it never got

that publicity. And I used to recruit, we'd call mainly through social media, Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc. And that was enough to recruit, you know, a few students. every year. We ran the course twice a year. We had an intake in September and in January and we recruited every year. But they were not, you know, large numbers. But it did what we wanted to do and nobody at the university raised any queries or complaints about the numbers students recruited and what we were doing. Numbers, PhD students were recruiting as a result and so on. So that's basically what the course did. I should just explain

I'm not sure how familiar people are with the MRES degree. It's essentially a master's program which is examined by largely by a research project, a research dissertation. And so effectively we're training the students to carry out research. And then they're examined by the dissertation, about 25,000 word dissertation based on original research. So that's the background to the MRETS. A quick question on that. But firstly, congratulations on the first Ph.D. student receiving their degree and completing that is momentous, you know, and really validates the program's success in your supervision and training people at the highest level here.

But about the MRES, so it's a master's degree course. Is it a year or two years? Do they take classes and then prepare for, you know, independently? research project for which you are the supervisor and does it involve other faculty being second readers? How does it work just so that people understand? It's, yes. I mean, it's a, as we can say three components, two taught courses and then the supervised research. The two talk courses, one we can say is a, we can call it a research skills. module. It looks at, it encourages people to think about kind of historical sources, so things like

oral history, archival sources. It gets students to think about kinds of history, what sort of history are we interested in, and what is the significance of that. And of course, the main things we look at are, I guess, what people would think of as history from below, the history of the people rather than the history of the white men of copter, for example. So we begin to consider those kinds of issues. We look at things like ethical issues in history in terms of interviewing and so on. We train the students to carry out a literature review,

to write a research proposal, so what is a literature review, what is a research proposal, and that course is examined by the students submitting a research proposal. So it's basically a research skills. study skills. I'm very much linked to the subject we're focusing on. The second course is a history, an overview calls, a survey calls on the history of Africa and the African diaspora. Of course, we see these histories as being interconnected intertwined. So, for example, we start off with the Haitian revolution. So then we look at this, is this part of Africa?

history? Is it part of the history of African diaspora? Is it part of Caribbean history? Is it what is it? What is it? It's carried out by Africans, people born in Africa. What is it? So we get our students to think about this usually artificial academic

division between the history of the African continent and the history of the African diaspora. When one begins and the other ends and these kinds of questions. So we have a survey. We basically go from And obviously we take moments in history where there are very clear intersections between these history of Africa and the Jasper. So we start with the Haitian Revolution.

We end with the global African reparations movement in the midst that we look at things like, you know, black power globally. We look at aspects of Pan-Africanism globally. we look at the intersection between, I guess, what people would call pan-Africanism and Marxism or Pan-Africanism and communism. Yeah, so we look at, say, broadly, various Pan-African connections and intersections, which link history of Africa and diaspora.

We look at something like the, you know, fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930. So various points along the last 200 years or so where people can look at this history. But that is just to give an overview, some ideas, and all the time the students have to be thinking, okay, but what I want to focus on? And of course, that can be quite a difficult process.

I remember, just to give an example, the student who's just graduated with a PhD, when she had to decide what she wanted to do, we went through four or five different possibilities. And she said, well, it's got to be something on, you know, Guyana. So, okay, well, I'm fine, well, it's got to be something on women. Oh, okay, okay, fine, you know, it's got to be something on connects with Britain. And so, so he went through various permutations and possibilities, you know, draft research proposals.

Then suddenly, you know, what suddenly, but going through this process, she suddenly came across the personality of Jessica Huntley. Now, Jessica Haldi may not be well-known to your listeners, but was a very well-known activist in Britain, was connected with a very well-known bookshop called Bogle Louverture. And Bogle Lovettcher was the initial publisher, a very well-known book by a gentleman called Walter Rodney, and his book was entitled to Howe Europe Underdeveloped Africa. So that's just, I mean, Jessica Haldi was much more than that. And my student decided she was basically going to write a biography of Jessica Humbley.

She started that at M-RES level. She did very well at M-RES level. She went on to do her PhD. She just completed that PhD and her book on the life of Jessica Huntley will be published shortly by, it's actually being published by Bloomsbury. So that just gives you a kind of idea of how things develop from, somebody who came to the course

a great interest in history her career was in something completely different a mature student but through the course we managed to train her and encourage her and give other skills and the confidence to go on and develop this research

which has resulted in a book so that's obviously not the everybody that's a wonderful illustration of you know the value of the course and it also reminds me that in your discussion about the way in which this program conceptually and in terms of this content and approach really connects the history of Africa to the African diaspora, because in some of the discussions

about this MRES program, you know, it's been noted that this is the only program like it in Britain and, you know, maybe wider as well. But I think the question that I had was, well, of course one can study African history. You know, Osas has School of Oriental African Studies, has, you know, African history. And, you know, there are universities that do encourage and allow students to study African history. And perhaps there are some who's can study Caribbean history. But it seems that it's the kind of approach of bringing these things together in a meaningful way, particularly for historians from those backgrounds who want to explore this history for the purpose of really educating their communities and as kind of an active history.

