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May 1, 2025 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
55:15
WTW83: Columbia University Cancelled Her Class, but She's Doing It Anyway
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Time Text
What's so scary about the woke mob?
How often you just don't see them coming.
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, everything, everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 83. I'm Thomas Smith.
That over there is Lydia Smith.
Can I just say, I know it's kind of that we hear it every time, but I miss when the green M&M was the thing.
Oh, I know.
Also high.
For the green M&M.
Yeah, high.
I'm talking about the green M&M.
Can you quiet down?
Okay, I'll exit stage one.
This has been very clear throughout our relationship that the green M&M comes first, and then you're second.
We all know this.
I know.
I also long for...
That time.
Yeah.
How good we had it.
When they were screaming about a green M&M not being sexy enough.
Well, what are we going to be talking about today?
Oh, hi.
How are you doing?
Hi.
It was so rude of you to not say hi to me.
So today I have a very special guest.
Her name is Karen Atiyah.
And Washington Post readers...
I might recognize that name.
She's an opinions columnist over there, has done editing for the Global Opinions column for the Washington Post.
But she also recently stepped into academia, something that she expresses, you know, that she's always wanted to do.
Where she stepped into is, you know, not just, you know, small little state college or anything.
It was Columbia University at the height of Israel-Palestine and the protests and encampments that were taking place on that campus.
Okay, that's an interesting time to get to happen to have gotten into it.
Very interesting time.
And not just that.
Her course, it wasn't like...
Calculus, which I bet you wish it were calculus, hon. I do, yeah.
Yes.
It wasn't.
It was about race, media, and international relations.
So yet another time you fooled me into bringing my graphing calculator to a recording, my TI-86.
You can still write boobs, like, upside down.
I can graph boobs with this thing.
Are you kidding me?
So why are you complaining?
This is a solar-powered, like, little tiny...
This is the real deal.
And you're right.
I'm not complaining.
I have it every time anyway.
Yeah, so it was a really interesting time, a really interesting class, and someone who was really eager to...
Impact students' lives at her alma mater in the same way that she felt her life was impacted and started her career for journalism.
Well, and we should say, teaching about race and teaching about important topics that now are illegal, I think.
I'm not sure.
Really?
Yes.
But like, for all we know, there's at least...
An executive order saying we can't talk about them, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we get into a lot of conversation about the course that she developed and that journey towards that, but also what it was like to be at Columbia at that time and teaching that class.
And then when she expected, I don't want to give too much away, but when she expected that the class which had rave reviews was well enrolled, expected fully to be teaching it again the following spring semester and to have
that rug pulled out from under her, surprisingly.
We think we have a guess as to why.
Yeah, we have some pretty good guesses.
But it's a fascinating conversation from someone that I think has really taken the time during this administration especially to...
voice and figure out how she can act.
Yeah, it's also nice to have, like, we're trying to have something a little more positive.
Yeah, yeah.
So this is a bit of a change of pace.
So we're so excited to speak to Karen today.
Nice to have something a little more positive.
Absolutely. So, yeah, I'm excited to get over to it.
Of course, we'll take our usual break, which you can avoid at patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Please support the show.
Every little bit helps, really.
And it's the difference between this podcast.
Voice being out there and not.
You know, this show and what we're trying to do, it really feels more important than ever.
So we thank you so much for supporting us, for listening, for sharing.
Any of that stuff that you can do means a ton.
So patreon.com slash wherethereswoke.
And you can avoid those ads if you go there.
Like, say, such as maybe this one right now.
All right.
After this, we'll get on with Karen Atiyah.
Karen, thanks so much for joining us today.
Really excited to chat with you.
But before we kind of dive into what caught my eye on Blue Sky and what started our conversation, I was wondering if you wanted to just kind of give a little bit of background information, you know, kind of what you're up to these days.
Top five desserts.
Yeah, your top five desserts.
I was starting already.
Yes.
And then we'll get into that controversy.
The non-Tiramisu controversy.
Hi, my name is Karen Atiyah, and I am a columnist for The Washington Post.
I am also known for being an amateur movie TIE fighter, cat mom to Artemis the cat, and I was a professor, albeit a little too briefly, at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs,
teaching race, media, and international affairs.
I wear a lot of very, very different hats.
Yeah.
So the course at Columbia, is that your alma mater?
Am I remembering that correctly?
Yeah.
So I went to, well, if we're going to get into my villain origin story.
I guess growing up, let's just go back.
Like growing up, I always wanted to be.
A philosopher.
I was always interested in questions in general.
And I went to Northwestern, and that's sort of where I started.
A little bit into journalism, but being on the student radio, current affairs shows, things like that.
