In times of widening inequality gaps, a resurgence of white nationalisms, the carceral/military sprawl globally and locally, authoritarian and increasingly sadistic enactments of state violence, a question hovers about higher education about our responsibility to "occupy" the academy with critical theoretical frames, activist research projects, forged in fragile solidarities with social movements, accompanying those most marginalized by state violence, and yet rendering visible the gross accumulation of power, capital, land and legitimacy by those of privilege. As a historic colonial project, and a site of deep political contradiction, universities are being call upon to enact and embody decolonizing commitments - even as demands for whiteness and a voracious appetite for capital and corporate power, seep into Boards of Trustees with a vengeance.

In the US, this requires an interrogation of state sponsored sites of structural violence on the mainland and globally (racialized policing and prisons, detention camps, surveillance apparatus, international military "aid," privatization of public education ...) as well as the interrogation of unjust policies of accumulation embodied in privilege.

My talk draws from The Public Science Project, at Graduate Center, CUNY, a research centre organized through activist projects hatched between community, movements and academic theorists/research. A 25 year reflection on Changing Minds, a critical participatory action research (CPAR) project launched within a women's prison by 12 women- half imprisoned and half free, and What's Your Issue? a project crafted by/with a 40 queer youth of color, and academic/activist adults.
I will try to dive with humility into the praxis of provocative inquiry, in conversation with critical scholars Du Bois, Fanon, Sartre, Luxembourg, Tuhiwai Smith, Greene, Anzaldua, Fals Borda and Martin-Baro as we try to produce knowledge in critical collectives with communities under siege, designing "products" to expose, disrupt, humanize, decolonize and provoke radical imaginary.