And so I wondered if you could talk just a little bit more about what makes this a particularly unique program and the approach that you're taking to really understanding African and African diasporic history in tandem and how that sits in the broader, you know, academic space when it comes to Eurocentric approaches, perhaps, to thinking about these histories. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, one of the things that's unique, was unique,

and he's unique about the course, was it was completely online. So you can be in, you know, you can be in Barbados, you can be in the US, you can be in Canada, you can be in Britain, you can be in Rwanda, you can be in other students from Hong Kong. it doesn't matter where you are in the world we set up the course

and this is pre-COVID we were ahead of the curve we set up a completely online course that's the first thing that makes it unique and it's unique certainly in Britain in Europe and commonly even internationally for that

just for that reason the second thing is that we are concerned about training historians so we take people who are their main criteria for entry to the course is enthusiasm about history. We don't say, well, you have to have a first degree in history.

You have to have a two one or a first class degree. We say, okay, we, you know, ideally we want people who've got first degree. Great if it's in history, great if it's in a humanity subject. But if it's not, okay, that's not a problem. Or maybe you don't have a degree for whatever reason. But maybe you've got a bit of experience, you know, your, You can show us that you can write to a certain level. You've got an enthusiast.

Okay, we'll take you. We'll take you and we'll train you and we'll do our best to get you through the calls. That's the approach that we take because our aim is to address a problem. This problem that we do not have enough people of African and Caribbean backgrounds who are taking up history and having skills to engage with issues. to carry out research and so on. So that is also something that's unique about our column.

We will take you and we will develop you. If you stick with us, of course, if you can stick with us, we will take and we will develop you in that way. The third aspect of it is that, which makes it unique, is that

you decide what you want to research. As I've just given me the illustration there that we have students and of course many of them want to focus on a kind of British aspect of history but others don't others want to focus on Africa

only want to focus on Africans in Asia or they want to focus on some particular cultural tradition in Barbados or they want to focus on the Haitian revolution and we have you know we I suppose because of my own

interest in history you know, we have the, I have the capacity to, to supervise that research to say, okay, well, have you thought this? Have you read this? And, you know, you build up that ability, as it will, that expertise, you know, not over a couple of years, but over, you know, maybe 30 years and so, having, you know, done a bit of research in different areas of the world and in different types of history. And a lot of my research, I think you mentioned it in the introduction, has to do with kind of Pan-African matters, we can say.

And so, you know, I have looked at, you know, Caribbean history. My training initially was in African history, but I've looked at diasporic history in the Caribbean, in the US, in South America, in Cuba, as well, particularly in Britain, when I've done a lot of work on the African diaspora in Britain. So I have that background, and I'm able to support students in perhaps ways that others maybe not so able to do.

And then the last thing is, yes, that we don't have this division between Africa and its diaspora that genuinely exists at academic level, which is a very, yeah, we can say a very Euro-Sensual approach. And you mentioned SOAS, and I was a student at SOAS for in about 12 years, total, maybe a bit more, actually. But anyway, a long time, about 12 years. And when I was an undergraduate, you know, it was very much aware, you know, we're studying the African continent.

So if you're an African and, you know, you get kidnapped by somebody and put on board a ship, does that cease to be African history? Okay, at what point? Is there a three-mile limit? And when you get outside that three miles, you cease to be an African and you become somebody else?

Well, that's ridiculous. So if, you know, half a million people are kidnapped and taken to some other place in the world and take with them their languages and their culture and their worldviews and their military expertise and all these other things and they wage a very successful struggle for over a decade and they overthrow the three principal arms in the world and in the Western world, French, the Spanish and British and successfully organized a, you know, the world's first revolution of the enslaved. That is part of African history.

Everybody kind of recognizes that, generally. The African Union even gives, you know, a hate to the special associate membership and so on. So, I mean, this is kind of recognized. So we should understand that not as something isolated from and divorced from the history of Africa. and, of course, it took place in the Caribbean. Openly, that's geographically correct.

That we can say it's part of the history of the Americas, as part of the history of the Caribbean. Some of I even say it's part of the history of France. But that doesn't mean it's not part of the history of Africa and Africans. So that's just what we try to encourage and develop. And, of course, I mean, just thinking about the Haitian Revolution, you know, the old ideas were, well, of course, all influenced by the French Revolution

and all the ideas came from France and there really kind of some distortion of the Enlightenment and all this kind of thing. And I mean the more you look at it, it probably doesn't have anything to do with any of that. All the ideas came from Africa, the worldview came from Africa,

the conception of democracy, justice came from Africa, military know-how came from Africa, the ability to unite people from different nations came from Africa. Everything was Africa. about it. You could argue. And so let's just say that and let's study it in that way.