So I got the opportunity to study radio journalism in Ghana on a Fulbright scholarship.
And then after coming back, I started grad school at Columbia's School of International Public Affairs.
It was then that I just, I loved that experience.
I loved being in a global environment.
I loved just the classmates I was learning from of studying human rights and media and advocacy.
And that's when I made a pivot then even to not go into kind of development, World Bank type of stuff.
That's when I really wanted to become a journalist because I didn't want to sort of...
Sit in Washington, deciding from far away what was best for people's lives and ocean away.
I wanted to actually be able to talk to people and have them explain in their own words what their lives were like, what they needed, what their problems were, what their joys were, all that.
So that led to me spending a year in a Caribbean island curacao freelancing for the Associated Press.
Oh, wow.
And then after that, decided to come back.
To Washington.
And not too long after that, this is 2013, I started at the Washington Post and have been there, sorry, 2014, have been there ever since in the opinion section.
So I wore many hats during my time at the Post so far, from an editor to now being a columnist, writing on basically anything I want, which is nice.
I say people are like, what's your beat?
And I'm like, my beat is...
Liberation, basically.
But specifically, yes, I do write a lot about culture, race, feminist issues from the, I would say, you know, a Black African diasporic internationalist perspective.
So all of those experiences led me to want to teach at the intersection of race, the social constructs of race, and how we see the world, literally the world order, how nations relate to one another.
Can be seen, or at least are parallel to our constructions of identity, who the we and we is, who the them and the other is, right?
For me, it was a chance to teach this at SIPA, the place that I feel like, in a way, birthed my internationalist perspective.
And I basically was just like, I just want to teach the course that I never had.
Yeah.
As someone coming from African immigrant parents who's interested in the world but never saw my histories or people like me represented in the canon, so to speak, I was like, here's my chance to make a bit of an intervention and teach this at the graduate level.
So I loved it.
I loved that opportunity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you got to teach it, right?
It was last spring.
Last spring, spring of 2024.
And then CPRA had been trying to get me for a few years.
Of course, it was during COVID.
Right.
And I just wasn't quite ready.
But finally, in the 2023, 2024 year, I said yes.
With my whole being, my whole spirit to this opportunity and develop the syllabus myself.
And again, I just, I think at heart, I really enjoy teaching and being in an academic environment and also bringing to the classroom my own experiences as a journalist.
And then also being able to introduce my class to other journalists, other thinkers, writers, authors who are also could shed light, you know, on these histories.
Of how the media treats race and how that shapes how we look at the world.
So yeah, it was a dream come true, basically.
And how was the feedback from the students from when you taught it?
They loved it.
I had students from all over the world, from the U.S. to India, Korea, Japan.
And what was so amazing about my first cohort, shout out to you guys.
What was so amazing about it, I had a few journalists, but most of them just really, given everything that was going on in the news, in the U.S. particularly, and how much race plays into so much of our society,
whether one wants to see it or not.
My class, which was over-enrolled, by the way, there's a waiting list to get in.
My class really...
They felt like they were able to freely speak about things that they couldn't in other courses in international affairs schools.
And I guess I knew that because I was them once.
And so it was great.
I was a very, it was first time I'm like, me?
A whole professor?
What?
Wow, okay.
Grading papers, having office hours, just seeing how throughout the course you can see it in people's faces, like their eyes brightening up when they're making connections and then making connections to the material back to their own lives or what they're seeing in their own communities or in their own countries,
right?
And sharing that with each other.
Like, that's the sort of thing I love.
And all the reviews, feedback was great.
They even gave me cards and said thank you and group pictures.
And I still keep in touch with them.
Oh, that's great.
So I loved it.
Again, shout out to y 'all.
Y 'all are the best.
So you were anticipating that you would offer the course again, right?
That it was something to be planned for the following year.
But obviously that hasn't happened.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what that experience was like.
So again, I was an adjunct and again, you know, because I've maintained a strong relationship with Columbia actually ever since I graduated and wanting to teach this, pursued to teach this.
People asked me for years, when are you coming?
When are you coming to teach?
So of course, as this summer after graduation rolled around and I wasn't hearing from the school, I was like, what's going on?
Obviously things are planned pretty far in advance.
I needed to know, you know, what was happening.
And then, you know, I got the news that, unfortunately, the course was not going to be renewed, which was, yeah, it was devastating.
I don't think it was devastating just for me.
It didn't really settle in for me.
It was more so for the students, I guess, knowing that not just at Columbia, there are so few.
Non-white, non-male professors, knowing that in the field of international relations schools, I mean, this is just not a course that is taught.
It just sucks, yeah?
And I, you know, tried to get clarity, you know, and all of this is quoted in the school's paper, the Morningside Post, had a post about this because students were upset.
