The Crisis of Knowledge and the American University:
James Baldwin and the Struggle for a Human Future
A Call
America today stands at the crossroads of history. The impoverished, war-weary, and despairing masses are rising in rebellion against the most corrupt and inhuman ruling elite the world has ever seen. The American State's unabashed financial, military, and ideological support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has further deepened this crisis of legitimacy, fundamentally upending the political calculus of one of the most consequential elections in this country’s history. On one hand, this is a moment of shared outrage and disbelief at the barbarity of the “civilized” West. Equally, this is a moment of reckoning that calls for ideological clarity and moral courage.
At the heart of this reckoning is the crisis of the American University, precipitated by the brave and moral stand taken by students all over the country against the genocide in Gaza. The brutal repression of these protests exposes the unparalleled Zionist influence over America’s elite universities, and their inseparable ties to the war agenda of an imperialist State. Neither is such repression without historical precedent, but our time presents new questions that need new answers.
Western science and academia are the pillars on which Western civilization bases its claim to supremacy. White supremacy, and its particularly vicious manifestation in Zionism, is the foundation-stone of elite institutions of learning in this country. White supremacy in this context is more than just overt racism, it is an utter contempt for the ordinary human being, which does not spare the white working poor. This disregard for human life and dignity is clearly revealed in the elite University’s direct and indirect investment in war and immiseration, and in its uncompromising support for the Nazi State in Israel. It is also revealed in the parasitic relationship the University has to the cities it inhabits. Its complicity in the deindustrialization and gentrification of urban centers, the disinvestment in people’s institutions and the school system, goes hand in glove with promoting a professional managerial class with highly concentrated wealth, that is completely removed from ordinary people and bears no responsibility to the communities it displaces.
What does the American University have to offer to the young person that arrives at its threshold with a genuine desire to know the world, and use that knowledge to take humanity forward? It tells them that their only future lies in the pursuit of safety and a high paying career. It promises them every privilege the white world has to offer, as long as they are willing to jettison their moral core and obligingly assimilate into the ruling elite’s life-world of decadence and irresponsibility. It separates them from the people who produced them, and from a knowledge of themselves and their history.
At the heart of this reckoning is the crisis of the American University, precipitated by the brave and moral stand taken by students all over the country against the genocide in Gaza. The brutal repression of these protests exposes the unparalleled Zionist influence over America’s elite universities, and their inseparable ties to the war agenda of an imperialist State. Neither is such repression without historical precedent, but our time presents new questions that need new answers.
Western science and academia are the pillars on which Western civilization bases its claim to supremacy. White supremacy, and its particularly vicious manifestation in Zionism, is the foundation-stone of elite institutions of learning in this country. White supremacy in this context is more than just overt racism, it is an utter contempt for the ordinary human being, which does not spare the white working poor. This disregard for human life and dignity is clearly revealed in the elite University’s direct and indirect investment in war and immiseration, and in its uncompromising support for the Nazi State in Israel. It is also revealed in the parasitic relationship the University has to the cities it inhabits. Its complicity in the deindustrialization and gentrification of urban centers, the disinvestment in people’s institutions and the school system, goes hand in glove with promoting a professional managerial class with highly concentrated wealth, that is completely removed from ordinary people and bears no responsibility to the communities it displaces.
What does the American University have to offer to the young person that arrives at its threshold with a genuine desire to know the world, and use that knowledge to take humanity forward? It tells them that their only future lies in the pursuit of safety and a high paying career. It promises them every privilege the white world has to offer, as long as they are willing to jettison their moral core and obligingly assimilate into the ruling elite’s life-world of decadence and irresponsibility. It separates them from the people who produced them, and from a knowledge of themselves and their history.
Today, with everything to lose, and very little to gain except their own humanity, the students have decided that their life must amount to more than this. In taking a stand against the genocide in Gaza and the University’s complicity in it, they have taken their rightful place among the people of the world, and the struggle for our human future. The crackdown on dissent, the stifling of free thought and speech, the forced resignations of presidents of some of the most elite institutions for not dealing with the student movement with a harsher hand, has revealed to them the ruthlessness and moral bankruptcy of the American University.
The students see that the University’s commitment to Truth and Knowledge pales in comparison to its commitment to its Zionist donors and war. They now know that the Freedom these institutions claim to uphold stops short of the freedom to be a revolutionary. They are breaking their silence, saying we will study war no more, we will no longer be made to stand idly by in the face of injustice and human suffering. They are demanding a new, more substantive Freedom, and a new basis for Knowledge that is centered on the moral imperative and the human being.
The brutal and cowardly military repression brought down on peaceful student protests across the country reveals that their demands hit at the very heart of Empire. Western academia is the basis on which the Western ruling elite exercises hegemonic control over the ideological landscape of the world. The crisis of the American University is rooted in an epistemic crisis of knowledge, which calls for reflection and a re-assessment of the assumptions on which knowledge production is based.
