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We live in a South Africa defined by deep inequalities. The post-apartheid promise of free and quality education is met by the realities of lasting disparities related to race, gender, socioeconomic class and disability, among other factors. The University of Cape Town (UCT) has initiated two interdependent processes to chart and track transformation, inclusion and diversity during these turbulent times. First, the university has set up an Inclusivity Survey, using a validated scale to understand staff experiences in relation to inclusion. Secondly, the university has identified and piloted a set of Transformation Benchmarks inspired by a higher education barometer for transformation in South Africa and global diversity and inclusion standards, which encourages transformation agents to take concrete actions to further transformation. Both these processes, first implemented in 2019, experimented with new ways of tracing the shape of transformation, inclusion and diversity at UCT. The paper will explore the opportunities and limitations these structured approaches to transformation offer to higher education institutions. For example, while structured approaches are useful, some argue that these reduce the complexity of social struggles (like those against racism) to simple box-ticking exercises. In unpacking these issues, the paper seeks to ask: how can we better monitor, evaluate and track progress in an increasingly turbulent world?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professor Brinsley Samaroo made a sterling contribution to the field of history, particularly that of Indian indentureship and the atrocities of the colonial past. He was a historian of the people, had entered national politics in one phase of his career and continued all his life to serve as a public intellectual for the society of Trinidad in defence of many groups and causes. In this tribute to his life, the author establishes the intellectual heights he had plumbed by the age of 83 and draws on the testimonies of four persons whose lives have been influenced by him in different ways. Each individual underscores the wealth of his knowledge, his generosity as a scholar, his accessibility, gregarious nature and penchant for storytelling. Yet all of this was packaged in a disciplined and no-nonsense individual who was deeply committed to recovering the voices of those who have not yet been heard in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the ways in which Muslim women seek to employ online media, particularly social media, to reclaim narratives around space, embodiment, and power. I argue that digital space is, like any other form of media, structured essentially by racism and patriarchy, but I also note the crucial potential for resistance exhibited by Muslim activists such as political leaders Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Instagram influencer Ayesha Malik, and the largely anonymous women who participated in #MosqueMeToo, encouraged by the journalist and activist Mona Eltahawy. I draw upon a post/anti-colonial feminist framework and the tools of critical discourse analysis in examining specific instances where such women perform acts of resistance that, in turn, trigger a gendered and raced reaction. I note the ways in which some Muslim women, such as Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed, are constructed as media heroes, given that their stories can be co-opted to validate notions of the white colonial savior, while others directly challenge narratives of colonialism and oppression and are thus subjected to backlash. I point to the ways in which some of this vitriol continues to refer back to the notion that Muslim women should be silent, and to the fetishized Muslim woman's body: how it should look, where it can/should go, and what can be done to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brij Vilash Lal was an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland. He taught History at the ANU, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of the South Pacific and the University of Papua New Guinea. He was a Life Member of Clare Gall, University of Cambridge. He was the author of more than twenty books and editor of another twenty on the history and culture of the Indian diaspora and on the history and politics of Fiji. He died on 25 December 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key innovation of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is its recognition of the critical importance of the principle of meaningful participation in realising the rights enshrined in the treaty document. Hence, the CRPD is the first human rights treaty to mandate the participation of civil society in the implementation and monitoring of the treaty. What happens, however, in a non-liberal society where human rights activism is potentially risky and lacks cultural resonance? This article turns to Singapore as a case study and analyses how one particular cross-disability representative organisation participated in the CRPD monitoring process through the ritualistic mobilisation of disability rights. This mobilisation was enabled by the CRPD's obligations of conduct, which provide a justification for their participation in the CRPD monitoring process. Hence, the usual risks associated with human rights activism in Singapore can be mitigated because these activists are technically assisting the Singapore government in fulfilling its obligations under the treaty. Such tactics of ritualistic mobilisation are aimed ultimately at the ritualisation of disability rights, which refers to the entrenchment of the human rights model of disability policy as the dominant political paradigm through which to approach disability issues. In