So even to an extent to this day, I still...
Don't exactly know why that decision was made.
Whether it was, yeah, some of the topics in my course were controversial.
I did address what was happening in Israel and did my best to create a very open channel of dialogue.
One of the only professors to do so, frankly.
In some ways, maybe there's something in the back of my head, given the attacks on CRT, DEI, all of that.
Maybe there's something in my spirit not shot.
Again, this all happened last summer.
This all happened before Trump came into office.
But I think that it just sort of was a prelude of what was obviously to come.
And I just really saw it as part and parcel of, in general, a retreat from diversity promises that a lot of institutions made.
Particularly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
But already while I was teaching, I was already seeing, how do I put it, Columbia's administration specifically.
There were signs of capitulation on diversity of thoughts on campus already.
Yeah, how's this time out with those hearings and stuff where they were grilling presidents and all that?
It was at the exact time.
I was like, I picked the perfect time to come back.
I was teaching during the protests, during the encampments, during the pressure.
I was there, you know, both in my capacity as, I mean, I was still a journalist, right?
But then also...
Seeing the encampments, the protests, I went out to the encampments myself.
I knew some students who were involved.
I had students who were docs, students who were caught up in what was becoming a really tense, scary, chilling environment on that campus, both to teach and to learn in.
But still, it was an amazing class.
And it just was really...
Well, perhaps divinely aligned that speaking about race identity in the media coinciding with what was actually happening in real time, even at Columbia.
There were some lectures where I just was like, guys, we don't even need to do the reading.
Let's just turn on the TV and see what they're saying about us right now.
What is being said about the environment on campus and how it's being, depending on who you are, where you sit, it's a realization in real time that truth can obviously be dependent on how you see the world.
And a lot of what is portrayed as the truth has to do with power.
And here we were sitting in the middle of...
This storm as students and teachers at Columbia, and yet the outside world was painting a picture that was so radically different than the reality, and yet it almost felt we were powerless to combat that because there was already a narrative that was being formed regardless of what the truth was.
So it was a deeply instructive time.
I'm sure this is something that will sit with my students for a long time.
It's definitely going to sit with me for a long time.
It's my first time instructing.
To go through all that and then to hear that that wasn't going to be happening was crushing, for sure.
Yeah, you know, on this show we're kind of all about that difference in how specifically often college campuses are being portrayed versus what they are actually like.
But, you know, we're not actually there.
Can you give us any examples of like coverage you saw or ways that the campus was talked about or the events were talked about that was just total distortions from reality?
Yeah, I mean, I think a couple of things.
Colombia is known as the activist Ivy.
It actually brands and markets itself as such because very famously during the civil rights movements, during the anti-apartheid movement, students had barricaded themselves in some of the very same buildings that the students last year during the protested.
And again, I was a graduate student there.
Some members of my family are actually alums there.
It's also situated in New York City where there are protests all the time.
There's always something going on that someone doesn't like.
And I remember going to school at SIPA as a graduate student and, you know, just seeing crowds outside the gates and flags and megaphones.
And I'd be like, who's that?
And someone would be like, eh, you know, it's just some like...
Some event you should know about, but you're embarrassed that you don't is usually for me what it would be.
Yeah. And it's just sort of like, and, you know, under the previous Columbia administration, President Lee Bollinger, who is a respected First Amendment scholar, so free speech.
So to come back to Columbia and come to this atmosphere of not only fear, but terror.
Distortion.
So I went to the encampments the first day they were put up.
And for anyone who's not a student at Columbia, where the encampments were set up, there's like a quad, there's a green.
And at the time it was near finals.
It's not uncommon to just see students like just hanging out there, putting up tents.
Protests on those lawns are not new.
And when I went to see the encampments when they first got started, it was like, okay, there's a few tents and, okay, a couple kids with some tambourines.
Most were just chilling.
They were, like, walking around with megaphones, like, a couple tambourines, a couple drums.
And that was it.
And I just sat with, like, one of my friends on the steps and I was just like, hmm, there they go.
And then we just went back to the cafe and I went back to my sushi.
Like, I did not think that.
What was going to happen was that those encampments, just a few hours, maybe 24 or 48 hours, would get forcibly dismantled by campus police.
That we would get an email saying that the university administration was going to basically forcibly clear them out.
I was shocked.
And that's when I knew this is a school that's willing to use force, right?
Now, depending on where you sit or whatever people heard outside of Columbia's gates or outside of New York, it was painted that those kids with their tambourines were violent agitators, were jihadis,
or at worst, kids who had no idea about what was going on in the Middle East were just ignorant and...
Had nothing else to do, spoiled rich kids who have time on their hands to join whatever latest trendy thing was happening.
