August 27, 2024 • 18 mins
In this episode, Chancellor May chats with Benjamin Weber, associate professor of African American studies, about his new book "American Purgatory: Prison Imperialism and the Rise of Mass Incarceration" and his research focused on racial inequity. Weber also shares the surprising job he would have in an alternate universe.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Hi, everyone.
Welcome to “Face to Face,” a UC Davis podcast
featuring students, staff and faculty innovators.
I’m your host, Chancellor Gary May.
Stay tuned for my next guest.
Hi, I’m Benjamin Weber, and
I’m an associate professor of
African American studies here at UC
(00:23):
Davis.
I research and write about the
history of social movements and
about racial inequality.
And I’m passionate about studying
the past to find root causes
and new solutions to some of the
most pressing social and political
challenges of our time,
like undoing the harms of mass
incarceration and reimagining
(00:44):
the future of human rights.
Well, Ben, welcome to “Face to
Face.” Thank you for being here.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I’m really looking forward to this
conversation.
And congratulations on your new book
by the way.
I understand it had a very
successful debut.
And thanks for the copy.
... Yeah, absolutely.
... So to start, I’m just curious
about what experiences in your
(01:05):
life led you to pursue this research
area focused on racial inequality
and finding the solutions to it.
Yeah, yeah, it was a long time
in the making. The book was about a
decade of research and writing.
And before that, I grew
up in the Bay Area here and
involved in racial justice
and environmental justice stuff in
high school.
(01:26):
And I came of political age in
a time when we were sort
of waking up to the fact that mass
incarceration was the social justice
issue of our generation and
certainly — and then also
when the U.S. went to war in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
And so these two
kind of major
issues of our time.
And I was really
(01:47):
fortunate to have a series of
incredibly wise and generous mentors
beginning my undergraduate,
college roommate, his dad was a
Black studies professor at UCSB for
a long time.
And then I just had a series of
really amazing teachers
throughout college and graduate
school.
And I had studied history and
(02:08):
politics and philosophy
at Brown and Harvard and Oxford and
all over. And I really found
that all of my best teachers and
mentors were in African American
studies, and that that
was the missing framework for some
of these problems, because
it was a discipline that’s both
interdisciplinary and it takes
racism and racial inequality
(02:29):
seriously and really looks for
root causes to contemporary
social problems.
You know, mentoring is so important
for all of us, including me.
So, I’m really
excited to hear you say how
important that has been in your own
career thus far.
And I hope you’re continuing that
practice of being a mentor now for
your students. ...
Absolutely. ... So in the book — we
(02:50):
talked about mass incarceration a
second ago — but in the new book,
you’re exploring the global history
of that phenomenon.
So how can we develop better
solutions to
mass incarceration from a global
lens?
Yeah, that’s a great
question. And it’s the question I’ve
been grappling with because
— and part of it begins with
(03:10):
understanding the history, going
back to the root causes
to see it as both the problem
as rooted both in the history of
racial slavery but also colonialism,
because some of those logics, some
of those practices that work their
way into laws and policies,
we’ve kind of disavowed the history,
the colonial legacies and
(03:31):
impacts of the problem.
And the other thing that the book
does is it lifts up solutions
from those people who
internationalize the struggle.
So one of those ideas is to put
it in a human rights framework to
say, what do we have to learn from
other parts of the world
as we begin to undo and repair
the harms of mass incarceration?
So one thing that is sort
(03:52):
of top of mind here in California is
the reparations movement.
And so other countries have
done this, have struggled with how
to repair a historic
atrocity, how to approach it.
And then to also think about this
tradition of mostly Black
intellectuals and activists who have
expanded our understanding of
human rights and what it
(04:13):
means beyond the kind of standard UN
definitions. And so that’s one
example of putting it in an
international framework,
is to think beyond kind
of the limits of some of
the existing laws and policies
in any given place.
Yeah. That’s fascinating.
Not only have other countries done
reparations, but the U.S.
has done reparations ...
Right. ... just not for the African
American community.
(04:34):
So it can be done
and should be explored and done.
