prithi

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

It is gorgeous & so moving — always taught their story with “archival scraps” — will report back what BCC students think 🖤

Grateful to be able to teach my Bronx Community College students this semester the revolutionary life of former BCC student & Panther member Joan Bird with more materials incl this gorgeous Sojourners for Justice zine 🖤 @prisonculture.bsky.social (thanks for picking up @dominiquejl.bsky.social)

It is a waste of educators’ labor to worry about policing students’ work or jury rigging AI-proof assignments.There are desultory ways of going about responding to such papers. But that doesn’t mean acquiescence. That means working towards and demanding structural changes at our institutions.

To propose that GenAI can compensate for "archival silences" perverts Trouillot's work. It's is a contradiction to say that a product whose logic exacerbates power imbalances--creating a most-likely guess based on the existing record--can restore absences that are the product of those imbalances.

Thinking of my New School friends whose programs have been closed (~30 of them), whose PhD programs have been indefinitely halted, and who are now receiving invitations to resign + accept severance payments — with the threat of 🪓 if not enough folks take the offer. A ✨-if-imperfect place ruined 😥

🔥

A spread of black and white snapshots laid out on a white table. Photos include protest signs, cops on horses, crowds of people including students and faculty outside City Hall. Faculty are wearing regalia, one has a skeleton on his shoulders, while others carry a big fake coffin with text saying “Bury Pataki’s Budget Cuts!” And someone holds up a huge skull that says CCNY 1847-1995 on its forehead. Other signs say: No Death Penalty for CUNY-SUNY Save Higher Education! We SEEK a Higher Education The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste–Pataki has lost his

Close up of a black and white snapshot of a protester holding a sign that says We SEEK a Higher Education

Close up of a black and white snapshot of a protester holding a sign that is a giant skull with CCNY 1847-1995 written on its forehead

Close up of a black and white snapshot of faculty protesting in their academic regalia, holding a sign that says Save Higher Education

Sometime last year, a CUNY alum contacted me saying they’d found some photos they took at the 1995 protest against budget cuts and would I please take them so they could clear out their attic?

They arrived today and they DID NOT DISAPPOINT

Uttara Shahani, RSC Research Fellow in the History of Forced Migration, has co-authored this insightful Op-ed in the Times of India commenting on the enduring impacts of Partition on the Sindhi Hindu community 70 years on. The image shows the full article: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-ed...

Kemi 🔥🔥🔥

Committee on Arts & Culture Hiba Abid, New York Public Library Dr. Elizabeth Alexander, Mellon Foundation Suroosh Alvi, Vice Jessica Baker, Vodoor Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden Alexis Bittar, Jewelry Designer Rocky Bucano, Hip Hop Museum Gonzalo Casals, Culture & Arts Policy Institute Carolyn Concepcion, ARTNOIR Colm Dillane, KidSuper Kimberly Drew, Pace Gallery Atiba Edwards, Brooklyn Children's Museum Kamilah Forbes, Apollo Theatre Lisa Gold, Asian American Arts Alliance Jenna Hamed, Curator and Book maker Kemi Ilesanmi, KG1 Wes Jackson, BRIC Ruba Katrib, MoMA PS1 Coco Killingsworth, Cultural Institutions Group Mino Lora, The Peoples Theatre Patricia McGregor, NY Theatre Workshop Lydia Pilcher, Cine Mosaic Victoria Rogers, Leadership Strategist Hal Rosenbluth, Kaufman Astoria Studios Legacy Russell, The Kitchen Kenny Savoca, IATSE 161 Hannah Traore, Hannah Traore Gallery Diya Vij, Powerhouse Arts Dennis Walcott, Queens Library

The @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social arts and culture transition committee for those who (like me) are into such matters:

The exit economy is here. Black Women are paying the highest price | Fortune This isn’t a blip. It’s a structural crisis. And it's not a recovery, it's a redistribution of opportunity.

Since February, according to my latest analysis, almost 600,000 Black women have been economically sidelined. The November 20, 2025, Jobs Report makes clear this isn’t a blip. It’s a structural crisis. That is not a recovery. It is a redistribution of opportunity.