Yeah, that was a distortion.
It was not just a distortion, but to obviously delegitimize and to not properly engage with what the students were asking for, which was very specific, actually.
It was specifically for the university to divest from what they saw as a country enabling.
Violence and in their view, genocide.
Very specific.
But no, if you hear people from outside, they're like, but the kids don't even know what they want.
We don't know what they want.
Can't they tell us what they want?
I'm like, their demands are very clear.
They usually make lists and stuff of that.
Helpful lists.
They're actually quite sophisticated in their messaging.
And it wasn't just students.
It was graduate students.
It was people who are from New York who are used to organizing and activating against injustice.
A large part of Columbia at least is sitting in Harlem.
Where people have been used to protesting Colombia for a long time.
And so, you know, those are just some of the examples.
You know, of course, there were different opinions.
Church people felt that the chants were wrong or violent or anti-Semitic.
Others who are like, wow, the NYPD is literally forcibly removing us, that that is violence.
So this concept of what violence and safety actually are, we're contested.
Is speech violence?
Is militarizing your campus with people who have weapons?
violence? Is that sort of it?
Is barring journalists, even your own student journalists, from reporting on what's happening to their own classmates?
is that violence?
I'm old enough to remember when it was the right saying that the kids on the colleges were declaring that words were violence and that that was the whole threat to speech and now it's,
where it's like, well, no, saying that Israel is committing genocide, that's now violence.
It's like, wait a minute, weren't you on the other side of that five minutes ago?
Funny how that works, right?
And funny how language, all of a sudden, violence is necessary for safety.
And seeing the language shifts that this is for security purposes when
Not just students, but faculty, particularly faculty of color, were protesting at the time by saying, we are not going to step foot on campus until it is demilitarized.
This is the NYPD is not known for handling their issues with cuteness and daisies and rainbows.
This is a police force that has so often been at the center of brutality.
It was just really chilling, sad, scary.
I saw for myself as the NYPD advanced upon us and protesters like a freaking military force.
That was one of the first times in my career as a journalist where I was like, wow, this could get really bad.
And this was my own, my school, this place where I used to call home, where I used to call safe, doing this to people who were peaceful.
Yeah, I'd say they were peaceful.
I think not just the cancellation, but I also had to think about, wow, what an environment that Columbia has enabled for learning that's become so restrictive and unsafe and fearful, I guess.
I wasn't prepared for that.
Yeah.
If there was anything that was kind of incredible about the way...
Students or people were mobilizing, which, you know, obviously was a threat to power, but these folks were moving in incredibly sophisticated ways.
So I'll give an example.
In the encampments, before they were dismantled, the students had set up a completely self-sustaining ecosystem, a little city within the university.
They had set up libraries.
They had set up food tents.
They had set up first aid.
They had set up, what else?
There was, I remember there was a spiritual wellness center, a little tent for like, basically a tent for like mental health support.
They had systems of moving as a collective.
I remember I was there when there was supposed to be media coming because Speaker Mike Johnson was about to come and smear what was happening at the university.
And they had codes ready for...
Basically determining, like, okay, everyone.
It's a code mayonnaise, everyone.
Yeah, kind of.
Code white bread.
We got a white bread over here.
Yeah, but it was to protect, yeah.
So they said, you know, anyone who doesn't want to be shown on the media or be identified, like, we're pre-warning you, you know, cover up or kind of, like I said, had a color-coded system depending on how much the students were willing to risk.
Students who were willing to be identified, who were being willing to go on record, they basically had a certain color and said, yep, I'm willing to risk that.
Others who didn't had particular colors.
And I was like, whoa.
This is pretty high level.
Impressive.
Yeah, very impressive.
It's about George Soros money, you know?
A guy who doesn't fuck around.
Very impressive.
You know, again, having students with folks on the outside who were bringing in food constantly, because again, they were sitting out from classes.
They were wanting to stay on the lawn until their demands were met.
So basically, people were making it so that they could sustain that, right?
By...
Offering the tents, offering not just that, but the education.
So they brought professors and speakers in the middle of the encampments who were still giving lectures outside.
Oh, wow.
You ever think, like, maybe this is just how school should be?
This sounds great.
It was kind of, honestly, it was like this utopia.
And again, the organizers were from all faiths.
I think previously they had had, because it was around this time of the year, actually, so they had had a Passover.
Seder in the encampments.
They would protect Muslim students when they were praying in the encampments.
It was like this kind of...
Why did they need protection?
That sounds weird.
I wonder why, right?
But still...
It was like, this is what humanity could be.
Wow.
Okay.
And to see professors who, Columbia is a school of social work, right?