So that's what we do. We look at that relationship and why it's important. Why has it endured from that time to the global African reparations movement? Why is there a global African reparations? Again, the African content of the diaspora come together and what is this connection? And so we examine these things. So that is unusual, also, and maybe unique about the program. And I think the overall thing we are trying to do is to, you know, take people who are interested,

who want to do research and want to find out more for themselves, maybe, for their communities, or their kids, or just because it fascinates them. and we're trying to assist them to to fulfill their dream or their aim in life. And yeah, maybe that makes us a little bit different to other university programs too. Yeah, as the listeners probably were able to glean from that answer, it is a really wonderful program in so many ways in terms of targeting people who, you know, are just genuinely passionate about history, people that have a specific interest within history,

the ability for them to choose their own project, weaving together these different geographic histories together into a more pan-African conception of history. I mean, it's just a really great program, which then, of course, brings us to the topic at hand. And the reason why we're, again, it's kind of a call to arms episode for the listener, the decision that the University of Chichester had recently announced

and the reason that we're here talking with you about this topic today because of course we're going to bring you back and talk about actual history history in future episodes so listeners don't worry we will get back to that with the professor but there is a very pressing issue at hand which is the decision that the university of chichester had announced so professor instead of having me announce what that decision was and what we're trying to accomplish with this this campaign that we're you know wholeheartedly signing on to why don't I have you explain to the listeners the university's decision, their justification for the decision, and why the decision is as insane as it really is?

Okay, well, yeah, okay, I try to keep it as simple as possible, but obviously you can ask me to explain things. As I indicated earlier, the course has been running about five years with success and with no targets. In May of this year, I was summoned to a meeting, a kind of emergency meeting with my head of department who told me that the university was review of everything, all of its taught post-graduate provision. So basically all of its master's programs were going to be reviewed. I was told, well, they were going to be reviewed in regard to recruitment. And, you know, they'd kind of be assessed as part of their,

they'd be assessed in terms of their marketability and so on. And if they didn't reach the target, they would be suspended while further review and investigation was done. So, you know, I was a little bit concerned about that because I'm not sure at that time when I was told what the target was, but I was mainly, I was partly concerned because whatever the target was, I think the eventual target was six students. I was concerned about it for a number of reasons.

The first reason was the target was being set in May and the course starts in September. Well, the improvement generally for our course, people tend to enroll between May and September for various reasons, financial, life. You know, people tend to do things a little bit last minute. And so if you take a snapshot in May, it doesn't actually give you a very good understanding

of how many students are likely to be on the course in September. Now, you could say that is the same for all programs, but, you know, my question was, well, has the university actually looked into, you know, enrollment patterns? Because I knew that generally my students all kind of turn it up. in September and said, oh, I want to do it and so. So I was a little bit concerned about that.

Secondly, the M-RES is a little bit different from, I think, nearly every master's program at the university, in that it takes enrollment twice a year, both in September and January. So although our figures are not great, we have, you know, an enrollment twice a year. So if anybody says, okay, you have this number of students. starting in September, I'm going to tell them, okay, fine, that's only half our normal enrollments, because it doesn't include the January figures. And it can't include the January figures because we're in May and people haven't enrolled for January 24.

So I raised these concerns. I said, well, you know, I'm a bit concerned about these things, but, you know, I assume the university would take away into account. And then I thought, well, you know, they're going to talk about marketability. That's probably a good thing because I've been concerned. complaining every year. You don't market the course. It's not publicized. You know, it's a problem and I'm doing my best and so. So I thought, okay, if the worst comes to the worst, maybe it'll be, you know, a workout okay. And I assume that this investigation was going to take, you know,

several months for people to look into what was going on and marketability and so on and so. well imagine my surprise when about two weeks after the first meeting i was i don't think i even had another meeting i was sent an email saying recruitment to the m res has been suspended and i was you know a little bit shocked actually i was very shocked um and i immediately went to not to the person who told me but i went to the deputy vice chancellor of the university who is always also the person responsible for EDI, for inequality, diversity, all these kind of things. I said, look, you've just suspended enrollment to a course which focuses on the history of Africa, the African diaspora. It mainly attracts students of African and Caribbean heritage.

It's the only course in the university of that type. It's a course which brings black students into the university which is overwhelmingly monocultural, isn't this a concern to you as the person responsible for, you know, equality and diversions? And he said to me, I said, well, you know, I said, what are you going to do about? He said, nothing. That's what you mean nothing. This is your, this is what you are supposed to do, you know, isn't, doesn't it breach all these policies? He said, well, I can't say anything to you. I said, well, I presented all the kind of arguments I've outlined to you. He said, I can't say anything and I can't do anything.

I said, well, what's, you know, like, what's happening? He said, well, he said, it's a cost-cutting exercise. So I said, ah, now I understand everything. The university has closed the course while suspending, whatever word one wants to use. They told the students who have registered for September to go home, thereby losing their income, and they're telling me as a cost-calling exercise, what does this mean?