You also just went
on a book tour.
... Yeah. ...
I bet that was fun.
What are some of the highlights from
the book tour experience?
It was wonderful.
I think the most kind
of rewarding and humbling part
of putting out a book is
who you get to then share the stage
(04:55):
with and be in conversation with.
So I was really excited
to be in conversation with some of —
the artist who did the artwork in
the book. He painted these portraits
of political prisoners and activists
who were featured in the book.
He’s a New Orleans artist,
Ayo Scott.
His dad is an incredible legacy,
and he’s an incredible legacy there
in New Orleans.
And he’s a dear friend.
(05:16):
And then actually, one of the
activists who’s in the book who
spent 50 years in prison was on book
tour with me.
And then people like bestselling
authors, my friend Clint Smith who
wrote “How the Word is Passed.” We
kicked it off with him in D.C.
And that was just a greatconversation
because we’ve known each other for a
long time, and he and my wife
went to school together.
And so it was just — it was the
(05:37):
first time I was doing it.
And so it really put me at my ease
to just have a conversation and then
— but yeah, it was
really a wonderful thing
to be in conversation around these
important issues but also
with some friends and then radio
hosts and other people — that was,
you know, a little intimidating, but
it was really fun.
Means you’ve hit the big time now, right?
(05:58):
I guess, you know, when they’re
going to start asking you to write
for Time and stuff.
... That’s right.
That’s impressive. ... Yeah. ...
Yeah, congrats on that.
As you’ve studied this phenomenon,
do you envision a possible
future where there are no prisons?
And if so, what does that look like?
Yeah, I think that’s been the
big question of
the last decade.
(06:19):
So I also teach the history of
the last 10 years of organizing.
And yeah, I think people are trying
to find less punitive
approaches to harm,
to kind of undo and
rethink practices
of targeted racial criminalization
and these other sorts of things.
And so, you know, there are a lot
(06:41):
of different visions
and different kind of abolitionist
practices. And one of the things
that we do as students is help them
think about clarifying their own
theory of change so that
it’s really rooted in the everyday
ways that people can be accountable
to one another, that people
can seek to
(07:02):
hold people accountable without
undue levels of
punishment and creating more
violence and more harm.
Because prisons are really supposed
to be not just punishment but
rehabilitative, right?
So we’ve skewed over the
years more toward the punishment
side, but there is an opportunity,
I think, for us to be much more
about rehabilitation and putting
people back into the community in a
(07:24):
way that they can be successful.
And that’s one of the ironic threads
in the book and in some of these
histories, is that some of the
reform movements — whether intended
or unintended — that were claiming
to be rehabilitative, ended up
actually creating even more.
So, like the Quakers thought that
solitary confinement would
rehabilitate people because they’d
(07:44):
be alone and they would find God,
and it drove people insane, right?
This idea of being
in solitary confinement.
And there’s a chapter in the book
about these honor farms
that was in the ’30s and ’40s that
progressive penologists had learned
this from American empire, from
places like the Philippines.
And they thought, you know, ‘OK, if
we give people more freedom
(08:06):
on these honor farms and whatnot,’
but it led to a kind of net widening
where, because it was seen as less
violent or less harsh,
it became more acceptable to apply
that to more and more people.
And so one of the concerns
with this idea of net widening is
similarly around electronic
monitoring.
So if you can, you know, put people
(08:27):
on an ankle monitor instead of
putting them in prison or jail,
does that make it feel
more acceptable to put more and more
people on that type of surveillance?
... Interesting. ... And so it’s one
of these kind of things that
historians and policymakers and
Black studies professors are always
trying to figure out is that how do
we get one step ahead of these
reforms that in name
(08:47):
are trying to rehabilitate but then
produce both intended and unintended
consequences?
Yeah, always be careful about those
unintended consequences.
So you started a project during
the pandemic.
It was called the Open Letters from
Prison project.
Can you tell the audience about
that, and what came out of it?
Yeah, that was a really beautiful
collaboration that
(09:08):
emerged organically from one of
our community partners.