A school of, one of the oldest, most famous teachers college.
This is a school that's training people to do exactly this.
Yeah.
To, as I wrote at the time, like, isn't this what conflict...
Resolution is, what atrocity prevention is, using the skills, using your organizing to try to put pressure on institutions to stop perpetrating oppression.
This is what Columbia taught us.
So to me, they were just doing on the street what we were taught, in my opinion.
So then to see those beautiful, again, this is within the quads, what was happening outside of the university.
Groups from across the city, you know, chanting.
There were a lot of chants that I thought, yeah, I thought were a bit disturbing.
I would not have done that.
But ultimately, as far as actual physical violence from encampments, absolutely not.
If anything, they were trying to make it as safe as possible.
But that didn't stop the university from not only clearing them, but from punishing the students, withdrawing diplomas.
Kicking students out of housing and healthcare, literally clearing the encampments and throwing students' belongings in the trash.
I was horrified.
I'm forgetting the exact chronology, but was this when they were kind of wanting to go too hard?
They were wanting to go really hard the other way because they were afraid of what happened to the other universities or something like that?
Right.
I mean, that was a thought.
I mean, those students were a bit bold.
They started their encampments the day that President Manoush Shafiq...
Was testifying before Congress.
So I was like, oh, wow, y 'all don't play around.
So yeah, it was this sense that like, okay, the university felt it needed to have a show of force, I suppose.
But I would argue, and I think many faculty would agree with me, it was the decision to use the NYPD to clear those encampments.
I don't think it was even 48 hours from when they set up that I think really set things into...
A spiral sort of trajectory, which a year later, Colombia still hasn't really recovered from.
Yeah, and I mean, the administration, Trump administration has gone so far to come in and specifically attack and deport someone who was heavily involved in that, Mahmoud Khalil.
Yeah, it's shocking.
It is shocking.
I never would have expected, and I still am conflicted because I still have a lot of love for...
Columbia and its ideals, I suppose.
And again, I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for that education and that experience.
And to an extent, I was shaped by what I saw on campus last year.
So I'll always carry that with me.
But it also makes me really sad.
Of course, as an alum of any institution, part of it is you want to be proud of your school.
And there's not much to feel.
Proud of right now.
I hope Columbia can turn it around.
There are so many great scholars, so many obviously amazing students, and there are faculty that are trying to stand for academic freedom.
But of course, faculty is different than administration, and this administration seems to be...
Not really making any friends on either side, right?
You're making everybody mad, man.
Everyone.
It's just such a dumb calculation.
You give the fascists an inch, they're never happy, but then the anti-fascists obviously are pissed.
You're never going to end up making that work.
I don't know why they're trying.
It's silly.
And then in between all that, you know, then you have, of course, you know, my school is an international affairs school.
So you have a situation where...
International students, non-Americans, are terrified to be here right now.
So the situation with deporting, or at the very least not giving the appearance of protecting students who are non-Americans, I don't think a lot of people really take into account, you know, those who are kind of outside of these spaces,
that foreign students account for a significant portion of tuition income for These schools, and particularly, obviously, for the International Affairs School, foreign students often pay higher tuition, which ends up subsidizing a lot of Americans,
frankly.
And so I can imagine for Columbia, specifically, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, the prospect of a Trump administration using university as a dragnet to try to carry out their anti-immigration agenda.
Columbia giving the appearance of, if not outright facilitating, obviously, but at least not protecting the free speech of its own students, particularly its own international students, is just a PR death blow and going to be a blow to the business.
It's existential.
And I've met, not necessarily from SIPA, but in the last few weeks, international students at graduate levels who are saying they don't even want to be in the U.S. anymore.
They're scared to even have their families come to their graduations that they've worked so hard to get towards.
Oh, wow.
I didn't think about that.
Yeah.
I've been speaking to some who just said, I've scraped my way to get to this point, to come to these elite schools.
And my parents have been so proud, but I don't want to risk them trying to get through.
The borders right now.
And they just said they told their parents to stay home in their home country.
Wow.
And I'm just like, my God.
And to also think that these are going to be students who might not have, especially during the COVID years, might not have had chances to have graduations then either.
Oh, yeah.
Right?
So it's just a robbery.
Of key moments in people's lives.
Oh yeah, just legitimately stolen from them.
Correct.
People don't forget that.
Now what was really, really striking to me though in reading about Columbia canceling your course is I think a lot of people when they're faced with capitulation, right?
It's like you just kind of have to accept it.
And you didn't.
And I want to hear about that because I find it so inspiring and hopefully something that we all can kind of take in our own little neck of the woods, so to speak.
Yeah, I guess, you know, like I mentioned earlier, the cancellation actually happened during the summer.