I said, well, it's obvious. You're trying to get rid of me. Because the only way you can cut costs on this calls is to get rid of me, because I'm the only cost. There's no classroom, there's no heating, there's nothing. It's all along on. So he said, well, you know,

I don't know whether he said yes or no or whatever, shrugged his shoulders and something. so nobody had said to me we are going to make you redundant nobody's told me that at all so then I went away and I said I need some break a holiday I had my whole holiday

I'm saying catch you they can make a redact that's what it's all about so anyway I went away for my three weeks or whatever four weeks actually longer because I had to go and speak somewhere else in New York and so when I came back so this is the first

The course was suspended, effectively closed, recruitment stopped, students told to go out. Then, when I returned, about, I said five weeks later, I'm summoned to another meeting. And I sent an email, I come to this meeting on institutional change. I said, what is that about? What's the meeting about? And I was sent some phrase that I'm not even sure if it was. was English, I said, well, what does it mean? What, what, what, what is the agenda for this meeting? And I wasn't told. So I said, okay, well, I better go with a union representative because it

was clear, it was obvious what it was about. I've been around long enough to know what it was about. So I went with my union rep and I was told, well, you know, there's been, you know, there's a problem with recruitment to this master's course and had to suspend it and therefore your post is at risk. I said, well, why? What's it got to do with me? I've been at the university for 12 years. I was not contracted to teach one course. I've taught undergraduate programs.

I supervise 10 or 11 PhD students. Why should my employment be linked to the suspension of one calls? You might just as well say that the director of marketing's post should be at risk of redundancy or the head of my department or the vice chancellor. Why is there any connection? So this was what was done, and I was told that, okay, I would be sent a redundancy or threat of redundancy letter. Actually, during the time I was in the meeting, a person telling me this said, okay, I'm going to send you a letter now, and tell you and explain everything to you.

So to cut a long story short, I was issued with that a letter and told that I would be made redundant at the end of what they call a consultation period unless I could reinvent myself or I could present a counterproposal of basically an economic nature which would say that I guess that, okay, I'm going to bring in this money and that money and these students and these tunes. and I had two weeks to do that. And that process ends tomorrow. So that's ascension situation. So they've closed the course and now they're trying to close me. So I said, well, what about my 10 PhD students? Six of whom have come through the M-RES, all of whom are doing research that I'm supervising,

who have come to the university because of me and my work. and I wasn't told anything about them, nothing was said about them, what would happen to them, and so on. So I said, well, okay, I have the students being told what you're doing? No, it's confidential. So I said, okay, well, so I went home and wrote less to all the students and said, this is what's happening. The students were obviously very alarmed, very concerned.

Some of them were on the master's program. They weren't sure what was going to happen to them, who was going to supervise them to the end of their dissertations. My PhD students were equally alarmed. What's going on? Some of them had just started their PhDs. We come here because of you or whatever, whatever, whatever. So they said, well, we're not going to accept this.

It looks, it has the smell of some kind of discriminatory. policy or action and they initiated the petition and various other types of protest and I can go into those in one detail but that is the yeah that's the basic situation facing us a unique course you can say that's been set up in fact a unique situation at the University of Trista because we have there a concentration of about 15 or 16 black postgraduate students, probably the largest

concentration of black postgraduate history students in Britain and all of it is going to be eliminated essentially. And you know, they're getting rid of me and I

hesitate to say anything more about myself as somebody who's generally you know, regard who does, even in the university's terms, somebody who's known for his research, for his teaching, for his contributions in other ways and so on. So all of that is going to be eliminated, but riddle, and so everybody is asking, well, why?

What's all this about? How do you explain it? Well, that is indeed an incredible mystery. I mean, if I look at this, I don't know what metrics and what kinds of, you know, approaches the university is taking to, you know, determine the viability of these degrees at that level. That's all some, you know, mystery here. But you're training a number of Ph.D. students.

That's a kind of continuing commitment. You know, the fact that they're ready to shudder the process. program, when there are those who are continuing, they're your supervisors, they're making important contributions. You've already just had one person complete their PhD from an academic perspective. Not only is this a unique, you know, and very marketable and unique program that fits a need and a niche that's doing something different from other programs. But secondly, it's successful in academic terms. I mean, you described the structure of the degrees. This is a rigorous and important kind of set of skills and training, you know, in African and African

diasporic history. There are a number of people who successfully completed the program. That's not a small number from my sense of one person being supervisor. This isn't a program with four or five in a faculty who are teaching and supervising. You know, the numbers that you're describing. I mean, to have four or five master's students is, you know, kind of overwhelming on top of having five or six PhD students. That's a very large time. I have 10 PhD students. Yeah, you've got 10 PhD students. And then if you're bringing every year, you know, three, four, five students to do the master's, that's quite a lot of student support and supervision. And in academic terms, there are quite a lot of high level, you know, research and work taking place.

here that should be something that the university is trying to promote and talk about as one of the unique and special, you know, characteristics, which makes me think that either we're witnessing some kind of very narrow neoliberal kind of, you know, kind of approach in the academy. And we can talk a little bit more about commodifying degrees and how administrators are looking at this in the neoliberal kind of turn of the academy, or there really is some kind of problem or issue because the optics of this have to be terrible. You know, it's gotten attention. It does look like it's discriminatory. You know, is there something against, you know, where people are uncomfortable with the kind of radical approach to history, the fact that you're connecting

academic research to, you know, people's identities and struggles in, you know, the social and political space in British society. It's not just meant to be, you know, kind of rarefied academic work that has no purchase and no value to communities. It's meant actually to stimulate those connections. And that isn't something that is always encouraged, you know, in the academy and in society. So I just wonder, you know, do you have any thoughts? Have you had any kind of reactions or responses that indicate, you know, how to really understand the significance of this decision and its consequences and its motivations?