And it was, you know, really kicked
off by the Office of Public
Scholarship. They had these grants
to collaborate with community
partners.
So we asked the California Coalition
of Women Prisoners in the Bay Area,
you know, what’s the need during
COVID, the pandemic, right?
We’re hearing all these stories
about people on lockdown in prison,
(09:30):
not able to visit with their family
members. And they said,
well, ‘We’ll ask our members inside
and outside of prison.’ And one
of the kind of immediate needs
was for forms of communication
and forms of solidarity
and care.
And, you know, people were in
lockdown and they weren’t doing
their typical — they weren’t having
as much visitation.
(09:51):
They weren’t having as much
communication with friends and
family. And so we did this
letter-writing program because
people had more time
on lockdown.
And the response was that we
sent in materials that we study
in classes here at UC Davis, and
we studied the history of
open-letter writing in
the African American studies
(10:12):
tradition, in these different
traditions. And then people wrote
letters in the style
of James Baldwin
and Assata Shakur and Angela
Davis. And it was really beautiful.
And we published a special issue
of that.
They’ve run this prison newsletter
for 25 years now.
So we did a special issue with them
on that. And, yeah,
(10:33):
that seemed like a
really meaningful response
to COVID, something that we could
do, something that students got
involved in and that people in
prison really appreciated.
And so we
are thinking about what the next
iteration of that will be,
but it always needs to respond
to and come from the question
(10:54):
of ‘What could be most useful
in this moment?’
Sounds like a really productive use
of the extra time we had on our
hands during COVID.
So, now here on campus,
you — I understand you’ve developed
a new course on
the Black human rights tradition.
What do you want students in that
class to take away?
Yeah, we’ll be offering that this
winter for the first time.
(11:15):
And so, I’d like to say I was
further along in the course
development, but it’s an exciting
collaboration between the Department
of African American and African
Studies and the Program on Human
Rights Studies.
And I think the big takeaway for
students is that
there is this tradition of Black
intellectuals and activists, you
know, stretching back to 19th
(11:35):
century abolitionists fighting
slavery all the way up through
contemporary intellectuals
who have offered and expanded
human rights tradition.
So that it’s not just restricted to
what did the U.N. say after World
War II, you know, counted as the
Declaration of Human Rights, but
that people have used the language
of human rights to fight for
something much more expansive.
(11:57):
And so one of the things we’ll ask
students is, what are
the human rights that the 21st
century requires?
So this is a living — we’ll look to
the past again to come up
with a vision for the future.
OK. And the first offering will be
... Winter.
This winter. ...
OK. So tell the students
that are watching to sign up.
... That’s right.
It’ll be a fun class.
(12:19):
So we have a tradition here on “Face
to Face.” We call it “Hot Seat.”
It’s not that hot.
All it is is I’m going to ask you
some rapid-fire questions, looking
for a one-word or one-sentence
answer. ... All right.
... You ready? ... Yep.
... All right, here we go.
If you could compete in any Olympic
sport, what would it be?
Oh.
That’s tricky.
(12:39):
Basketball.
Why basketball?
I grew up playing high school
basketball.
Yeah, and it’s always been ...
The Olympics were great, by the way.
Oh, man. Amazing.
Snoop Dogg. ...
Amazing. ... What can I say?
... And Steph Curry.
... Well, and then Jordan
and Simone the gymnasts —
my daughters are Jordan and Simone.
Yeah. And Marcia Faustin, Dr.
Faustin, and shout out to our UC ...
(13:00):
Marcia’s been a great ambassador for
us at those Olympics. ... It’sincredible.
... OK.
If you lived in an
alternative universe, what job
would you be doing?
I often think about wanting
to be a postman.
Like, if you could have a job and
not — mail person — no
disrespect.
If you could have a job that
(13:20):
required less thinking.
Sometimes I think academics,
we overthink.
And if I could have something — I
love to walk.
I love the social idea
of talking with neighbors.
I always talk to them when they come
around our house.
My wife’s uncle is a mailman,
and I don’t know why, but I always
thought that’d be a reallyinteresting
job.