And I wrestled with a different sort of personal capitulation in that I was angry.
I was in the dark as to why this happened.
I wasn't sure if it was because of my political views or not, but I was told to keep quiet.
Oh, really?
I mean, just people in general, right?
Others were worried.
They told me, Karen, you still want to get an academic job at some point, right?
So maybe just be strategic.
Don't be a troublemaker.
Yeah, exactly.
Or kind of told, well, a lot of other people are getting their courses canceled, like budgets change.
At the same time, I just was like, but I met all the requirements.
You guys tried to get me here for so long.
And I still wasn't getting a solid answer as to why.
So I kept quiet because I was, I guess, scared.
I didn't want to feel publicly becoming...
A victim, I guess?
So, yeah, I sat on it for a bit.
And, of course, I had my day job at the Washington Post, so it's not like I was losing a massive amount of income.
I could still feed myself, so I could go along to an extent.
But it weighed on me, sure.
And then Trump came along and made these demands and targeted Colombia even more directly than last year.
And I suppose for me, seeing that happen and seeing Columbia capitulate so hard.
Yeah.
As if last year wasn't enough.
I guess that's what it was.
Y 'all brought the sledgehammer on students last year.
Set a really chilling precedent for how...
Not only campus protests should be dealt with, but I think a precedent for how protests in general should be handled, which is with overwhelming force.
And that wasn't enough.
So that was happening.
And then, of course, Trump's attacks on, like, overt attacks on diversity and education, literally purging Black people and history from government and threatening not only universities, but...
I think a lot of us weren't really prepared for the force of what I would call and have called this segregationist impulse.
And so to see Columbia not only try to one-up itself in its brutality, but then I think for me, what triggered me was...
Placing the departments of Middle Eastern studies, African studies, and South Asian studies under special supervision, which is like, we're going to monitor the ethnics, right?
And I was like, what sort of colonial bullshit is this?
And just a reminder that even the course that I was teaching on race, media, and international affairs, even if I had stayed, was then what going to be possibly thrown under the bus anyway.
Right?
That I would, would my class, if I was to teach again, would my class be monitored?
Like, that's just kind of what made me think, y 'all are bending the knees so far.
It's breaking.
To step back out of all that, again, watching, being here in DC and watching this overtly racist regime, frankly, and I was feeling powerless.
You know, I'm seeing my friends losing their jobs.
Just worried about the state of this country.
For months, I was like, what can I do?
Like, yeah, I'm a journalist.
I mean, sometimes I feel like I'm typing into the void sometimes.
And I really was just like, well, I know how to teach.
And teaching made me happy.
And of course, you know, what's happening now, I feel like I'm constantly on social media and Washington Post being like, there's an international component to this or just constantly reminding people of history.
And I'm like, well, I can teach this at a classroom level.
So I really just put on Blue Sky.
This was like a week ago.
Wow.
Hey, guys, if I taught this race and media and international affairs course, like a certain version of my Columbia course, would you take it?
And I was just, I don't know.
I wasn't even really thinking.
I think I'd just seen many people deciding to pivot after losing their jobs.
And of course, I still have my job, but I'd just been thinking about what I could do that could serve, I guess.
So I put that out there.
And within 45 minutes, I had like a thousand likes and maybe a hundred people would be like, I would sign up immediately.
And I was like, oh.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
And honestly, you guys, I don't even really know what prompted me to keep taking things a step further.
So I put that out there and then I was like, ah, okay, this is interesting.
Let me do a Google form and let me collect some data right now.
And I just did a Google form of who was interested, where were they from, a sense of demographics.
If they'd be willing to pay for this, maybe we could build something that could actually help other students or contribute to, like, defense funds.
You should check, like, does anyone have a spare university in their backyard?
That didn't work.
I was overwhelmed by, like, within, I don't know, a day that I'd put up that Google form, I got a thousand responses.
It started spreading beyond blue sky to other parts of social media.
And maybe by the next two days, I had like 3,000 responses of people saying, yes, yes, please, yes.
Then one of my friends was like, Karen, what are you doing?
Just do the thing.
How much more interest do you need?
I think for me as a journalist, we get so used to the dopamine hits of likes and yeses that I already had enough data to show.
Obviously, there was interest that people would do this.
And I was saying, look, this is a Columbia-level course, and I just don't believe in this time.
People are hungry for knowledge.
People want to learn about race, actually.
The second you start to ban something is precisely what makes people want it even more, a bit of a Streisand effect.
And yes, of course, people are pissed off at Columbia, and for good reason.
So I guess I was just like, wow, screw it.
Let's go.
Let's set up an actual...
Course, because I've already got the syllabus.
I've already got the materials.