addition to demonstrating the impact of obligations of conduct enshrined in the CRPD on the mobilisation of disability rights, this article adds to the growing recognition in socio-legal and human rights scholarship that civil society participation and rights mobilisation may take a variety of forms, not only the more explicit or confrontational modes that feature in Western liberal democracies. It also contributes to the growing literature on disability movements in East Asian developmental welfare states by attending to how disability rights and the CRPD are mobilised in the region to realise a more just and equal society for disabled people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan currently enjoys a "VR boom", a proliferation of commercial virtual reality (VR) programs. As it pertains to disability studies, however, we observe troubling ableist and assimilatory tendencies such as a VR tool for implicit bias training for medical practitioners that promises "simulated experiences" of disabled people, or a VR vocational coaching tool designed to teach disabled people social scripts in professional settings. This article cautions against such stifling and one-dimensional approaches to disability and instead offers more expansive and transformative VR usage based on the creative and pedagogical practices the authors engage with: 1) a VR co-creation approach which revolves around disabled content creators and developers who forge disability-centered community spaces, and 2) a VR intersectional education approach which invites students -- regardless of their disability status -- to identify their interrelated struggles in an ableist, cisheteronormative, and patriarchal society, realizing their political responsibility for nurturing inclusivity with disabled community members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the ongoing impacts worldwide of institutionalisation on people with intellectual disability, the public knows little about large-scale disability institutions that have been the focus during the late 20th century of deinstitutionalisation efforts (historic institutions) and the people who lived there. An interdisciplinary team of researchers (including those with intellectual disability) undertook research with people with intellectual disability to explore what and how the public should learn and remember historic institutions. The project found that people with intellectual disability support community engagement with histories and lived experiences of historic institutions, in order to repair past wrongs, end contemporary practices of institutionalisation, segregation, and exclusion, and realise transformative equality and inclusion. People with intellectual disability should lead these initiatives, with appropriate support in recognising the very live memories and traumas associated with them. This article provides a model of inclusive research for turning the harms of past institutionalisation into an educational and reparative experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on impacts of overlapping, interconnected, and interdependent social categorizations. Topics include interdisciplinary issue broadly examining contemporary Kurdish art forms in Iraqi Kurdistan within the fields of Visual and Conceptual Arts; and negotiating multiple intersections of interconnected and interdependent social categorizations such as nation, ethnicity.

This essay discusses the Black student anti-apartheid activism on campus from 1976 to 1985, and emphasizes the importance of HBCU’s as early incubators for anti-apartheid activism. It highlights the transnational interconnectedness of African Americans and Africans, referencing African America’s long-standing solidarity with African liberation movements, and suggests this coalition and its results are indicative of the power of previous generations of Black radicalism expressed in Civil Rights, Black Power, and anti-colonialism movements [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, long-held perceptions about gender are coming under scrutiny. Marginalized groups the world over are using social media to create platforms for themselves, thereby allowing activism and social engagement to flourish in ways that were not possible before. Forming part of this global social dynamism regarding gender are the efforts that South African academic institutions and society at large are making towards an active engagement with the process of rethinking patriarchal, colonial, and heteronormative structures. Our academic discourses should reflect our lived experiences, and research which does not seek to engage with the society that it focuses on is at risk of becoming irrelevant. Our country's own literary canon has the potential to incite meaningful interrogations of the world we live in. Literature can offer a somewhat more compact framework for analysing complex issues that affect our realities. One such issue is the prevalence of violence in South Africa against women, femininities in general, as well as non-conventionally masculine bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores memory-making practice in a small section of the London Tamil diaspora, the shaping and reshaping of memories of state crime and resistance, and the potential and challenges of this memory work in the context of a globalized and criminalized justice struggle. The Tamil Information Centre's "Tamils of Lanka: a Timeless Heritage" exhibition is discussed as an intervention into Tamil memory practices in London as a necessary, enlivening and hopeful departure from an increasingly dispirited reliance on street protest, a supplement to protest, political lobbying and accountability efforts, and a new space for community-based mourning rituals. Mobilizing the concept