How we know, that is the scientific method to discover new knowledge, must be preceded and informed by why we know, or the purpose of such knowledge. If the institutions of knowledge production are tied to war, the purpose of such knowledge IS war and the creation of individuals well-adjusted to war. In the struggle to bring forth a future centered on humanity and peace, and not war, it is imperative that we question the philosophical, ideological, and epistemological foundations of scientific and intellectual activity as it is practiced today.
The dominant view of science, which is the white view, is that science is the concern of a select few “experts,” who must pursue it as a disinterested and neutral activity. While the scientist and scholar is allowed a narrow autonomy over their field of study, they cannot uphold political, ideological, or moral positions that challenge the values and assumptions of the ruling class and their interests. Thus academic freedom, an institution hard fought for and crucial for free and democratic knowledge production in service of the Truth, is under attack in the same American University which claims to be its ultimate arbiter.
The overarching ideological framework across all disciplines in Western academia is Postmodernism, which attacks the existence of an objective Truth. By doing so, these theories attack the possibility of Knowledge itself and the capacity of the human being to know the world. The human being is reduced to an abstraction, only revealed through increasingly narrow categories of identity, and never in the fullness and complexity of the universal human condition. This worldview, rooted in the centrality of the Individual and individual liberties, is self-defined as progressive and imposed on intellectuals the world over. It is also the basis on which Western academia mounts its authority as the gatekeeper of discourse, narrative, and method.
Today however, we find ourselves in a pre-revolutionary moment. The American State is unraveling, and an overwhelming majority of the people of this country demand a fundamental revision of the political and economic system. In such times, the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of human beings, human social relationships, and thought becomes real, and ideological clarity becomes essential. Every revolutionary moment needs knowledge and theory — principles to guide this transformation and show the path forward. If the American University is fundamentally anti-revolutionary and anti-human, where is the basis of such knowledge, that serves the democratic and emancipatory possibilities of a new American People, to be located?
The students see that the University’s commitment to Truth and Knowledge pales in comparison to its commitment to its Zionist donors and war. They now know that the Freedom these institutions claim to uphold stops short of the freedom to be a revolutionary. They are breaking their silence, saying we will study war no more, we will no longer be made to stand idly by in the face of injustice and human suffering. They are demanding a new, more substantive Freedom, and a new basis for Knowledge that is centered on the moral imperative and the human being.
The brutal and cowardly military repression brought down on peaceful student protests across the country reveals that their demands hit at the very heart of Empire. Western academia is the basis on which the Western ruling elite exercises hegemonic control over the ideological landscape of the world. The crisis of the American University is rooted in an epistemic crisis of knowledge, which calls for reflection and a re-assessment of the assumptions on which knowledge production is based.
How we know, that is the scientific method to discover new knowledge, must be preceded and informed by why we know, or the purpose of such knowledge. If the institutions of knowledge production are tied to war, the purpose of such knowledge IS war and the creation of individuals well-adjusted to war. In the struggle to bring forth a future centered on humanity and peace, and not war, it is imperative that we question the philosophical, ideological, and epistemological foundations of scientific and intellectual activity as it is practiced today.
The dominant view of science, which is the white view, is that science is the concern of a select few “experts,” who must pursue it as a disinterested and neutral activity. While the scientist and scholar is allowed a narrow autonomy over their field of study, they cannot uphold political, ideological, or moral positions that challenge the values and assumptions of the ruling class and their interests. Thus academic freedom, an institution hard fought for and crucial for free and democratic knowledge production in service of the Truth, is under attack in the same American University which claims to be its ultimate arbiter.
The overarching ideological framework across all disciplines in Western academia is Postmodernism, which attacks the existence of an objective Truth. By doing so, these theories attack the possibility of Knowledge itself and the capacity of the human being to know the world. The human being is reduced to an abstraction, only revealed through increasingly narrow categories of identity, and never in the fullness and complexity of the universal human condition. This worldview, rooted in the centrality of the Individual and individual liberties, is self-defined as progressive and imposed on intellectuals the world over. It is also the basis on which Western academia mounts its authority as the gatekeeper of discourse, narrative, and method.
Today however, we find ourselves in a pre-revolutionary moment. The American State is unraveling, and an overwhelming majority of the people of this country demand a fundamental revision of the political and economic system. In such times, the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of human beings, human social relationships, and thought becomes real, and ideological clarity becomes essential. Every revolutionary moment needs knowledge and theory — principles to guide this transformation and show the path forward. If the American University is fundamentally anti-revolutionary and anti-human, where is the basis of such knowledge, that serves the democratic and emancipatory possibilities of a new American People, to be located?