I've already got the lesson plans, the lectures, all that.
I already got what worked and what didn't.
And it just didn't feel right that just because Columbia said no, that this wasn't something of value.
And it just didn't make sense that, you know, I was almost thinking of having something that's sitting in your closet collecting dust.
I'm like, why not just offer it again?
I've got this.
Right.
And so, yeah, so that was Monday that I put out the interest forms.
By Friday, my friend was kicking me in the butt to be like, stop screwing around and open it up.
I sent out the email to open enrollment Friday night.
We're sitting here on Monday.
As of right before this conversation, I have had more than 500 people paying students.
I had to cap the enrollment.
And not just that, but we're going to be able to support a lot of scholarships for people who say they want to take the class.
So, holy shit!
I'm like, wait!
Did I just become a dean?
Yeah.
Give yourself tenure quick.
You know, but not just that.
I think for me, it's just, I don't know, maybe it'll hit me and I'll start falling apart and crying.
And at this point, it's not even about Columbia anymore.
It's about feeling like we need community.
Yeah.
And not just community, but joy.
Like I said, I've been feeling really down.
I've been feeling really...
Defeated.
I'm like, you know, and I, this over the last week, just seeing people's, not just enthusiasm, but like offering to volunteers like, hey, I know online ed tech, like I can volunteer.
Some libraries in DC are like, hey, if you need a space, we got you.
Folks who are just like, hey, if you need an operations manager, like willing to donate for free, stuff like that.
And I'm like, y 'all.
Y 'all.
If you need someone to not study but come in and make some good jokes during the class, that's all I really could offer.
I'm thinking of some of those TikTok videos of like, I definitely want to be the teacher to be like, all right, class, one, two, three, all eyes on me.
Quiet coyote.
Exactly.
Like, all right, heads up, seven up.
In that case, I'm dating myself as a geriatric millennial.
Us too.
Yeah, and I've seen some responses that are like, I have not been to a class in 25 years, but I'm going to sign up for this.
And I think, I mean, I think a lot of things are happening, but I think that people are really desperate, again, for community.
They want to learn.
When I teach this stuff, when I learn this stuff, it changed how I saw the world for good.
It changed how I saw media.
It made me be able to examine media a lot differently.
And that's what I've got.
I want to share that.
And I want people to be able to share that with their people.
And then they share that with their people.
And that's how it works.
So I just think we're in a moment where we are needing to really go back to the fundamentals of consciousness raising.
And if this is, you know, what I can do to help, I hope this may be, and also just, I guess a bit of a jailbreak of the higher education system, honestly, because I just was like, why do I need to go through Columbia or a bunch of committees,
a bunch of just all sorts of bureaucracy?
Why do students need to be put in crippling lifelong debt?
Why, as an adjunct, do you need to break your back for pennies while the universities exploit your labor?
And I guess for me, I'm like, this bypasses all of that.
And at least the model that I have now makes it so that it is not only accessible, but it's self-sustaining.
I should be able to not only fund...
Scholarships for this first cohort, but also be able to pay guest lecturers something for their time.
The universities, frankly, exploit labor.
Obviously, I'm not at the scale of a school, but I just found this to be not only fun and enjoyable and not only sticking it to the man and resistance, but I'm like, this is a really interesting experiment.
What schools and community learning really was supposed to be about in the first place.
Not hedge funds that happen to have an education department.
So, yeah, I'm really excited.
That's so cool.
When does it start?
When does it begin?
When's the first session?
First sessions, I'm going to begin after July.
Fourth, after the holiday, it's going to run for six weeks.
So I will be teaching, again, it is race, media, and international affairs.
And it's looking at basically reframing how we're seeing the construction of how we think about race in the modern times and how it actually does have parallels to how mass media, particularly in America, I'm focusing mostly on the West writ large,
but particularly how in America, how...
Notions of race and the other have been portrayed in the media and also helped fuel the mass media's rise.
And I would say race, but I would say actually racism and the fear of the other helped to sell colonial papers in the U.S. back in the 1700s.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
So it's sort of like, again, I would tell my students, you know, when they learn this history, something I keep saying is, Gosh, guys, does this sound familiar?
Does this sound familiar to the racist clickbait that we have today?
Don't they say, is it Desert Storm that kind of made CNN or something like that?
Wow, what a pattern that I imagine is repeated a lot of times.
Yeah, so it's just to be able to give people the tools.
And they probably themselves have noticed patterns in media or coverage about the Middle East or about...
Or about, you know, how even as we remember COVID, right, being racialized or the Ebola panic being definitely seen as, you know, an African ooga-booga virus, right?
These things are, people might see, they're like, hmm, this doesn't seem right.
