Psymhe Wadud

“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy,” Gloria Watkins (more widely known as “bell hooks”) used to say. In discussions of politics, power, class, and authority, the classroom can indeed be such a space. In fact, higher education is incomplete if students’ and even teachers’ deeply held convictions are not challenged, or if members of the academy are not forced to intellectually engage with alternative worldviews.

It has been a year since the student-led mass uprising, and now there is a document—the July Declaration—to inscribe in history the experiences of July-August 2024. The relevant stakeholders deserve appreciation for finalising the document, particularly for how it traverses across times and remains grounded in the ideals of the rule of law, human rights, and non-discrimination. In a way, the document was meant to reckon with the past and pave the way for the future.

A woman was tortured, disrobed, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment in Muradnagar, Cumilla. She was filmed against her will, without her consent, and her shame was widely publicised, auctioned, and politicised. She, as a woman, does not inhabit the vacuum, and represents no one identity—she is a woman, has a non-dominant identity, and is socioeconomically vulnerable. These identities shape her lived reality and her movement across multiple axes of power, oppression, and dominance.