Judith Butler Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extramural Speech

The protection of extramural speech is crucial for understanding the relationship of democracy to higher education

September 4, 2025 • by Judith Butler

In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, before Donald Trump took office and started to threaten universities with the withdrawal of federal grants, it was already clear that academic freedom had become increasingly disregarded by university administrations. It is difficult to make an argument that will not ...

Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extramural Speech

Activism

Future Anterior Witness

Women’s Voices Narrating Black Death

February 16, 2023 • by Julie Beth Napolin

Facebook's censorship of documented violence points to a boundary in public life: death is not meant to be livestreamed....

<strong>Future Anterior Witness</strong>

Democracy

On Repression and Resistance

December 8, 2020 • by Aysen Candas

I would like to start by thanking the New University in Exile Consortium, particularly the Consortium's marvelous director, Prof. Arien Mack. Thanks to Arien's persistent efforts, uprooted academics from all over the world find their voice in a new community of like-minded scholars. I would also like to thank Prof. ...

Migration

The Universal within the Particular

October 19, 2020 • by Eneken Laanes

But the nagging question that has accompanied academic work on cultural memories of violence, apart from the historical knowledge it produces and helps to keep alive, is its relevance for our contemporary world, its ability to contribute to change. As much as the collage of Holocaust testimonies makes us painfully ...

Feature

Why Nationalists Insist on the Gender Binary

The attack on transgender people is part of a bigger plan to reverse gender justice

November 6, 2018 • by Maria Bucur

Since 2012 religious groups of many stripes have started to use the term “gender ideology” as a means to polarize the conversation about gender justice, especially in relation to non-binary individuals. What Catholics like the German sociologist Gabriele Kuby want to see is a return to what is “normal” and ...

Why Nationalists Insist on the Gender Binary

Feature

Bodies in Transition

Derailing gender in the liminal space of breast cancer treatment

May 24, 2018 • by Tara Mastrelli

According to political historian and gender theorist Paul Preciado, we are living in the pharmacapornagraphic era. In this era, claims his book Testo Junkie, gender is produced through the body’s constant interaction with images, imagery, and social norms that represent a naturalized sex ideal, and through technological and pharmeucuetical interventions. There is ...

Feature

Gender and the Politics of Secularism

A conversation between Joan Wallach Scott and Judith Butler on Scott’s latest book Sex and Secularism

April 26, 2018 • by Judith Butler and Joan Wallach Scott

An excerpt from Joan Wallach Scott’s latest book Sex and Secularism can be found here. Judith Butler: Shall we start the interview? I am wondering whether you could describe the decision to work on a book on sex and secularism. What led up to that decision? How does this book follow from your The Politics ...

Feature

Bannon at Booth

A conflict between principle and strategy?

March 15, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

Bannon, surely, needs no introduction, nor need we long belabor the reasons why the decision to invite him to speak at the University of Chicago proved controversial. Still, let’s note that in a letter of protest signed by over 100 members of the University of Chicago faculty, the rationale for objecting to ...

Uncategorized

Violence is What We Were Paid To Do, Part III

The LAPD and the Rodney King Affair

February 22, 2018 • by Eileen Chen

Below is the final segment of a three part series examining the history of police brutality in Los Angeles. This series was originally a paper submitted for the Sociology of Power and Authority class taught by Isaac Ariail Reed at University of Virginia. The first two segments tracked the inner ...

Violence is What We Were Paid To Do, Part III

Education

Milo in Berkeley

Further reflections on the renewed academic free speech debate

January 23, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

What light if any, I will ask here, does this claim shine on the larger discourse about academic free speech, specifically as that discussion has come to focus, for historical and strategic reasons, on UC-Berkeley. The proximal cause of Berkeley’s centrality is the shutdown of an intended speech by Milo ...

Feature

Racial Preference and Grindr

The enduring erotics of colonialism

January 11, 2018 • by Dominic Reilly

Beyond preference vs. prejudice At what point does preference become discrimination? This question was used to frame a recent video produced by Grindr exploring the increasingly prominent topic of “race” and so-called “racial preferences” on hook-up and dating apps. That increasing attention is being paid to the racialized aspects of our partner selections ...