2014 Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture
One of the many consequences of Chancellor Wise's decision to un-hire Steven Salaita this fall is that the boycott by scholars outside our institution has made it difficult for students to fulfill the projects that up until August 1st had so much potential to transform this campus through conversations about the profound effects of globality and how we apprehend difference, oppression and solidarity on this campus. While this has created the conditions that have resulted in outside scholars refusing to engage this campus through formal speaking engagements, it has also created the opportunity for us here to speak to each other about our own work on these issues, especially as they impact the humanities.
~ Jodi A. Byrd , in her introduction to Prof. Robert Warrior's lecture
October 30, 2014
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The Transnational Solidarity Initiative organized the 2014 Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at the University of Illinois, which was delivered by Professor Robert Warrior, Director of American Indian Studies and Professor of AIS, English and History. Professor Warrior's talk, "Remembering Said's Minority Imperative, and the Persistence of Lost Causes" followed a screening of Edward Said's famous 2003 Walker-Ames lecture on Palestine, Iraq, and U.S. Policy, titled "Imperial Continuity", delivered at the University of Washington.
This experimental pairing of lectures between Edward W. Said, and his one-time student, Robert Warrior, was organized on the occasion of the 79th anniversary of Said's birth (November 1), and 2014 being the 35th anniversary of the publication of The Question of Palestine and the 20th anniversary of the publication of The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination 1969-1994. |
Prof. Robert Warrior speaks about his time studying under Edward Said and the need to rethink Said's idea of the minority imperative in the context of Indigenous thought and literature and the aftermath of Prof. Steven Salaita's unjust firing from a tenured position at the American Indian Studies Program at UIUC.