Scholē IRL

This week, we are joined with Mason Herson-Horvath from the Institute for Social Ecology, an independent institution of higher education dedicated to the study of social ecology, an interdisciplinary field drawing on philosophy, political and social theory, anthropology, history, economics, the natural sciences, and feminism. The ISE has offered intensive summer programs, a year-round B.A. degree program, workshops on issues such a...

This week, we are joined with Tuba İnal Çekiç, Cagla Diner, and Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi (Safi), from Off University, a self-organisation of scholars at risk who seek new strategies to sustain academic life threatened by anti-democratic and authoritarian regimes. Off University was established by scholars in Turkey, yet addresses itself to a public all over the world: Academics who have been purged from their institutions, forced to...

This week, we are joined with Erin Manning and Brian Massumi from 3Ecologies, an autonomous learning environment exploring collective techniques for creative thought and practice. Its activities are radically open, guided by an ethos of self-organization and open accessibility. It affirms the value of neurodiversity and non-normative modes of thinking, being, and perceiving.

As an alternative or supplement to the university, the 3E...

This week, we are joined with Sigi Jöttkandt, Joanna Zylinska, and Gary Hall, the Directors of the Open Humanities Press,  an international community of scholars, editors and readers with a focus on critical and cultural theory and a mission to make leading works of contemporary critical thought available worldwide. OHP has operated as an independent initiative since 2006, promoting open access scholarship in journals, books and ex...

This episode we are joined with Cathy Kemp, Tony Beavers, and Peter Suber from the Independent Philosophy Institute, now known as Exploring the Future of Philosophy, a group of academics, mostly philosophers, greatly concerned by cutbacks to institutional philosophy in the US.

The core idea is to offer small, online philosophy seminars across a wide range of topics, texts, figures, periods, movements, and cultures. It would be admi...

People think.

This week, we are talking with Rafael Khachaturian from the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, a para-academic institution offering a variety of courses across the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences to people who are interested in pursuing questions outside of the boundaries of the traditional university. We talk about how BISR is turning academic precarity into a site of solidaristic strength, how...

To kick off our series, we are talking with Geo Maher from the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction - a school for collective thinking and learning about injustices and political change to empower movement organizers of all ages and backgrounds to challenge and transform oppressive systems - what we think is at the heart of whatever a "schole of the undercommons" might be.

The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement Sch...

On our first (pre-episode) of the season, we (Sarah and Ira) share some thoughts about why we started our podcast Scholē IRL, and what is at stake in trying to make a space for thinking together in and out of collapsing university ecosystems.

But let’s face it, we’re thinking in survival mode.

Sarah talks about her journey in and out of academia, to self-identifying as a para-academic, while Ira talks about how he is situated within...