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Articles by Rinaldo Walcott
Dispatches From the Culture Wars - September 8, 2026
Dispatches From the Culture Wars — September 8, 2026 Published September 8, 2026 The University is the Crisis Torture in Texas Prisons Public Enemy: Data Centers State of the Climate Movement Public Libraries at the Breaking Point How Dakota Tribes Beat a Mining Company Crackdown on Federal Workers Repression of ICE Watch The Right is Afraid of the Girl Scouts Modeling the United Front The University is the Crisis By Rinaldo Walcott, Canadian Dimension In recent weeks much has been said about...
The university is the crisis
Jason Arday in 2024. Photo from . Jason Arday is dead. That seems one thing we might be sure of. In recent weeks much has been said about the circumstances surrounding Arday’s death. The 41-year-old former Cambridge professor was found dead at his home in south London on August 14, nine days after resigning amid allegations of plagiarism, which he denied.
Rinaldo Walcott
The university is the crisis The crisis of the university is its inability to be honest about the nature of its self-induced crisis. Its leaders or senior managers often share the perspectives of those who wish the university to return to its historical elitist male institutional self. Indeed, they often share the same class, went to the same schools, and belong to the same social formations.
Why Ric Esther Bienstock’s ‘Speechless’ left me speechless
A protest encampment at the University of Chicago’s Main Quadrangle, featuring a sign reading: “As you go to class, remember that there are no universities left in Gaza.” Photo by wabisabi2015/Flickr. Ric Esther Bienstock Good Soup Productions, 2026 I’m invested. I was left speechless. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock’s two-part documentary essay Speechless claims to be concerned with the narrowing of free speech on campuses, particularly in the United States.
Rinaldo Walcott: Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke into an embattled moment. We need another like him now
Shortly after 5 a.m. a friend sent me a link that announced the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s passing. It felt like a personal loss. I never met the man. But if you were young and Black in the 1980s it was a wild time — and Jesse Jackson was an essential part of those times. The Reagan years were ending, leading to George W. Bush’s one-term presidency. It was also the time of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Whitney Houston’s self-titled album and the rise of hip hop.
Rinaldo Walcott: Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke into an embattled moment. We need another like him now
Shortly after 5 a.m. a friend sent me a link that announced the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s passing. It felt like a personal loss. I never met the man. But if you were young and Black in the 1980s it was a wild time — and Jesse Jackson was an essential part of those times. The Reagan years were ending, leading to George W. Bush’s one-term presidency. It was also the time of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Whitney Houston’s self-titled album and the rise of hip hop.
A Practice of Speculative Imaginings: On Sam Cooke and the Art of Utopia
Sometimes in a moment of overwhelming emotion you hear a song. You finally hear it. You don’t just get the meaning of the lyrics, or feel the beats and the rhythm, but you hear the unutterable in the song. You hear the deep recesses of musical allure, the places where language breaks down for the singer and musician, and in that, you finally share in the full meaning. Heartbreak songs can do that. But so can political or social-consciousness songs.
Diaspora against the nation-state
Since leaving was never voluntary, return was, and still may be, an intention, however deeply buried. There is as it says no way in; no return.
OPINION | In the 1970s, the RCMP hired an FBI agent to infiltrate Black activist groups in Canada | CBC Documentaries
Black Life: Untold Stories illuminates the struggles and triumphs of Black Canadians while celebrating the contributions of both famous and lesser-known individuals. Epic in scope, the eight-part series spans more than 400 years with an eye toward contemporary issues, culture, politics, music, art and sports. This opinion piece is by Rinaldo Walcott, a Canadian writer and political scientist who is featured in the episode 'Justice Denied.' Watch now on CBC Gem.
The bankrupt morality of Canada’s political class
What’s left to say? Three weeks ago, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre ritualistically “dragged” Greg Fergus, the first Black Speaker of the House of Commons, to his seat some hailed it as history-making. The occasion produced the kind of counting that still remains relevant for some Black people.
The conservative attack on gay life
When the Canadian government updated its travel advisory to the United States, warning LGBTQ+ people that many American states have enacted laws that would persecute them, it got my attention. A few days later I listened to an interview with Sherwin Modeste, Executive Director of Pride Toronto, where he teared up and concluded that Canada should ask its federal ministers not to travel to the US as a kind of protest.
Do Black migrant lives matter in Canada?