It's difficult to answer that in the sense of, I mean, obviously the universe claims that it's all, economically based although because I'm not allowed to speak about the process of redundancy and what's being discussed in what's called consultation but I can't say

even though a motion has been tabled on the question in Parliament in Britain even though it's in the leading papers regarding the independent it's online it's on Twitter, even though we're just coming up to 10,000 people, probably today

we'll hit 10,000 signatures on the petition. Even though the whole world knows what's going on, I'm not supposed to talk about it. But the university keeps claiming that it's simply a question of economics of some

kind, although it's not an economics that makes sense to me. Even the figures that I've been provided with don't add up and in fact

demonstrate the discriminatory nature of what's going on. There is another master's program in the university which is an MA in cultural history which has very similar figures I don't think any black students. It's very similar figures but it's still running. And Alice has tried to do something very special

which hasn't been advertised at all, which maybe has one or two, which has produced six PhD students, which the MA hasn't produced as far as long as, is being closer. Everything seems to be discriminatory. The fact that only half of our annual intake is being counted, the fact that the target is set in May

when most people haven't enrolled in the course, it looks discriminatory. The fact that I'm, you know, perhaps one of them, if I can say this, that's one of the more well-known or more eminent professors at the university are being targeted, the first person of African descent to be a professor of history and being targeted. It all looks discriminatory and the university keeps saying to me

isn't. Well, they haven't convinced me. And anybody you talk to in the street, in the media, everybody thinks it is. You know, and I said this to the university, everybody thinks that and essentially you have to persuade people that it isn't because that's how it seems what the actual motive is the only thing that's been said to explain it to me possibly is that they've used the phrase that the university only wants or wants to focus on generalist degrees now I've asked several times what is a generalist degree what is a generalist history degree and nobody's explain that term to me. I've asked them and written several times

requesting, explaining what that means. Because obviously if I'm to make a counter-proposal, as I'm required to do, to stop my post-big memory. I need to understand okay, what kind of degrees does the university want?

No one's explained it to me. So I understand it to mean Eurocentric degrees. I can't think what else it can mean. So I assume, okay, they want Eurocentric degrees. Well, Well, that is, seems to me to go against the kind of even the EDI policy of the university, which is not a very well-developed one, as well as the general requirement of the times. And I always point out to the university that in the first semester that I joined the university in 2012,

I taught a module called Africa and the African diaspora in the modern world, which was again a kind of survey from 1500 in Africa. right up until the present day kind of thing, which took in Africa, the Caribbean, North America, as well as Britain. That module in my first semester was voted by the students of the university module of the year. And the students said, isn't this great, for the first time we're learning about Africa, African American history, Caribbean history, history of black people in print. We've never done this before. We've not had it at school.

and this is 99.9% white students are saying. So the idea that any history of Britain or anywhere else could be told, could be presented, could be studied without the history of those of African and Caribbean heritage, let alone any other more international history, is so ridiculous and such a backward conception that you can't quite imagine how the university are presenting it. And of course they're not defiling or commenting on what it could mean. But that's the only kind of explanation I've had, that it's economics and we want generalist degrees. And one can only conclude from that that. The other thing I think I conclude from it is that they don't really, whatever the actual reason is, they don't really care.

They don't care about the history of Africa, on the African diaspora. Maybe they just think it's not important. They don't really think having, you know, so many black students is of any value. That's not really important. Having so many PhD students in history of African and Caribbean heritage, that doesn't really matter.

Having somebody like me at the university and maybe other universities would, you know, boast about it. In fact, even University of Chichita has kind of boasted about me in the past and what I've achieved. so on but really they don't care who is his boss and we don't need him so that's to me that's the only way you can understand it

and I'm being charitable I'm not accusing them of racism or anything such as that I mean who would want to say that but you get the idea that they don't care we're not going to take into account you know the backgrounds of students what the one of the degrees

achieved what it does for the image of the universe we don't need that we don't care anything about Let's just get rid of it. And we'll do it in the most sort of clumsy way possible. We don't care what people say about it. We don't care if, you know, half of the world has its eyes on us. We don't care if 10,000 people sign a petition.

We don't even care the students take out, you know, legal action against us, which is what the students in terms of. You know, we're not bothered about that. Let's just get rid of it. and it's also strange because I'm not the sort of, anyway, actually I won't say that. Let me leave it, leave it where I am because... Well, let me jump in for a second, Ben, Professor, and say that your conclusion in terms of the university not caring

is really the only conclusion that anybody that has looked at this situation can come away with. And at risk of, you know, prompting of deeper discussion on the neoliberalization of the institution, of the university as an institution in Britain, you know, kind of drifting more and more towards the model that we've seen in the United States, you know, when they're talking about the strict economics of a program, it goes to show that the university is putting these numbers out there as a way of getting rid of any sort of responsibility towards social justice, any sort of responsibility towards furthering knowledge within a particular discipline, if they're able to put a number on that and say, hey, look, here's

the number and this is our justification. It abrogates any responsibility that the university has towards any of those other aims, social justice, academic, you know, rigor, bringing in these other students from different backgrounds, making the university a more diverse place, both academically and in terms of background of the students. By putting a number on it, they're able to get rid of any sort of that discussion. You know, the university has, has, has, As many programs, as you pointed out, there's other similar programs that have similar metrics that aren't being cut right now. The university could say, you know, look at the numbers for this program. You know, why are we cutting this one versus that one?