That was not the answer I was
(13:41):
expecting, but that’s a good one.
If you could have dinner with anyone
— alive or not — who would it be?
That’s a great question.
I’ve been thinking about James
Baldwin a lot.
These open letters and,
you know, “The Fire Next Time”
and “The Fire This Time.” And,
(14:03):
for some reason, he’s kind of top of
mind.
That’s a fascinating answer.
I always wonder if he’s the same
person in an informal
setting as he is on television when
he’s given these interviews, and
he’s really fiery, right?
... Oh, yeah. ... Yeah. So.
...And you imagine there’s a big
difference from his writing —
feels much more intimate.
And there’s a kind of performance
that some of those intellectuals
were forced into, especially
(14:25):
then, right? Like, the debating
Buckley and these kind of right-wing
racists. ... Yeah. ... I can’t
imagine what the pressure
and, you know.
So you came to us from New Orleans.
So I have to ask this question,
which is best, East Coast or West
Coast?
Well, I’m a Bay Area kid,
so, I always joke
that we came back to the best coast.
OK.
(14:46):
Even though I want people to know, I
don’t think New Orleans is on the
coast.
No, no, we were on the East Coast
for a long time. I was teaching at
Brown before I was teaching at the
University of New Orleans.
We decided no East Coast, but if we
were going to raise kids anywhere,
it would be Bay Area or New Orleans.
... All right.
Good. OK, this is my favorite
question to ask every guest, what is
on top of your playlist right now?
Oh.
I don’t know if this is embarrassing
(15:07):
or good, but it’s Beyonce.
Elijah’s in this
Berkeley Parks and Rec camp this
summer. And the counselor is a
middle school dance teacher, so she
taught them some pretty cool dances.
And so this gets requested a lot
in my home.
That’s a perfect answer.
It just means you’re a good dad.
(15:27):
Now it’s your turn. You ask me
anything you want.
Yeah.
I asked Elijah on the way — on the
train up here, I was like, what do
you want to ask the chancellor?
And, you know, I heard you were from
St. Louis, and I brought you that
book on St. Louis, because one of my
favorite historians called it “The
Broken Heart of America” in his last
book.
And so I wonder how growing up
there shaped the vision for your
(15:48):
work and the work that you’ve done.
Yeah. Well, first, let me just tell
people Elijah is your son.
... Yes. That’s right. ... And he’sabout to start
kindergarten.
I’m glad he helped you with your
questions. So
I had a great childhood growing up
in St. Louis.
You don’t really know that some
place is different until you
live somewhere else, right?
(16:09):
So, St. Louis has had its
challenges over the years.
For a while, a lot of the
manufacturing left.
There was — there used to be a big
GM plant.
That left.
A lot of people were affected by
that.
So there’s been some economic
challenges.
Crime has been a problem.
My best friend from
(16:30):
high school was the chief of police.
He’s retired now.
And, so every
time I thought my job was hard, I’d
talk to him and realize it’s not
that hard because he’d have to deal
with all this.
You know, for many years, St. Louis
has been the murder capital of
the world. And so, gun violence
is a huge issue.
But at the same time,
(16:50):
you know, all of my best memories
were from where I grew up and who I
grew up with.
And St. Louis really shaped my own
character and gave me the
ambition and the tools to
be where I am now. So I’m very
grateful for that.
And then we were also thinking, our
department is eager to know
what your hopes for
the Austin and Arutha Goss
(17:12):
Presidential Endowed Chair.
This is a big deal and big news.
And we’d love to hear what your
hopes for that are.
We are all so grateful to Darryl and
Lois Goss for their
generous donation allowing us
to have the chair
and my thoughts,
my ambitions are for us to use that
as a tool to recruit
(17:33):
a fine scholar in this field,
someone with national, if not
international renown.
And I hope that we can do that.
I’m looking forward to who we are
able to recruit into
the chair. And I want to get more
chairs that we can do similar things
with, right? So thanks for sitting
down with me, Ben.
It’s been a fascinating
conversation. I’ve enjoyed getting
(17:54):
to meet you and Elijah.