But there's these patterns throughout history in which there's a reason why the media is where it is with regards to.
Race, particularly in the West, and I'm focusing on the West.
I also focus on other parts of the world.
I had a unit on France, of course, like I said, had a unit on global pandemics, race in the media.
So it's really like, it's not this high level, you know, I'm not discussing like super complicated theory or anything.
It really is history and like current affairs.
And to really just be, again, explicit about how...
Race, as we're seeing in this country right now, has been an animating force for so much of our politics, relations, how we see religion, how we see each other and everything.
So it's not one of those things where, you know, I'm sure the writers like, I've seen the comments where they're like, great, she's going to teach them how to hate white people.
It's not about that.
It's about, again, understanding how we see each other and the relations between groups.
Expanding to the relations between nations themselves, right?
And so, again, everything from the founding of the League of Nations in 1919 to today, how the Security Council at the UN is set up, where certain countries have never been able to be a part of the Security Council.
So, anyway.
Hell of a sales job for session two, I guess, because we can't join session one.
That's what we do.
And then we look at what's happened in the media today.
And unfortunately, there's way too much content in today's media in terms of race and media and international affairs, even with the China standoffs and trade wars.
There's so, so much to be said in America's suspicion of China, whether it's domestically or internationally, taking away from...
America, specifically white America's dominance.
So here we are again.
My brief sales pitch, that's what we're doing.
And that's what we're going to be learning.
And it will give people the tools to really put what's happening today into some context so that when they get into discussions about current events with their friends, family, and loved ones, they've got a little bit more historical context.
To talk about.
And also just the skills to kind of start poking holes in things.
Start poking holes in things.
Yeah, and asking those questions when things are being presented to you.
Correct.
Sending letters to the editors when they get stuff wrong and just really being able to read what you're seeing in the media with a much more critical...
Which is what we need to be doing.
And as misinformation is spreading, as people are finding themselves, it's not just misinformed, but frankly, confused about everything.
I'm hoping that, you know, this class will help to say how we got here wasn't an accident.
We are just living out patterns that have been baked in to how we see the world, but we can choose differently.
Hopefully, that's what education is, gives people the ability to expand their imaginations, to imagine a different, more equitable, more sort of human way to look at how people are being represented to each other.
Because, yeah, stories matter.
Yeah, we're running out of time, but this was so much fun.
This was so inspiring.
It's really great to hear that story come.
I guess full circle?
I don't know if you would even say it.
You've taken control of it.
Yeah, I guess so.
Is there anything else that we missed?
Anything else you want to tell folks before we sign off?
As I said, the course sold out in 48 hours over the weekend.
There is a waitlist for a fall offering.
So if anyone is interested, there is a waitlist up on my Substack and on my socials.
And I guess for those who are thinking about Wanting to do something.
If you have the skills to teach or to share, I hope everyone just finds a way to kind of be a part of community and find ways they can help others in this moment right now.
We're in a very difficult moment right now.
Don't be afraid to value yourself in your own voice.
And for me, I guess this was just all a part of saying, you know what?
I have something to offer this world and I'm going to do it.
And I don't need anybody's permission to offer what I have to the world.
Yeah, they can cancel us, but we're going to do community anyway.
We move, is what I've been saying.
Moving like water.
Like the encampments at Columbia, right?
The professors showed up there to teach them anyway.
You don't need a classroom.
Nope, we're going to teach anyway.
We're going to move anyway.
We're going to flow anyway.
Love it.
It's all good.
Great.
Thanks so much for doing this.
Where should our listeners go to find more about all of this stuff?
I mean, you mentioned your blue sky.
Anything else you want to throw out there?
Yeah, so you can find me on Substack at the Golden Hour, and there is a Resistance Summer School section.
You can basically find my journey about creating this initiative.
Again, this has only come together in a week.
So I'm a little, my nervous system is not quite caught up to my new summer job quite yet.
But of course, you can find me on social media.
I'm at Karen Atiyah across all platforms.
Great.
And yeah, just looking forward to connecting with more people this summer.
Awesome.
Wish we were some of them, but we'll hop on that wait list for sure.
Yes, please.
Lydia's a teacher's pet.
I'm going to sit in front of class.
Gold star, gold star.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Can't help you.
My phone last made a sound in 2010 and since then I had it put down.
It was one and done, huh?
I can't handle the sound.
I've had it on silent for 15 years.
I can't handle it.
Man, I'm jealous.
Your nervous system must be so pristine.
No, definitely not.
My dad just called.
I just accidentally clicked.
That's a podcast first.
I'm sorry, guys.
Do we have to list your dad on the credits now?
No, no.
I think that's what it was.
It was, yeah, daddy.
Sorry.
Sorry, dad.
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