Or on the other hand, they could say, well, the university is facing difficult financial times at the moment, but we have a responsibility to protect this program for this reason, this reason, this reason. they're not doing that. The reason that they're not doing that, I mean, it seems fairly obvious to me is that they simply don't care about the aims of the program. They don't care about the fact that this program is bringing in a diverse set of students

in terms of their background, in terms of their academic interests, and in terms of what they're attempting to do with the education that they receive in this program, you can't really come to any other conclusion than the fact that the university, at the very least does not care about the aims of the program because when you assign a number to it in terms of economic terms

and that's your justification, it's saying you don't care about anything else related to that program, the importance of that program to the university, to the broader discourse surrounding the issues of that program and to the academic discipline. They just don't care. I mean, that's at the charitable reading of the situation, in my opinion. Yeah. I think that's about right. I think that's what one has to conclude. I mean, there may be more, you know, sinister intentions. I can't say. I don't have any evidence in that. People speculate. People have said to me this way, oh, somebody's out to get you. Because the other aspect of it is that the, you could say that the course has been targeted. in a way not as something in itself

but as a means of getting rid of me that's the only reason for closing that's the only kind of that's how the thing works. The course and the closure of the course and the target is an instrument to get rid of me because I'm being linked to this course even though I have

done and do other things at the university and so it does look rather strange and, you know, I keep asking the university, well, what about my PhD students? You know, doesn't that bring in income? And why does you never mention it? And in every document, it's never mentioned.

So it appears that there's a continual focus on wrong calls as a justification in a way of getting rid of me. And, of course, with all the, you know, the implications and the consequences and so on. And I think the not caring is shown also by the way, that the university treats the students because, of course, the students didn't know about any of this

and only know because I told them. So the university hasn't contacted them and said, well, you know, we're going from this very difficult transition and, you know, you know, might be a bit unsettling. We're not sure what's going to happen, but, you know, don't worry. They haven't done any of that.

The students have contacted the university and said, what's going on? We purg, this is happening. We're very, you're upset and concerned and angry. And then the university has responded. But if the university had its way, it would all be completely secret. Nobody would know what was going on. And that cannot be an example of caring for your students.

And, of course, the university also claims that, oh, well, even if they get rid of me, they will support the students. Well, how are they going to support the students when they get rid of the person who's the specialist? supervise, though. I mean, it sounds like the university thinks, oh, anyone can supervise, you know, the history of Africa or the history of the Caribbean or history. Yeah, it's not important. It's not like, you know, something that somebody has to be trained in or have 30 years of

experience to do. Anyone can do that. And they think that's going to, that's reassuring to the students. I tried to explain to them several times. That is not reassuring. The students are not reassured because the university hasn't done anything to reassure them and as long as it persists in this present cause which is to threaten even redundancy after tomorrow whenever it is that is not going to that is not going to reassure anyone the students are you know upset they're saying they can't work they're angry they've taken legal action and uh i guess fortunately for for them they've

been supported by a very well-known legal firm in Britain called Lee Day, who listeners may not heard of, but is very well known in its kind of human rights actions. It supported the Mao Mao claimants against the British government and many other important and significant cases, and they are supporting the students, which is great for the students. I believe that the M-RES itself has legal representation

so the M-RES as a whatever as a course is being legally represented and of course I have my union supporting me so this is the situation and I think the other aspect of it is just to go to deal with the issue of how it's perceived that I've already sort of touched on this, that people around the world have been incensed

by what has happened. You know, they've been presented with the evidence, what has happened to the course, what's happened to me, they've heard what the students think, and, you know, 10,000 people in just a couple of weeks have signed a petition opposing what the university did. I mean, I think that's quite remarkable and the students that managed to get

around Madison Pult. It's in the national news. A member of parliament has put down an early day motion in parliament. The protest letters have been written. Students have written letters. You know, it's like the whole world has its eyes

on the university just what it's going to do. So you could say that the university has created a lot of a lot of publicity about the course and it's ironic that they've created the publicity when they've closed it rather than doing the publicity

when it was open and building on its unique character and I think what's been demonstrated too is how unique it is, how much support it has, how many potential students there are. But unfortunately it's kind of too late in a way because they've closed the course and

there's no recruitment. So I think it's very, very sad. And we have, and the students particularly are calling on people to show the university that they're wrong. This isn't something that nobody cares about. This is something which is very important to people. If you go to the petition and you read the comments that people have written, I mean, how many people have taken the trouble to write comments and sometimes substantial comments.