He’s out there.
Thanks to everyone for listening.
Tune in next time on “Face to Face.”
Go, Ags!
Hi, everyone.
Welcome to “Face to Face,” a UC Davis podcast
featuring students, staff and faculty innovators.
I’m your host, Chancellor Gary May.
Stay tuned for my next guest.
Hi, I’m Benjamin Weber, and
I’m an associate professor of
African American studies here at UC
(00:23):
Davis.
I research and write about the
history of social movements and
about racial inequality.
And I’m passionate about studying
the past to find root causes
and new solutions to some of the
most pressing social and political
challenges of our time,
like undoing the harms of mass
incarceration and reimagining
(00:44):
the future of human rights.
Well, Ben, welcome to “Face to
Face.” Thank you for being here.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I’m really looking forward to this
conversation.
And congratulations on your new book
by the way.
I understand it had a very
successful debut.
And thanks for the copy.
... Yeah, absolutely.
... So to start, I’m just curious
about what experiences in your
(01:05):
life led you to pursue this research
area focused on racial inequality
and finding the solutions to it.
Yeah, yeah, it was a long time
in the making. The book was about a
decade of research and writing.
And before that, I grew
up in the Bay Area here and
involved in racial justice
and environmental justice stuff in
high school.
(01:26):
And I came of political age in
a time when we were sort
of waking up to the fact that mass
incarceration was the social justice
issue of our generation and
certainly — and then also
when the U.S. went to war in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
And so these two
kind of major
issues of our time.
And I was really
(01:47):
fortunate to have a series of
incredibly wise and generous mentors
beginning my undergraduate,
college roommate, his dad was a
Black studies professor at UCSB for
a long time.
And then I just had a series of
really amazing teachers
throughout college and graduate
school.
And I had studied history and
(02:08):
politics and philosophy
at Brown and Harvard and Oxford and
all over. And I really found
that all of my best teachers and
mentors were in African American
studies, and that that
was the missing framework for some
of these problems, because
it was a discipline that’s both
interdisciplinary and it takes
racism and racial inequality
(02:29):
seriously and really looks for
root causes to contemporary
social problems.
You know, mentoring is so important
for all of us, including me.
So, I’m really
excited to hear you say how
important that has been in your own
career thus far.
And I hope you’re continuing that
practice of being a mentor now for
your students. ...
Absolutely. ... So in the book — we
(02:50):
talked about mass incarceration a
second ago — but in the new book,
you’re exploring the global history
of that phenomenon.
So how can we develop better
solutions to
mass incarceration from a global
lens?
Yeah, that’s a great
question. And it’s the question I’ve
been grappling with because
— and part of it begins with
(03:10):
understanding the history, going
back to the root causes
to see it as both the problem
as rooted both in the history of
racial slavery but also colonialism,
because some of those logics, some
of those practices that work their
way into laws and policies,
we’ve kind of disavowed the history,
the colonial legacies and
(03:31):
impacts of the problem.
And the other thing that the book
does is it lifts up solutions
from those people who
internationalize the struggle.
So one of those ideas is to put
it in a human rights framework to
say, what do we have to learn from
other parts of the world
as we begin to undo and repair
the harms of mass incarceration?
So one thing that is sort
(03:52):
of top of mind here in California is
the reparations movement.
And so other countries have
done this, have struggled with how
to repair a historic
atrocity, how to approach it.
And then to also think about this
tradition of mostly Black
intellectuals and activists who have
expanded our understanding of
human rights and what it
(04:13):
means beyond the kind of standard UN
definitions. And so that’s one
example of putting it in an
international framework,
is to think beyond kind
of the limits of some of
the existing laws and policies
in any given place.
Yeah. That’s fascinating.
Not only have other countries done
reparations, but the U.S.
has done reparations ...
Right. ... just not for the African
American community.
(04:34):
So it can be done
and should be explored and done.
You also just went
on a book tour.
... Yeah. ...
I bet that was fun.
What are some of the highlights from
the book tour experience?
It was wonderful.
