Past Events
Poet, musician, filmmaker, actor and intellectual Saul Williams discusses the relationships between aesthetic forms and political education in conversation with Dr. Shana Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference. Reflecting on practices of Black experimentation—in language, music, and film—this dialogue explores the various sites of enclosure and foreclosure, from the nation state to the university, that bear upon the present and what practices are necessary to enact more just futures.
This conversation is the second installment of the University in/and Crisis working group, a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University, the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study at Teachers College, and is supported by The Radio in the Orchard. It is presented as part of The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cultures's Black On Screen: A Century of Radical Visual Culture, a centennial series capturing 100 years of local and transnational Black movement work and artistic evolution on film.
On this walk, we will learn about Harlem’s storied role in the movement against systemic injustice, including police violence.
Join Us for an Evening of 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.
5:30 PM - Shabazz Center Tour and Opening Drinks
Our event will begin with a drinks reception and guided tour of the historic Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
Event seating begins at 6:15 pm.
6:30 PM - Archive Unveiling
We will then follow the tour with a Malcolm X audiovisual archive presented by renowned scholar Sohail Daulatzai (UC Irvine).
7:30 - Concert Vijay Iyer and Wadada Smith: Defiant Life
We will cap off the evening with an live concert featuring the acclaimed duo of Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith performing their album Defiant Life.
We look forward to seeing you there. Drinks and seating are first come first served. Make sure to get your ticket and arrive early to guarantee your entry.
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.
Seeds from a Seed's Perspective: A Lecture & Discussion with Eric Sanderson
Insights on the Movement of Plant Propagules by Indigenous People, Other People, and Others in the Landscape that became New York (Welikia)
Eric Sanderson has been working for nearly twenty-five years to understand the historical ecology of New York City, deriving insights relevant to conservation, urban planning, resilience, and epistemological issues, such as: what does it mean to be a New Yorker? How do you get here? How do you get away? Here we take the seed’s perspective on these questions and examine the processes by which we can understand the historical landscape before New York, what it meant for seeds and their movement, and how those movements changed in a landscape long stewarded by the Indigenous Lenape people to one controlled by the Dutch and English settlers to the our modern American metropolis.
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