Spain has too rosy a view of Franco’s regime. Let’s remind ourselves of its horrors | Giles Tremlett Little is taught about the murderous, incompetent dictatorship – and now almost one in five young people say Franco was good for the country, says historian Giles Tremlett

Spain has too rosy a view of Franco’s regime. Let’s remind ourselves of its horrors | Giles Tremlett

Join Obden Mondésir (Haitian Studies Institute CUNY) & myself as we reflect on an essay we co-created years ago on seditious speech & the 19th C. historic community of Weeksville #falloffreeedom @veralistcenter.bsky.social •
3:30pm Fri Nov 21 studiesintodarknessareading.splashthat.com

@madameclair08.bsky.social ✨🔥

thread. We published a pamphlet about her by LaShawn Harris that focuses in particular on how police violence and corruption played a major role in Madame Queen's life. www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2092-m...

Stunning. Archives are everything.

If you have to get permission to teach in your area of expertise from people who are definitionally not qualified to adjudicate your expertise then you are no longer working at a university.

You’re working at a state propaganda factory.

Ah the 1970s.

Stagflation, three day weeks, collapsing infrastructure. Civil War in Northern Ireland. In yer face racism and bigotry everywhere. Bin strikes. Strikes in general. Blackouts. Industrial decline. Wage inequality. Dog crap everywhere. And households spent 25% of their income on food.

Today — join me & Peggy King Jorde at Museum of the City of New York as we discuss why Public History is critical to our city’s future

Tix here: www.mcny.org/event/robert...

More from Peggy King Jorde: www.theguardian.com/news/2024/ma...

I am. Read the 3 chapters and join me!

If Capital Strikes Against Mamdani, Organized Worker Power Can Strike Back Let’s study how Wall Street sank Mamdani-style municipal plans back in 1975 — and get prepared for a similar fight.

My new piece for @truthout.org: Zohran Mamdani’s victory opens political space we haven’t seen in decades.

But we can’t expect Mamdani to save us. Even the best politician can’t deliver the world we deserve—that can only be achieved by mass movements.

#WorkersPower

truthout.org/articles/if-...

The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person.

The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person.

People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives.

And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.

A book standing upright with a book cover that reads Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Community that Shaped a Borough by Prithi Kanakamedala. Black and white photo of the author. And event details Museum of the City of New York, November 12 at 6:30pm

An honor to be in conversation w/ Peggy King Jorde for The Robert A. & Elizabeth R. Jeffe Distinguished Lecture in Urban History at Museum of the City of New York

We’ll discuss why Public History is critical to our city’s future www.mcny.org/event/robert...

www.theguardian.com/news/2024/ma...

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…

What an amazing essay from the former chair of Africana Studies at Bowdoin. I'll share a few sections in the reply but seriously, read the whole thing. It's all insightful and beautifully written.

lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

Shout out to Schomburg & Weeksville colleagues hosting 100 young New Yorkers today to learn our city’s history

& thank you to the young person in the Schomburg Junior Scholar’s Program who asked if I was a contestant on Bake Off because of my Scouse accent — I wish, kid, just a dork historian 🎂🧁🥮

Great framing.

Take a lesson from the Black Panthers who understood how to feed people

Artist Amy Sherald: The 60 Minutes Interview Amy Sherald spent years painting in obscurity, and almost died from a rare heart condition. Now 52, the artist behind Michelle Obama's official portrait is one of America's most celebrated painters.

ICYMI: Drop everything and spend 13 minutes with Amy Sherald--with her singular vision and talent, with her clarity about her central place in the jagged American story. You will be stirred by it all. www.cbsnews.com/video/amy-sh...

Rethinking the Early Black City - Leslie M. Alexander, 2025 Over the past twenty years, historians have made significant advances in researching and analyzing the Black urban experience in the early nineteenth century. T...

Article Abstract, "Rethinking the Early Black City" by Leslie M. Alexander journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... “How might our understanding of Black political consciousness and community creation be enhanced if we viewed Black communities as a form of urban marronage?"