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Saree Makdisi on Israelis and Palestinians and Kimberlé Crenshaw on the Battle Over Black Studies

On this episode of the Start Making Sense podcast, we examine Netanhayu’s policies and provocations, and the fight over the future of Black Studies.

Jon Wiener and Start Making Sense

March 2, 2023

Israeli security forces detain a protester during a demonstration against the Israeli government’s controversial justice reform bill, near the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem on March 1, 2023.(Ahmad Gharabli / AFP via Getty Images)

Israel’s new far-right government, headed, again, by Benjamin Netanyahu, is working to undermine democracy for Israelis and advance Israel’s annexation of Palestinian land. Provocations by Israel in the West Bank have been followed by settler pogroms against Palestinian villages. Saree Makdisi provides comment and analysis of how Israel is “destroying the fantasies of liberal Zionism.”

Also: the worst thing that happened to Black history during Black History Month was not Ron DeSantis banning critical concepts and approaches—it was the College Board revising its new African American Studies curriculum to meet all of his demands. But now scholars in Black History, Black Studies and related fields are fighting back. Kimberlé Crenshaw will explain. She founded the African American Policy Forum.

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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


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