#RaceClass

University of Mississippi professor James (JT) Thomas joined the #RaceClass Podcast for a convesation about whiteness, teaching sociology in a deep red state, and glimpses of the impossible in Mississippi. We also explore how Du Bois can help us understand the "Souls of Jewish Folks" and what it's like to grow up on both sides of color line in Kansas City.

Arnie and Jon discuss Trump's plan to leverage the IRS to resegregate higher education. The effort echoes Christopher Rufo's call for the Trump administration to "industrialize" its assault on higher education by exerting "existential terror" on the entire sector. In real respects, the proposed IRS rule could advance Trump's campaign to push Black and brown students out of higher education and entrench racist tropes about who's got intellectual chops and who doesn't. But the proposed rule's actual text does something unexpected. Trump might want the rule to eliminate DEI, but it actually creates liability for universities that disparately harm students of color and creates a safe harbor for initiatives that reduce prejudice and discrimination.

UC Berkeley Law Professor Russell Robinson joins for deep dive into the Trump administration's war on Blackness, civil rights and the prospect of multiracial democracy. We explore how courts and institutions will respond to our "upside down moment" in which the federal agencies created to protect civil rights are led by individuals & organizations nostalgic for the racial and gender hierarchies that defined pre-civil rights U.S. society. Learn about Professor Robinson's work: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/russell-robinson/

Sociologist Rahim Kurwa discusses his new book "Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing." The book documents decades of antiblack racism and white supremacy in the Antelope Valley -- Los Angeles County's northern outpost. Professor Kurwa traces the Antelope Valley's evolution from a white segregated postwar suburb to a destination for individuals priced, policed, and evicted out of Los Angeles. We discuss how politicians, police and residents resisted Black migration through the policing of subsidized housing and how Black tenants, allies and organizers fought back. Grab a copy of Rahim's book today: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/indefensible-spaces/paper

"We openly support the assassination of basically every elected Democrat in New Hampshire." So posted the New Hampshire Libertarian Party on X earlier this week. Arnie and Jon discuss how the likely person behind that post is embedded within the fabric of NH's rightwing ecosystem extending to the state's Republican Party. New Hampshire's also become home for Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who apparently sees the state as an opportunity to exit all those pesky regulations and equality commitments necessary for multiracial democracy.

German historian Thomas Zimmer joins the #RaceClass Podcast for a deep dive into AfD (Germany's neo-Nazi party), the links that bind AfD and MAGA, and what looking to Germany can teach us about the United States. We discuss the broad failure of liberal and centrist scholars and institutions to deliver an analysis or politics that attends to racism, patriarchy and other organizing forces that shape U.S. society and animate the global movement to redeem white Christian supremacy. Check out Thomas' newsletter "Democracy Americana" today: https://steady.page/en/democracyamericana/posts

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig joins the #RaceClass Podcast for a wide ranging conversation about familial ancestry, the Jason Arday tragedy, Tyler Austin Harper's appeal to white liberals, Jon's former torts professor turned President of Columbia university and what it means to lead under authoritarianism. We also dig into Julian's blog Cloaking Inequity and the ongoing demand for university administrators who specialize in professional unreadability. You can follow Julian's newsletter here: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/without-fear-or-favor-7365409628462956544/

Arnie and Jon discuss how the Trump regime is leveraging accreditation to make universities heel. The gambit traces straight to Project 2025 and rightwing activist Christopher Rufo, who explained to the New York Times the plan to use federal funding as a weapon to exert "existential terror" on every university that refuses to fall in line with their anti-democratic agenda. Shame on the ABA Legal Council, the primary regulator of American law schools, for thinking it could satiate the regime by sacrificing DEI. We also explore how the GOP's support for data centers and school vouchers is driving voters to Democrats ready to fight the billionaries destroying our communities and schools.

Environmental law scholars Carmen G. Gonzalez and Rebecca Bratspies join the #RaceClass Podcast to discuss their new teaching guide: Teaching Environmental Law in Context. Their guide offers a corrective to the traditional environmental law course that disconnects students from the power dynamics, structural racism and local politics that animate today's most pressing environmental fights. We also discuss what it means to teach about environmental racism in a moment of escalating rightwing repression and climate emergencies. Get your copy today: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/teaching-environmental-law-in-context-9781035333899.html

Why is Texas' GOP so scared to educate their own students? Jon & Arnie discuss the rising repression across Texas' public universities. The Texas state legislature, with help from handpicked rightwing administrators, is systematically undoing the decades of work that cultivated world class higher education in the state. At Texas A&M, administrators are scanning syllabi to cancel classes and content about race and gender. At the University of Texas at Austin, Jim Davis (President) and William Inboden (Provost) are overruling their own departments to strip tenure from faculty whose work they dislike. At Texas Tech, you're not allowed to use the word "systemic."