Dr. Aziz Choudry to Discuss “Learning Activism” in SUNY Empire State College Webinar Oct. 14

Revisioning Adult Higher Education Webinars

Hosted by SUNY Empire State College

SUNY Empire State College invites the entire college community to participate in a special, free webinar in which conversation around key issues, challenges and possibilities for adult higher education today are welcome.

Dr. Aziz Choudry, McGill University (Canada) and The University of Johannesburg (South Africa), will discuss learning and knowledge production in social movements/activist contexts, the focus of his new book, Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements (University of Toronto Press, 2015).

No registration is required to participate. Simply join the webinar 10 minutes prior to the session by clicking the link below. It is recommended that participants run the audio setup wizard (Tools -> Audio -> Audio Setup Wizard) upon entering the webinar.

[Join Webinar]

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

1 - 2 p.m. EST

“Taking Struggle Knowledge Seriously: Critical Adult

Education, Social Movement Learning and the

Intellectual Work of Activism”

Dr. Aziz Choudry

Associate Professor, McGill University

Visiting Professor, The University of Johannesburg

Webinar description: What do organizers and activists know and how do they know it? This webinar will draw on Choudry’s new book, Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements (University of Toronto Press, 2015).  Activist spaces can be rich sites of learning, knowledge production and theorizing, and these struggles for change can best be understood if we engage with the intellectual work that goes on within them.  Learning Activism is primarily about the intellectual labor – the learning, knowledge production and research – which takes place in the course of organizing and activism. Choudry suggests that some of the most radical critiques, understandings and theories about the world we live in, its power structures and dominant ideologies, and the fragility of the environment – and indeed the most powerful visions for social change – emerge from ordinary people coming together and working for such change.

Presenter bio: Aziz Choudry is associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University and visiting professor at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, Faculty of Education, at the University of Johannesburg. He is author of Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements (University of Toronto Press, 2015), co-author of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood, 2009), and co-editor of Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Organize! Building from the local for Global Justice, (PM Press/Between the Lines, 2012), NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects (Zed Books, 2013), Just Work? Migrant Workers' Struggles Today (Pluto, forthcoming, 2015), and Unfree Labor: Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada (PM Press, forthcoming, 2016). With a long history as a social and political activist, educator and researcher, Choudry serves on the boards of the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal and the Global Justice Ecology Project.

Contact Alan.Mandell@esc.edu or Karen.LaBarge@esc.edu if you have any questions about the webinar.