I think the most kind
of rewarding and humbling part
of putting out a book is
who you get to then share the stage
(04:55):
with and be in conversation with.
So I was really excited
to be in conversation with some of —
the artist who did the artwork in
the book. He painted these portraits
of political prisoners and activists
who were featured in the book.
He’s a New Orleans artist,
Ayo Scott.
His dad is an incredible legacy,
and he’s an incredible legacy there
in New Orleans.
And he’s a dear friend.
(05:16):
And then actually, one of the
activists who’s in the book who
spent 50 years in prison was on book
tour with me.
And then people like bestselling
authors, my friend Clint Smith who
wrote “How the Word is Passed.” We
kicked it off with him in D.C.
And that was just a greatconversation
because we’ve known each other for a
long time, and he and my wife
went to school together.
And so it was just — it was the
(05:37):
first time I was doing it.
And so it really put me at my ease
to just have a conversation and then
— but yeah, it was
really a wonderful thing
to be in conversation around these
important issues but also
with some friends and then radio
hosts and other people — that was,
you know, a little intimidating, but
it was really fun.
Means you’ve hit the big time now, right?
(05:58):
I guess, you know, when they’re
going to start asking you to write
for Time and stuff.
... That’s right.
That’s impressive. ... Yeah. ...
Yeah, congrats on that.
As you’ve studied this phenomenon,
do you envision a possible
future where there are no prisons?
And if so, what does that look like?
Yeah, I think that’s been the
big question of
the last decade.
(06:19):
So I also teach the history of
the last 10 years of organizing.
And yeah, I think people are trying
to find less punitive
approaches to harm,
to kind of undo and
rethink practices
of targeted racial criminalization
and these other sorts of things.
And so, you know, there are a lot
(06:41):
of different visions
and different kind of abolitionist
practices. And one of the things
that we do as students is help them
think about clarifying their own
theory of change so that
it’s really rooted in the everyday
ways that people can be accountable
to one another, that people
can seek to
(07:02):
hold people accountable without
undue levels of
punishment and creating more
violence and more harm.
Because prisons are really supposed
to be not just punishment but
rehabilitative, right?
So we’ve skewed over the
years more toward the punishment
side, but there is an opportunity,
I think, for us to be much more
about rehabilitation and putting
people back into the community in a
(07:24):
way that they can be successful.
And that’s one of the ironic threads
in the book and in some of these
histories, is that some of the
reform movements — whether intended
or unintended — that were claiming
to be rehabilitative, ended up
actually creating even more.
So, like the Quakers thought that
solitary confinement would
rehabilitate people because they’d
(07:44):
be alone and they would find God,
and it drove people insane, right?
This idea of being
in solitary confinement.
And there’s a chapter in the book
about these honor farms
that was in the ’30s and ’40s that
progressive penologists had learned
this from American empire, from
places like the Philippines.
And they thought, you know, ‘OK, if
we give people more freedom
(08:06):
on these honor farms and whatnot,’
but it led to a kind of net widening
where, because it was seen as less
violent or less harsh,
it became more acceptable to apply
that to more and more people.
And so one of the concerns
with this idea of net widening is
similarly around electronic
monitoring.
So if you can, you know, put people
(08:27):
on an ankle monitor instead of
putting them in prison or jail,
does that make it feel
more acceptable to put more and more
people on that type of surveillance?
... Interesting. ... And so it’s one
of these kind of things that
historians and policymakers and
Black studies professors are always
trying to figure out is that how do
we get one step ahead of these
reforms that in name
(08:47):
are trying to rehabilitate but then
produce both intended and unintended
consequences?
Yeah, always be careful about those
unintended consequences.
So you started a project during
the pandemic.
It was called the Open Letters from
Prison project.
Can you tell the audience about
that, and what came out of it?
Yeah, that was a really beautiful
collaboration that
(09:08):
emerged organically from one of
our community partners.
And it was, you know, really kicked
off by the Office of Public
Scholarship. They had these grants
to collaborate with community
partners.
