My chair just *rejected* a $42,000 grant from a major foundation we were awarded to support @study__struggle, a political education project on mass incarceration and immigrant detention, saying it's a "political" not "historical" project, and could jeopardize department funding.

This came just two days after the University publicized our $57,000 grant from @FWDus for the exact same project. So either it's cause and effect, or one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Or both, because ineptitude and malice go hand in hand.

https://umfoundation.com/main/2020/10/23/supporting-community-outreach/

Let's pretend "politics v. history" is a good-faith argument. @study__struggle organizes reading groups around a 4-month curriculum w/talks by scholars such as @macfound winner @klytlehernandez, Harvard professor @lorgia_pena, @CaseyGrants fellow @nickwestes and, Angela Y. Davis.

In fact, the same day as this call, @HumanitiesAll reached out to cite and support our work as an example of the public humanities that combines community partnership and social justice. So not only is all history political, but this is good history with good politics.

Now that we've dispelled with that. The real issue is that @OleMissRebels prioritizes racist donors over all else. So it's not some mythic politics v. history binary, but that this antiracist program threatens racist donor money. And racism is the brand. It's in the name.

This grant supports things like books for incarcerated participants, commissary for study groups to buy food and stamps to write pen pals, honoraria for our award-winning speakers, web design, and Spanish-translation, ASL teams, and close captioning for greater accessibility.

My chair closed the call by suggesting that I start a nonprofit. I research, I write, I mentor, I teach, I do service. I also create and run programs that serve the communities the University violently subjugates through all its *political* work. White supremacist political work.

@CamCalisch recently nailed it: it's an arm of the state. It creates knowledge to legitimize state violence, it polices, it gentrifies, it discriminates, it silences, and it obstructs antiracism, anticapitalism, and abolition. But we're going to do the work, with or without it.

We're now in the process of finding a new fiscal sponsor and removing all existing money from the University of Mississippi related to @study__struggle. We're also looking to expand and deepen our work, so please reach out if you want to support radical study groups in prisons.

If anyone wants to explain how institutional racism works, please feel free to use this thread. Just make sure you tag @OleMissRebels. I want to make sure they get credit for the work they do.

Thanks for the support everyone! While the point of this thread is to call out institutional racism, the point of the work is to educate and organize for PIC abolition. Check out our @study__struggle program here. https://www.studyandstruggle.com