This year marks the 100th birth anniversary of James Baldwin, the greatest essayist of the English language, and a revolutionary witness for the Black Freedom Movement — the Third American Revolution. In celebrating the Year of James Baldwin in Philadelphia, we celebrate his literary, philosophical, and ideological genius, as well as the life-world that produced him, which is the Black Freedom Tradition. We believe that this rich body of knowledge and revolutionary thought that stems from the lifeworks of W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Baldwin himself, offers us a philosophical and epistemological framework that holds the key to our future.
In this symposium, Baldwin will speak to the current moment as a revolutionary thinker and philosopher who has a message for humanity. He illuminates a way to know the world that is centered on the struggle for human freedom. This epistemology, and its possible consequences for knowledge and a human future, challenges and upends the assumptions of the ruling class and the ideological landscape it shapes.
In this symposium, Baldwin will speak to the current moment as a revolutionary thinker and philosopher who has a message for humanity. He illuminates a way to know the world that is centered on the struggle for human freedom. This epistemology, and its possible consequences for knowledge and a human future, challenges and upends the assumptions of the ruling class and the ideological landscape it shapes.
Baldwin speaks as someone produced by Western civilization who categorically rejects the standards of the West. He turns the logic of history on its head, asserting that it is white civilization that is held captive by its history of slavery and imperialism, preventing it from joining hands with world humanity as it moves towards the future. Dismantling the myth of white supremacy, which makes its adherents incapable of achieving their own human possibilities, is therefore the only path to maturity in this still adolescent country.
Central to Baldwin’s epistemology is his revolutionary Love for humanity. For him, Love is a human precondition for knowledge, that aligns creative and intellectual activity with the project of human freedom. This emphasis on Love is a philosophical transgression of Western logic and modes of thinking which are centered on the individual and European rationality. This is also why Western intellectuals are woefully inadequate in explaining the meaning of the great changes taking place in the world today. The forward movement of human knowledge demands an epistemic break with the Eurocentrist limitations of the West, and a new way of knowing the world that is rooted in Love for humanity.
Lastly, this symposium is also our humble tribute to the brave men, women, and children of Palestine, who are making the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the future of all humanity. It should not be lost on us that while elite universities are engaged in the ruthless dismantling of the student protests against the genocide in Gaza in the name of preserving peace and the sanctity of centers of learning, every single university in Gaza has been decimated, hundreds of schools have been leveled, and many thousands of students, teachers, scientists, writers, and poets have been murdered by Israel. Yet, they persevere, fearless in their defiance of the Nazi Israeli state, glorious in their martyrdom and their undefeated faith in the future.
We call on all peace-loving people to join us in paying our debt to Gaza. The demand for a new basis for knowledge is also the demand for a new world order which places human freedom and peace at the center of its concern. Every scientist and every intellectual must choose in this urgent moment, to stand with humanity or with the enemies of human freedom and knowledge.
Central to Baldwin’s epistemology is his revolutionary Love for humanity. For him, Love is a human precondition for knowledge, that aligns creative and intellectual activity with the project of human freedom. This emphasis on Love is a philosophical transgression of Western logic and modes of thinking which are centered on the individual and European rationality. This is also why Western intellectuals are woefully inadequate in explaining the meaning of the great changes taking place in the world today. The forward movement of human knowledge demands an epistemic break with the Eurocentrist limitations of the West, and a new way of knowing the world that is rooted in Love for humanity.
Lastly, this symposium is also our humble tribute to the brave men, women, and children of Palestine, who are making the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the future of all humanity. It should not be lost on us that while elite universities are engaged in the ruthless dismantling of the student protests against the genocide in Gaza in the name of preserving peace and the sanctity of centers of learning, every single university in Gaza has been decimated, hundreds of schools have been leveled, and many thousands of students, teachers, scientists, writers, and poets have been murdered by Israel. Yet, they persevere, fearless in their defiance of the Nazi Israeli state, glorious in their martyrdom and their undefeated faith in the future.
We call on all peace-loving people to join us in paying our debt to Gaza. The demand for a new basis for knowledge is also the demand for a new world order which places human freedom and peace at the center of its concern. Every scientist and every intellectual must choose in this urgent moment, to stand with humanity or with the enemies of human freedom and knowledge.
The Black freedom tradition has always strived for peace and freedom for all humanity- (left) Dr. MLK Jr. leading a march against the war in Vietnam (1967); (centre) Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois addressing the World Congress of Partisans for Peace in 1949; (right) Robeson speaking at the anti-war "Hands Off Korea" rally in 1950.
Photo credits (in order of appearance):
- Jim Wilson/The New York Times
- Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP
- Mark Gerson/National Portrait Gallery - London
- Penn FJP/Instagram
- Dr. King (AP Photo) / Du Bois (AP Photo)/ Robeson https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/korean-war-rare-pictures-1951-1953/