Canada has always had a hard time providing support for Black and African refugees. So it should surprise no one that 200 asylum seekers were left to sleep on the pavement outside of Toronto’s shelter intake office at 129 Peter Street this month, ostensibly to wait for a “bureaucratic tug-of-war” between various levels of government to end and for emergency shelter spaces to open up. This cruel episode is a stain on our false sense of exceptionalism.
Why we should abolish ‘Corporate Pride’ once and for all
June is Pride Month, and I have already tendered my annual resignation from gay and queer life until July 1. Every year I withdraw from being gay in the month of June because what we can only call ‘Corporate Pride’ cannot and does not address the kinds of concerns that are important to my queer life. Corporate Pride, with its many big business sponsors, turns Pride activities into one large party and not much else.
Roxham Road and the Canadian Unconscious
Joe Biden paid an official visit to Canada in late March. While he was here, the United States and Canada struck a new deal on Roxham Road that will allow both countries to turn away a rising surge of asylum seekers and refugee claimants from their borders. Roxham Road straddles the Québec and New York state border at the towns of Champlain on the US side and Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle on the Canadian side. It became an “irregular” border crossing at some point between 2016 and 2017.
Roxham Road and the Canadian unconscious
Joe Biden paid an official visit to Canada in late March. While he was here, the United States and Canada struck a new deal on Roxham Road that will allow both countries to turn away a rising surge of asylum seekers and refugee claimants from their borders. Roxham Road straddles the Québec and New York state border at the towns of Champlain on the US side and Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle on the Canadian side. It became an “irregular” border crossing at some point between 2016 and 2017.
The unsettling truth at the heart of the Elghawaby controversy
I recently experienced an ethical dilemma. A letter was circulated by people I admire and respect and with whom I share many political positions concerning the attack on Amira Elghawaby. Elghawaby was appointed in January as the Trudeau’s government’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia. In Québec, Elghawaby’s appointment was greeted with disdain and calls for her to step down were initiated by leading government officials who accused her of being anti-Québec.
Why British Vogue’s ‘celebration’ of the African model fell short
During the past few weeks, Edward Enninful, the British-Ghanaian editor-in-chief of British Vogue, has been celebrating the new cover of his magazine, where he introduced nine “dark-skinned” models of African descent. The February issue, which has been available on newsstands since January 18, includes an accompanying story by contributing editor Funmi Fetto, exploring “the rise of the African model” and “spotlight[ing] the new generation”.
The Three Pamphleteers
Decline is relative. It took Edward Gibbon 3,180 pages in six volumes of my small-print Everyman edition to describe the Roman Empire’s slow and inevitable collapse over nearly one and a half millennia. Andrew Potter manages to dispatch our current screwed-up society in a mere 128.
Rinaldo Walcott on Riots, Policing, and Traditions of Black Refusal
If you have never participated in a protest where the police are basically at war with the demonstrators then you have not fully experienced the violence that policing represents. Fully decked out in their battle gear and arranged in battalion formation, the police represent, in both form and practice, a martial force arrayed against the very civilians they are supposed to protect.
Diversity efforts in universities are nothing but façade painting
Soon after the Derek Chauvin verdict was made public on April 20, faculties at many universities and colleges in the United States and Canada received emails from administrators, asking them to provide “support” to students by offering additional drop-in office hours. Faculty were also asked to state that these hours were not just for course-related questions, but for “general checking-in”.
Black Agenda Report
Being in the wake, in the afterlives of slavery…is to be caught in the reverberating aftermath of a long disaster, a durational dance with danger, with terror. “In the Wake is a dramaturgical analysis of Black life, both historical and contemporary.” (Celebrating five years since the publication of Christina Sharpe’s book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, we asked four writers to offer a short meditation on what the book has meant to them. This week’s contributor is Troizel Carr.
BAR Book Forum: Amandla Thomas-Johnson’s “Becoming Kwame Ture” | Black Agenda Report
The Stokely Carmichael of the 60s continued to politically and ideologically evolve while in Africa where he adopts the names of his political mentors Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah. “Ture imagined a world where holding fast to principles of anti-imperialism and anti-racism were crucial, not one where I only scratch your back if you’re prepared to scratch mine.” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Amandla Thomas-Johnson.
BAR Book Forum: Catie Coe’s Book, “The New American Servitude” | Black Agenda Report
Senior care puts care workers into racialized, gendered, and age hierarchies, making it difficult for them to achieve social and economic mobility. Senior care workers are regularly subjected to racial insults and demonstrations of power—and effectively turned into servants.” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Catie Coe. Coe is Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University.
