Join Us for an Evening of Culture, Music, and Community!

The Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University invites you to celebrate the launch of our yearlong program Countering the Carceral State. Inspired by Malcolm X's internationalist insights and in line with CSSD's thematic focus in 2025-2026 on crisis, the program explores interconnections between the crises of disciplinary enforcement central to American power at home and abroad. Program events will probe continuities between policing, racial profiling, and police militarization; the prison industrial complex; immigrant detention; forever wars in the Middle East and Central Asia; and the transformation of war zones like Gaza into technological testbeds. The launch is an arts and culture celebration of steadfastness in the face of state-sanctioned violence, which is inspired by the legacy of Malcolm X, and which features a screening of the video essay From the Ruins: A Prelude and reflections by Dr. Sohail Daulatzai (UC-Irvine) and a musical performance by Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith from their album Defiant Life.

RSVP here. The event is first-come, first-serve.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Music, and is in collaboration with the Institute for Research in African American Studies and the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University.