I mean, it's very strengthening, I would say, very heartening because you sometimes feel, oh, well, it's my particular problem, well, it's just me and my student. But when you realize you've got 10,000 people, they're all saying the same thing or making the same demand, it kind of makes you determine to, or more determined, to carry on and do everything to keep it open and to carry on the teaching and the supervision

and, you know, you are made to realize how important people think the whole program that we've been able to establish the university, how important it is the work of all doing. And so, yeah, I mean, we just hope that the university C reason realize that the support we're getting helps them to understand how people view this cause, how people view what they're doing,

how people view me and what they're doing to me, and that they think again, yeah, I mean, that's our hope and our wish. Well, I do want to say that indeed is very ironic that the program has received a lot of attention in this fashion at the time of its closing, but, or at least it's suspension, you know, I mean, I think a lot of our listeners are very interested in history. This is guerrilla history.

They're, you know, interested in anti-racist, anti-colonial, you know, histories and struggles. They're activists and they're concerned with the relationship between history and present kind of social struggles for justice. and, you know, maybe people would be interested, you know, in such a program. And I would probably encourage them to express that interest and that disappointment that an option that they've only now, you know, maybe become aware of is not available to them to the university. And if it was only about a particular degree course or some kind of decision in an academic university,

the context, I don't think, you know, this wouldn't be something that we would necessarily, you know, cover on this podcast. But this, to me, rises to a much, you know, greater point about the history of Africans and African diasporic peoples that is a significant resource, actually. You know, this program, the kinds of scholarship people are doing, the activist nature of it. This is guerrilla history. This is is what we mean by guerrilla history. And a very serious kind of resource that's available to future guerrilla historians in some ways is really threatened here. So I would encourage all of our listeners to also think about this. I know it's something that you teach on at the, you know, up to the global reparations movement. I mean, you know, a program like this, whether it makes money or not, is really in some ways completely immaterial. That's putting aside, you know, all the metrics and things that could be shown for the kinds of contributions it's making, even on academic terms, it's clearly a valuable program that if the university

actually cared about, you know, research, cared about education, it wouldn't even be considering this. But at a separate level, in terms of reparations, what has British society done to really change its educational system, to incorporate, to recognize, and to attend to improve the condition of Africa of African Diasporic peoples. I mean, this is part, I should say, you know, we should be thinking programs like this and future programs that need to actually be developed as part of, you know, reparation, struggle, and activism because of the significance and importance of people's understanding their histories in order to equip them for struggle, for change, for improvement.

So, you know, I thank you so much for coming to talk to us about this. I'm, you know, still very disturbed and distress. A lot of my concerns have not been resolved. They've been heightened by what I've heard you describe here. But perhaps you can tell us what people should do. What's the direction this struggle should take and what our listeners can do to support and aid you and your students? Okay.

Well, let me just add one thing because you mentioned the question of preparatory justice. and I should say that the MP who member parliament who tabled an early day motion in parliament is the chair of the old party committee of reparations in the British parliament. Not only did she table this motion, she also contacted the vice-chancellor of the university and said, look, this is a unique degree.

It connects with our concerns with repatriatory justice. You know, we could work together in some way and it would be a very useful resource as you've indicated and the university wrote back and said essentially they weren't even going to talk to them. Basically it's none of your business.

Yes. Not your business. There's one other example. Somebody wrote to the university who has a background in public relations, public affairs and she said, okay, I will give my expertise to the

university for nothing. I will market this program for you and I will, you know, yeah, I will do it for nothing. You don't have to pay me anything, you know, and they didn't even respond to her letters. So, you know, again, it makes you think they don't care. They don't really, they're not really concerned about the program or that it's being used, again, as a mechanism to,

either to get rid of me because I'm me or just get rid of me because I happen to be a historian that they're not particularly, they're not particularly one. So what can people do? Well, there are two very many things people can do. Firstly, sign the petition. We're very close. We may even have reached 10,000 signatures now,

but if not, we will certainly reach it today. But it would be great to double that figure in the next week or so. So we're asking everybody to sign it and to share it with five other people. We want everyone to sign and share with five other people. And then, of course, you have to make sure those five other people also sign it and also share it each of them with five other people. If everybody does that, we will have, everybody got some mathematicians listening who will be able to tell us how quickly we will get to a million or whatever. But just doing that would be very, very helpful to us because we think making the whole issue more and more public, more people aware of it, does help to focus. the minds of those who are taking decisions

in the university that they understand this is important. People do support it. People do want it. So that's very important. There is also a letter being circulated. I can make it available to you for

basically academics and or history professionals. So people engaged in archivism or museum or some heritage or history just for them to sign it because we think well maybe the university don't understand 10,000 random people signing a petition and making comments. Maybe that's not, it's a conclusive evidence, that they need people who really understand

about history and heritage. So we have that letter, open letter, which people can also sign and I will make that available to you. Please do. Then, of course, I mean, people can, you know, write directly to the university. I mean, it's not difficult to find. details of university and the vice-chancellor, whose name is Jane Longmore, and I can. As people, it's useful, I can supply an email address that people can write to.