BAR Book Forum: Jayna Brown’s “Black Utopias” | Black Agenda Report
I am hoping my call will provoke/inspire us to practice forms of life and liveliness differently. “I’d like to promote an awareness that humans are not the center of the universe, but merely a temporary presence in it.” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Jayna Brown.
BAR Book Forum: Koni Benson’s “Crossroads: I Live Where I Like” | Black Agenda Report
This book challenges the myth that 1994 was the turning point in South Africa -- because the liberation process is unfinished. “Forced removals were not considered in the famous 1994 Truth and Reconciliation Process.” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Koni Benson. Benson is a historian, organizer, and educator.
BAR Book Forum: Jean Casimir’s, “The Haitians: A Decolonial History” | Black Agenda Report
The worldview animating Haitian masses today is leading to a social context ungovernable within the framework of prevailing economic neo-liberalism. “Haitians denounced the very concepts used by the metropolitan countries to see and organize the world.“ In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Jean Casimir.
Abolitionist Politics: The Case for a World without Prisons
Excerpted with permission from On Propertyby Rinaldo Walcott (Biblioasis, February 2021). What is often called police and prison reform does not and has never worked for Black people.
BAR Book Forum: Alison M. Parker’s Book, “Unceasing Militant” | Black Agenda Report
BAR Book Forum: Alison M. Parker’s Book, “Unceasing Militant” The author explores Mary Church Terrell’s long history of activism, to remind us that movements for social justice do not happen overnight. “Although she was never a member of the Communist Party, Terrell willingly worked with left wing activists.” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Alison M. Parker.
BAR Book Forum: L.H. Stallings’s“A Dirty South Manifesto” | Black Agenda Report
BAR Book Forum: L.H. Stallings’s“A Dirty South Manifesto” Regulation of sexuality in the United States has been predominantly shaped by and largely dependent upon safeguarding or interpreting the First Amendment. “Listen to and refuse to be outraged by the slow tongue, practice the slow tongue, devise different ways of going down, and become connoisseurs of dirt.” The following is an excerpt from L.H. Stallings’s book, A Dirty South Manifesto: Sexual Resistance and Imagination in the New South.
BAR Book Forum: Amy Cooper’s “State of Health” | Black Agenda Report
Unlike the US and other corporate-ruled countries, activists inside and outside of government collaborated to bring about radical social change in Venezuela. “People viewed the state as a source of immense wealth that rightly belonged to them.” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Amy Cooper. Cooper is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Saint Louis University.
Why abolition in our time should go far beyond defunding the police
A protester kneels during a demonstration against the death of George Floyd at a park near the White House on June 1. The author writes that “Floyd’s death also affirmed what many Black people like me already knew: that we have a different relationship to property and its meaning than white people and many other people of colour do.” By Rinaldo WalcottExcerpt from On Property Sat., Feb. 6, 2021timer7 min.
Duke University Press - The Long Emancipation
Moving toward Black Freedom Share Book Pages: 144 Illustrations: 6 illustrations Published: April 2021 Subjects African American Studies and Black Diaspora, Gender and Sexuality, Theory and Philosophy In The Long Emancipation Rinaldo Walcott posits that Black people globally live in the time of emancipation and that emancipation is definitely not freedom.
Duke University Press - The Long Emancipation
Moving toward Black Freedom Book Pages: 144 Illustrations: 6 illustrations Published: April 2021 Subjects Gender and Sexuality, Theory and Philosophy, African American Studies and Black Diaspora In The Long Emancipation Rinaldo Walcott posits that Black people globally live in the time of emancipation and that emancipation is definitely not freedom.
Race and the wilful ignorance of Margaret Wente
Truth, progress and science. The relationship between these concepts is unwieldy and complex. As media scholars, we read Margaret Wente’scolumn heralding journalist Nicholas Wade’s new book and cringed, recognizing the ease with which these concepts were used to tell a misleading story about race. Wente asked in her headline: “what if race is more than a social construction?” The answer in our eyes is not about race, but rather global racism and its remarkable persistence.
25 books about being Black in Canada
Read these works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry about the experience of Black Canadians. Jericho Brown is an American poet and author. (Copper Canyon Press, Stephanie Mitchell) Jericho Brown is an American poet, author and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. His award-winning collection, The Tradition addresses contemporary issues from sexual identity to mass shootings and the police killing of unarmed Black men.
BLM: Books by Black Authors
BLM: Books by Black Authors One of the ways to support Black Lives Matter is to read books by Black authors. Check out some of our picks below, View books in this list
Black People In The Age Of COVID-19: When Policing And Public Health Collide
The claim that COVID-19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them. States of emergency show that citizenship privileges some, is partial for others and disappears others. In our early analysis of national media coverage, those experts sharing the grim statistics of infections and deaths, those front-line workers seen as risking their lives and those who have lost loved ones are predominantly white.
Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data
About the authors: OmiSoore Dryden is the James R. Johnston Chair, Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University. Beverly Bain is Professor in Women and Gender Studies-UTM Campus at the University of Toronto. Rinaldo Walcott Director of Women and Gender Studies Institute at University of Toronto. The claim that COVID-19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them.
Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data
The claim that COVID-19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them. States of emergency show that citizenship privileges some, is partial for others and disappears others. In our early analysis of national media coverage, those experts sharing the grim statistics of infections and deaths, those front-line workers seen as risking their lives and those who have lost loved ones are predominantly white.
Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data
The claim that COVID-19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them. States of emergency show that citizenship privileges some, is partial for others and disappears others. In our early analysis of national media coverage, those experts sharing the grim statistics of infections and deaths, those front-line workers seen as risking their lives and those who have lost loved ones are predominantly white.
Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data
A woman waits for a streetcar in Toronto on April 16, 2020. The many Black people working in essential jobs do not have the luxury of staying home during the pandemic. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette Beverly Bain, University of Toronto; OmiSoore Dryden, Dalhousie University, and Rinaldo Walcott, University of Toronto The claim that COVID-19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them.
Eleven Toronto bookstores doing delivery-plus their quarantine reading recommendations
Eleven Toronto bookstores doing delivery—plus their quarantine reading recommendations There’s only so much Netflix you can watch in a day. As Torontonians continue to hunker down in self-isolation, bookstores are seeing increased demand for reading material. Many bricks-and-mortar locations have closed to the public, but some are offering delivery around the city.
Jordan Tannahill: the Canadian stage's 'kind-hearted, wayward angel' | Super Queeroes
From left: k.d. lang, Kent Monkman, Tegan & Sara, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Peaches, Ellen Page, Dionne Brand, Xavier Dolan and Jackie Shane (Illustrations by Jonathan Busch) So much more than ‘the only lesbian in Canada’ Five years before homosexuality was ostensibly decriminalized in Canada, when same-sex sexual activity was still punishable by a multi-year prison sentence, Jane Rule published Desert of the Heart.
Finding room for hope in the humour, light and lyricism of Marie-Claire Blais | Super Queeroes
From left: k.d. lang, Kent Monkman, Tegan & Sara, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Peaches, Ellen Page, Dionne Brand, Xavier Dolan and Jackie Shane (Illustrations by Jonathan Busch) So much more than ‘the only lesbian in Canada’ Five years before homosexuality was ostensibly decriminalized in Canada, when same-sex sexual activity was still punishable by a multi-year prison sentence, Jane Rule published Desert of the Heart.
Toronto's Emancipation Month: why Black communities need not celebrate
The City of Toronto is about to get Emancipation Month. This August, City Hall will mark the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery in Canada in 1833 with a month of events.
Tomson Highway: a pioneering voice in Indigenous theatre | Super Queeroes
From left: k.d. lang, Kent Monkman, Tegan & Sara, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Peaches, Ellen Page, Dionne Brand, Xavier Dolan and Jackie Shane (Illustrations by Jonathan Busch) So much more than ‘the only lesbian in Canada’ Five years before homosexuality was ostensibly decriminalized in Canada, when same-sex sexual activity was still punishable by a multi-year prison sentence, Jane Rule published Desert of the Heart.
Candy Palmater: the kickass queer Indigenous comic that standup stages needed | Super Queeroes
From left: k.d. lang, Kent Monkman, Tegan & Sara, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Peaches, Ellen Page, Dionne Brand, Xavier Dolan and Jackie Shane (Illustrations by Jonathan Busch) So much more than ‘the only lesbian in Canada’ Five years before homosexuality was ostensibly decriminalized in Canada, when same-sex sexual activity was still punishable by a multi-year prison sentence, Jane Rule published Desert of the Heart.
Nalo Hopkinson: a queer, feminist, Afrofuturist vision of the world | Super Queeroes
From left: k.d. lang, Kent Monkman, Tegan & Sara, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Peaches, Ellen Page, Dionne Brand, Xavier Dolan and Jackie Shane (Illustrations by Jonathan Busch) So much more than ‘the only lesbian in Canada’ Five years before homosexuality was ostensibly decriminalized in Canada, when same-sex sexual activity was still punishable by a multi-year prison sentence, Jane Rule published Desert of the Heart.
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