Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Martha Biondi's superb book is a pioneering treatment of the integral role of courageous black students in the turbulent 60s. In our age of the Occupy Movement, we badly need this wonderful work!"
and#151;Cornel West, author of Race Matters
and#147;The Black Revolution on Campus is a passionate and powerful piece of scholarship about a dramatic moment in the evolution of American universities: the period in the 1960s and 1970s when the Black Power Movement clashed with the liberal sensibilities of Western cultural empire building. Biondi carefully demonstrates why this era of intellectual insurgency, led by Black students and their white allies, was significant. It allowed those whose stories had been left out of the curriculum to begin to speak truth to power. But it also made space for other movements (such as feminism and gay rights) to become important parts of the contemporary academic curriculum. Biondi invites the reader to do more than bear witness to an important scholarly debate about the role of black studies on college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s. Her probing analysis illuminates enduring yet evolving truths about our larger culture and its myths of American life.and#8221;
and#151;Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
and#147;The Black Revolution on Campus is the first comprehensive account detailing the struggles for black studies within institutions of higher education in the United States. It suggests the enduring salience, and at times bitter consequences, of black struggles for inclusion, representation, and autonomy on college campuses and within university curricula. I know of no other work of its kind, and certainly no work as definitive.and#8221;
and#151;Nikhil Pal Singh, author of Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy
and#147;Martha Biondi's The Black Revolution on Campus is a judicious and empathetic history of the Black student movement. Reading the book reminds us of the forgotten stories and remarkable individuals who forged the organizations that moved history along. It makes us recognize how much the good side of the contemporary American academy is indebted to the courage and commitment of the people who put themselves on the line to bring justice into institutions that are often smug about their values and their own history. The promise of the Black Revolution is unfinished. Biondi's book is a reminder of those tasks that remain.and#8221;
and#151;Vijay Prashad, author of Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today
Review
and#8220;Thoroughly researched, beautifully written, and a fascinating piece of history . . . an exceptional piece of scholarship, and a book greatly worth reading.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Biondiand#8217;s work offers a fresh perspective on the student protest era, acknowledging the major and overlooked contributions of black students.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Biondiand#8217;s book is a very powerful chronicle of the struggle and strategizing that moved seemingly immovable institutions toward change.and#8221;
Review
"Enriches our understanding of the vital, if often undervalued and understudied, role of black students in linking campus radicalism to broader struggles for racial and economic justice and in calling public attention to issues of diversity in higher education. . . . The Black Revolution on Campus is a valuable addition to our understanding of the modern black freedom movement, student activism, and the institutionalization of black studies as an agent of change in higher education."
Review
"The most comprehensiveand#160;account of black studies founding generations. . . . [A]and#160;nuanced telling of the creation of black studiesand#160;programs."
Review
"Deep and interesting. . . . [Biondi] provides a sweeping view of the birth of black studies."
Synopsis
The United States currently has the largest prison population on the planet. Over the last four decades, structural unemployment, concentrated urban poverty, and mass homelessness have also become permanent features of the political economy. These developments are without historical precedent, but not without historical explanation. In this searing critique, Jordan T. Camp traces the rise of the neoliberal carceral state through a series of turning points in U.S. history including the Watts insurrection in 1965, the Detroit rebellion in 1967, the Attica uprising in 1971, the Los Angeles revolt in 1992, and events in post-Katrina New Orleans in 2005. Incarcerating the Crisis argues that these dramatic events coincided with the emergence of neoliberal capitalism and the state's attempts to crush radical social movements. Through an examination of the poetic visions of social movements--including those by James Baldwin, Marvin Gaye, June Jordan, Jos Ram rez, and Sunni Patterson--it also suggests that alternative outcomes have been and continue to be possible.
Synopsis
The Black Revolution on Campus is the definitive account of an extraordinary but forgotten chapter of the black freedom struggle. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Black students organized hundreds of protests that sparked a period of crackdown, negotiation, and reform that profoundly transformed college life. At stake was the very mission of higher education. Black students demanded that public universities serve their communities; that private universities rethink the mission of elite education; and that black colleges embrace self-determination and resist the threat of integration. Most crucially, black students demanded a role in the definition of scholarly knowledge.
Martha Biondi masterfully combines impressive research with a wealth of interviews from participants to tell the story of how students turned the slogan and#147;black powerand#8221; into a social movement. Vividly demonstrating the critical linkage between the student movement and changes in university culture, Biondi illustrates how victories in establishing Black Studies ultimately produced important intellectual innovations that have had a lasting impact on academic research and university curricula over the past 40 years. This book makes a major contribution to the current debate on Ethnic Studies, access to higher education, and opportunity for all.
Synopsis
Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called and#147;the biggest prison building project in the history of the world.and#8221;
Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom.
In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit Californiaand#8217;s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The resultsand#151;a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the and#147;three strikesand#8221; lawand#151;pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the stateand#8217;s commitment to prison expansion.
Synopsis
and#147;A magnificent analysis of the political economy of superincarceration and the slave plantations that California calls prisons.and#8221;and#151;Mike Davis, author of
Ecology of Fear"Golden Gulag is a deeply necessary book for our times. Gilmore digs beneath the easy answers to the more troubling causes of a political consensus that prisons are the only solution to all urban and rural ills."and#151;Nayan Shah, author of Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown
"Ruth Gilmore lays bare the diabolical logic of neoliberal incarceration. She shows us that the prison is a symptom of the decline of our civilization, how the California Nightmare has produced its disposable population. Gilmore's depressingly hopeful analysis is a wake-up call for our somnolence."and#151;Vijay Prashad, author of Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare
About the Author
Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Associate Professor of Geography and Director of the Program in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is a member of the founding collective of Critical Resistance, one of the most important national anti-prison organizations in the United States.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction: The Black Revolution on Campus
1. and#147;Moving toward Blacknessand#8221;:
The Rise of Black Power on Campus
2. and#147;A Revolution Is Beginningand#8221;:
The Strike at San Francisco State
3. and#147;A Turbulent Era of Transitionand#8221;:
Black Students and a New Chicago
4. and#147;Brooklyn College Belongs to Usand#8221;:
The Transformation of Higher Education in New York City
5. Toward a Black University:
Radicalism, Repression, and Reform at Historically Black Colleges
6. The Counterrevolution on Campus:
Why Was Black Studies So Controversial?
7. The Black Revolution Off-Campus
8. What Happened to Black Studies?
Conclusion: Reflections on the Movement and Its Legacy
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Photo Credits
Index