Say whatever people wish to express, of course, if people wish to express their concern, then they should do that. If people wish to say that they were, you know, very, very eager to be recruited or to enroll in such a course, that would also be helpful to maybe persuade the university. So that's also something people can do. If people have the possibility of any media contacts of any kind, it could be podcast, it could be print media, it could be anything. Again, it's very helpful to give a voice, not necessarily to me, but certainly to my students. Then my students can reach out and contact others and again express their voices.

And some of the students' letters have been made public and there may be more. So I think all of this activity, these are the kind of things we would like people to do. There may well be the case because the students are taking legal action that there will be a crowdfunding appeal very very shortly. And I will, if that is the case, will supply that information

and people can, of course, support financially. So I think those are the main things. Of course, people are welcome to take their own initiative and if they want to do anything else. Of course, within the bounds

of law and so on, anything, you know, are dangerous or in any way, but just to express their views and in any other way that they think, appropriate and suitable, then we would very much

appreciate their support and yeah, just that's really, I think, what we need at the present time. Yeah, so in way of closing, first of all, I want to thank you for your time, Professor. It

was a great conversation about, like I said, a very pressing and in many ways disturbing issue. And I hope that we'll get to talk to you again very soon about issues regarding your actual scholarship and not these disturbing issues that are being imposed upon you by your institution. But next, I also want to implore the listener. So listeners, please, you need to take five minutes out of your day. I know we're all very busy people,

but you did just listen to an hour and 15 minute conversation. So you did have the time to listen to this. Take five minutes out of your time going through Twitter or whatever it's called today or scrolling through Instagram or whatever take three minutes to sign on to the petition we have the link in the show notes go down sign the petition write a comment tell the university what you think about their decision to cut the MREs program and uh you know make professor ad these position redundant write that comment then take the link write a short little message and forward that message and the link to five other people. It's five minutes total.

And if all of you do that, I mean, we see how many listeners we have. We're going to increase the number of people that have signed onto this petition exponentially. We know that. If all of you do that, the numbers of this petition are going to increase many, many times. And if you then forwarded on to your contact,

it's only going to be amplified that much more. So please take five minutes out of your day to do that. The links are all made available to you in the show notes it's not going to take you any time to find anything click it write it you have no excuse honestly this is the least that you can do um so yeah that's my uh you know my plea to everybody to just just do it i i know that you're going everybody is busy we're all busy do it okay so now with that out of the way professor uh how would you like to direct the listeners to find your work is there anything that you want to point them to if they want to learn more

about you and your scholarship. I mean, they can go to my website, hackyamaddy.org, or they can just Google my name. They'll find various, probably various videos. And certainly on my website, there are videos, there are some articles. They can obviously look from my books that are around and about. Again, there's a quick Google search. One of the most recent ones is called Many Strachers.

which is an edited volume actually of young historians work. Some of the young historians I work with. Some people who come through the M. Res program itself are contained in that edited book. My other book, African and Caribbean people in Britain, A History, which is published by Penguin and came out in hardback last year. It's going to be issued in paperback this year. It will be very extremely cheap available from all goods. bookshops or on

you know Amazon and so on so that's around if people are interested we're hoping very very shortly that my book pan-Africanism of history which is unfortunately temporarily unavailable because of some

publishing difficulties one day you can get me back to talk about publishers I'll take a few hours but anyway pan-Afghanism of history will be coming out soon. I don't know whether I can officially say this.

I don't know whether I can. I think I can no, anyway. Maybe I'm not sure if I can say it. But it will come out soon and have a US publisher very, very soon because people have been asking writing to me and saying, when is it available? It will be available soon in English. It's also available in Portuguese. It's available in French. It's being translated at the moment into Arabic and to

Spanish. So yeah, look out for those as well. Excellent. We'll certainly do that, and I'll link to your website in the show notes as well. So listeners, after you go and write the petition, then you can click on the professor's website, but do do the petition first, that way you don't forget. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcast? You can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And if you're interested, go listen to some back recent episodes of the the modulus, M-A-J-L-I-S about the Middle East, Islamic World, Muslim diasporas.

If you're interested in those topics, we've got episodes for you. Absolutely highly recommend that. Our co-host, Brett O'Shea, was not able to make it today, but you can find all of the work he does at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. As for me, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck 1995, H-U-C-1-995, the Stalin History and Critique of a Black Legend translation that I did alongside Salvatore Ango de Morrow is now available. You can find all of that information either by following me on Twitter or pre-ordering it on

Amazon and the orders through bookshop.org. If you don't want to give money to Amazon, we'll open on August 10th. So this episode will be coming out just in advance of that. So if you don't want to order through Amazon, but you do want a hard, a print edition of it, then wait until August 10th and go to bookshop.org and look for the Iskra Books page on there, the publisher Iskra Books. As for guerrilla history, you can help support us and allow us to keep doing what we do by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history with gorilla being spelled, G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-L-A

history, and you can keep up to date with everything that we're doing by going to Twitter and looking for at Gorilla underscore pod. That's, again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. You know what I'm going to do. Thank you.