So we asked the California Coalition
of Women Prisoners in the Bay Area,
you know, what’s the need during
COVID, the pandemic, right?
We’re hearing all these stories
about people on lockdown in prison,
(09:30):
not able to visit with their family
members. And they said,
well, ‘We’ll ask our members inside
and outside of prison.’ And one
of the kind of immediate needs
was for forms of communication
and forms of solidarity
and care.
And, you know, people were in
lockdown and they weren’t doing
their typical — they weren’t having
as much visitation.
(09:51):
They weren’t having as much
communication with friends and
family. And so we did this
letter-writing program because
people had more time
on lockdown.
And the response was that we
sent in materials that we study
in classes here at UC Davis, and
we studied the history of
open-letter writing in
the African American studies
(10:12):
tradition, in these different
traditions. And then people wrote
letters in the style
of James Baldwin
and Assata Shakur and Angela
Davis. And it was really beautiful.
And we published a special issue
of that.
They’ve run this prison newsletter
for 25 years now.
So we did a special issue with them
on that. And, yeah,
(10:33):
that seemed like a
really meaningful response
to COVID, something that we could
do, something that students got
involved in and that people in
prison really appreciated.
And so we
are thinking about what the next
iteration of that will be,
but it always needs to respond
to and come from the question
(10:54):
of ‘What could be most useful
in this moment?’
Sounds like a really productive use
of the extra time we had on our
hands during COVID.
So, now here on campus,
you — I understand you’ve developed
a new course on
the Black human rights tradition.
What do you want students in that
class to take away?
Yeah, we’ll be offering that this
winter for the first time.
(11:15):
And so, I’d like to say I was
further along in the course
development, but it’s an exciting
collaboration between the Department
of African American and African
Studies and the Program on Human
Rights Studies.
And I think the big takeaway for
students is that
there is this tradition of Black
intellectuals and activists, you
know, stretching back to 19th
(11:35):
century abolitionists fighting
slavery all the way up through
contemporary intellectuals
who have offered and expanded
human rights tradition.
So that it’s not just restricted to
what did the U.N. say after World
War II, you know, counted as the
Declaration of Human Rights, but
that people have used the language
of human rights to fight for
something much more expansive.
(11:57):
And so one of the things we’ll ask
students is, what are
the human rights that the 21st
century requires?
So this is a living — we’ll look to
the past again to come up
with a vision for the future.
OK. And the first offering will be
... Winter.
This winter. ...
OK. So tell the students
that are watching to sign up.
... That’s right.
It’ll be a fun class.
(12:19):
So we have a tradition here on “Face
to Face.” We call it “Hot Seat.”
It’s not that hot.
All it is is I’m going to ask you
some rapid-fire questions, looking
for a one-word or one-sentence
answer. ... All right.
... You ready? ... Yep.
... All right, here we go.
If you could compete in any Olympic
sport, what would it be?
Oh.
That’s tricky.
(12:39):
Basketball.
Why basketball?
I grew up playing high school
basketball.
Yeah, and it’s always been ...
The Olympics were great, by the way.
Oh, man. Amazing.
Snoop Dogg. ...
Amazing. ... What can I say?
... And Steph Curry.
... Well, and then Jordan
and Simone the gymnasts —
my daughters are Jordan and Simone.
Yeah. And Marcia Faustin, Dr.
Faustin, and shout out to our UC ...
(13:00):
Marcia’s been a great ambassador for
us at those Olympics. ... It’sincredible.
... OK.
If you lived in an
alternative universe, what job
would you be doing?
I often think about wanting
to be a postman.
Like, if you could have a job and
not — mail person — no
disrespect.
If you could have a job that
(13:20):
required less thinking.
Sometimes I think academics,
we overthink.
And if I could have something — I
love to walk.
I love the social idea
of talking with neighbors.
I always talk to them when they come
around our house.
My wife’s uncle is a mailman,
and I don’t know why, but I always
thought that’d be a reallyinteresting
job.
That was not the answer I was
(13:41):
expecting, but that’s a good one.
If you could have dinner with anyone
— alive or not — who would it be?