of "memory knots" (Stern 2010), this article explores the radical shift in commemorative practice in 2019 pioneered by TIC volunteers, relying on interviews with exhibition organizers in their role as memory workers, and reflects on the potential of this public invitation to reimagine the past as one of resistance and resilience. The latter part of this article explores the contestations and contradictions that emerged in the exhibition organizing process; the damage wrought by prevailing terrorism discourses on community memory comes into view. I argue that the exhibition, as a process and an invitation, signals a new appetite for historical excavation and a reimagining of Tamil resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using critical textual analysis based on the postcolonial school of thought, this essay analyzed a ten-minute segment, called "Women of the Revolution," on the ABC news program This Week, anchored at that time by Christiane Amanpour, for its portrayals of Arab and Muslim women. The analysis showed that Arab and Muslim women were portrayed positively only when they fit a "media-darling" trope of Western-educated Arab or Muslim women, or those who looked and acted similar to Western women, especially if they ascribed to a Western view of feminism. Those women also were seen as the exception to the "repressive" culture that characterizes the Arab and Muslim worlds, according to the Orientalist stereotype. The implications of this analysis indicate that, in spite of the visibility and progress of many Arab and Muslim women in their countries and indigenous cultures, they are still framed within old recycled molds in US mainstream media, even if these seem positive at face value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on an Egyptian labour lawyer and political activist, Haitham Mohamedain who has been detained many times for his political activism. Topics include he played a central role in defending textile workers from the industrial town of al-Mahalla al-Kubra in 2008; mentions his charges include inciting protest against the rise in public transport fares; and also mentions the charges against him have not been withdrawn by the prosecution.

This article examines how the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) articulated the Palestine question as both an Arab-American and a Third World issue after the 1967 War. Using archival documents and recollections from several AAUG members, this article traces the ways in which activism on Palestine and other issues facilitated the creation of a transnational Arab-American "intellectual generation". Although the AAUG often focused on Palestine, it educated its members and engaged in activism on issues affecting other communities who grappled with racism, imperialism, and colonialism. In doing so, it attracted diverse allies to the Palestinian cause, such as Black Americans, Africans, South Asians, and other members of the "global Third World." This article further analyzes the AAUG's transnational engagement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) during its first decade. Using both traditional and academic activism, the AAUG firmly associated Palestine with the Third World and fostered an Arab-American intellectual movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Aswad describes how she became involved in the Middle East and her ongoing commitment to organizations and programs working for Arab Americans and Palestine. She focuses on the Dearborn area and the ultimately successful struggle to prevent the destruction of the largely Arab American community in the Southend through a program of "urban renewal" which was actually one of "urban removal." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this highly personal firsthand account, a leading Arab American activist traces his history as a child in a small town in northern Michigan to his growing political activism spurred on by experiences in the Middle East and the 1967 war. He places particular emphasis on the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG) and National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Both of these organizations, very early on, took principled, yet highly controversial stances in favor of a Palestinian state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the current political role of the Palestinian youth by comparing the period shortly before the First and Second Intifadas with the current situation ¡n the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). It critically interrogates the oft-repeated assertion that the Palestinian youth are characterized by political anomie, showing that the political role of the youth in the OPT is constrained by three factors: Israeli occupation, oppression by Fatah and Hamas, and the political paralysis resulting from the split between these two dominant political organizations. However, the present youth activism challenges the policies of both Fatah and Hamas, and draws strength from its utilization of international cooperation and its popular practices. While it is still small, this youthful activism displays a determination, clear-headedness and independence that contrast with the political culture in the dominant factions of Palestinian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the implication of the reexamination of a lynching case for framing the agenda of Arab-American activism at the beginning of a century when the possibility of violence, verbal and physical, threatens the lives of Arabs in the U.S., as of 2001. Implication of the racialization of Islam for understanding the marginalization of Arabs; Number of lynching cases recorded in Florida between 1921 and 1946; Significance of race and ethnicity to the lynching of grocer Nicholas G. Romey.