That’s a great question.
I’ve been thinking about James
Baldwin a lot.
These open letters and,
you know, “The Fire Next Time”
and “The Fire This Time.” And,
(14:03):
for some reason, he’s kind of top of
mind.
That’s a fascinating answer.
I always wonder if he’s the same
person in an informal
setting as he is on television when
he’s given these interviews, and
he’s really fiery, right?
... Oh, yeah. ... Yeah. So.
...And you imagine there’s a big
difference from his writing —
feels much more intimate.
And there’s a kind of performance
that some of those intellectuals
were forced into, especially
(14:25):
then, right? Like, the debating
Buckley and these kind of right-wing
racists. ... Yeah. ... I can’t
imagine what the pressure
and, you know.
So you came to us from New Orleans.
So I have to ask this question,
which is best, East Coast or West
Coast?
Well, I’m a Bay Area kid,
so, I always joke
that we came back to the best coast.
OK.
(14:46):
Even though I want people to know, I
don’t think New Orleans is on the
coast.
No, no, we were on the East Coast
for a long time. I was teaching at
Brown before I was teaching at the
University of New Orleans.
We decided no East Coast, but if we
were going to raise kids anywhere,
it would be Bay Area or New Orleans.
... All right.
Good. OK, this is my favorite
question to ask every guest, what is
on top of your playlist right now?
Oh.
I don’t know if this is embarrassing
(15:07):
or good, but it’s Beyonce.
Elijah’s in this
Berkeley Parks and Rec camp this
summer. And the counselor is a
middle school dance teacher, so she
taught them some pretty cool dances.
And so this gets requested a lot
in my home.
That’s a perfect answer.
It just means you’re a good dad.
(15:27):
Now it’s your turn. You ask me
anything you want.
Yeah.
I asked Elijah on the way — on the
train up here, I was like, what do
you want to ask the chancellor?
And, you know, I heard you were from
St. Louis, and I brought you that
book on St. Louis, because one of my
favorite historians called it “The
Broken Heart of America” in his last
book.
And so I wonder how growing up
there shaped the vision for your
(15:48):
work and the work that you’ve done.
Yeah. Well, first, let me just tell
people Elijah is your son.
... Yes. That’s right. ... And he’sabout to start
kindergarten.
I’m glad he helped you with your
questions. So
I had a great childhood growing up
in St. Louis.
You don’t really know that some
place is different until you
live somewhere else, right?
(16:09):
So, St. Louis has had its
challenges over the years.
For a while, a lot of the
manufacturing left.
There was — there used to be a big
GM plant.
That left.
A lot of people were affected by
that.
So there’s been some economic
challenges.
Crime has been a problem.
My best friend from
(16:30):
high school was the chief of police.
He’s retired now.
And, so every
time I thought my job was hard, I’d
talk to him and realize it’s not
that hard because he’d have to deal
with all this.
You know, for many years, St. Louis
has been the murder capital of
the world. And so, gun violence
is a huge issue.
But at the same time,
(16:50):
you know, all of my best memories
were from where I grew up and who I
grew up with.
And St. Louis really shaped my own
character and gave me the
ambition and the tools to
be where I am now. So I’m very
grateful for that.
And then we were also thinking, our
department is eager to know
what your hopes for
the Austin and Arutha Goss
(17:12):
Presidential Endowed Chair.
This is a big deal and big news.
And we’d love to hear what your
hopes for that are.
We are all so grateful to Darryl and
Lois Goss for their
generous donation allowing us
to have the chair
and my thoughts,
my ambitions are for us to use that
as a tool to recruit
(17:33):
a fine scholar in this field,
someone with national, if not
international renown.
And I hope that we can do that.
I’m looking forward to who we are
able to recruit into
the chair. And I want to get more
chairs that we can do similar things
with, right? So thanks for sitting
down with me, Ben.
It’s been a fascinating
conversation. I’ve enjoyed getting
(17:54):
to meet you and Elijah.
He’s out there.
Thanks to everyone for listening.
Tune in next time on “Face to Face.”
Go, Ags!
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