The Space of Justice

Space of Justice is the podcast of the initiative for Just Space at Duke University. Just Space is sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs at Duke University. For more information about Just Space or to participate with Just Space week checkout sites.duke.edu/justspace

Welcome back to Space of Justice hosted by Michael A. Betts, II (he/him/his). This week Michael sits down with Professor of the Practice in Computer Science, Dr. Nicki Washington, to discuss the current realities of confronting white supremacy in the computer science world and how we can use Cultural Competency Training to make space for those who are typically on the margins while learning in the field. Space of Justice is a podcast of the Just Space Initiative sponsored by the office of Student Affairs at Duke University. Check back every Tuesday for the newest episode! Find out more about Just Space at sites.duke.edu/justspace

Welcome back to Space of Justice hosted by Michael A. Betts, II (he/him/his). This week Michael sits down with three brilliant Black Durham based artists, Brittany Barbee, Shay Hendricks, and Anthony Patterson who have a storied history with both the University and Durham. In the wake of the murders of Ahmaud Aubrey, George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and Daniel Prude and the subsequent uprisings which happened, all three responded to the moment with work in public spaces. Space of Justice is a podcast of the Just Space Initiative sponsored by the office of Student Affairs at Duke University. Check back every Tuesday for the newest episode! Find out more about Just Space at sites.duke.edu/justspace

Welcome back to Space of Justice hosted by Michael A. Betts, II (he/him/his). This week Michael sits down with Durham CAN Executive Director, Atinuke "Tinu" Diver, to talk about the city's $95 Million affordable housing bond and how Duke and Durham can better support the needs of its low income populations. Space of Justice is a podcast of the Just Space Initiative sponsored by the department of Student Affairs at Duke University. Check back every Tuesday for the newest episode! Find out more about Just Space at sites.duke.edu/justspace

Welcome back to Space of Justice hosted by Michael A. Betts, II (he/him/his). This week Michael sits down senior leadership of Duke’s Next Gen Living & Learning 2.0 Committee, comprised of Vice Provost/Vice President of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMAN (spelled McMahon), Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Gary Bennett, and lastly Dean of Student, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, & Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Blackshear to answer the question of “How will Duke build a joyful and intentional 4-year residential experience that promotes growth, meaningful inclusion, and health and that is distinctly Duke?” Space of Justice is a podcast of the Just Space Initiative sponsored by the department of Student Affairs at Duke University. Check back every Tuesday for the newest episode! Find out more about Just Space at sites.duke.edu/justspace

Welcome back to Space of Justice hosted, Michael A. Betts, II (he/him/his). This week Michael sits down with Chicano filmmaker and photographer Bishop Ortega and talks to him about is May 2020 MFA Thesis project on Trinity college's Indian Industrial Boarding School and Duke's subsequent responsibility to it's Native and Indigenous faculty, students, and staff. Space of Justice is a podcast of the Just Space Initiative sponsored by the department of Student Affairs at Duke University. Check back every Tuesday for the newest episode! Find out more about Just Space at sites.duke.edu/justspace

Second Season Teaser

In this episode, Shelvis Ponds sits down with Angel Collie, Assistant Director of the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity at Duke University. Sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs at Duke University. Beginning of Transcript: SHELVIS PONDS: In this episode, we sit with Anglie Collie from the Center forSexual and Gender Diversity at Duke University to discuss how he navigated histransitioning experience in light of opposition and struggle.SHELVIS PONDS: It’s good to be with you, Angel, today. Thank you so much foragreeing to be a part of our Just Space podcast. The word identity often comes up inyour work. Could you share with us what you think the word identify means?ANGEL: Yeah, when I think about identity I think it can be the parts of how someoneshows up in the world, who they understand themselves to be, I think there’s aconstructed part of identity, some that we may identify with those things, it may bethings that have been assigned to us, or society has made meaning of and they impactour experiences and how we show up and how with the expectations are for us in theworld.SHELVIS PONDS: Thank you, thank you. I really think it’s a salient point to thinkabout identity that one self-identifies as as opposed to one identity that one is assigned.Could you share about that difference of identity that I live into because I self-identifywith that identity versus a identity I made just naturally be assigned by the outsideworld?ANGEL: Yeah, I mean I think about that a lot in terms of the identities that I hold. Ithink one of the salient, one of my salient identities would be my identity as a transperson. I was assigned female at birth, I was expected to conform to expectationsassociated with that sex assignment whether that was being forced to wear dresses andthere was a whole line of expectations and limitations and restrictions that came alongwith that. Down to the activities that I wanted to engage in or what my family and mycommunity wanted me to do so it’s kind of a general example, but growing up I alwayswanted to play football, I wanted to be in taekwondo, martial arts, my mom wanted meto like go to dance school and she always really wanted a girl so I think I got a lot of that- those hopes and yet that never really fit for me, there was always a way in which I hadthis internal sense that I was male, I am male and so I’ve had to come out as trans, I’vehad to like align my gender expression and how I communicate my gender into the world to reflect my gender identity to reflect my gender identity because it wasn’t whatI was assigned so that’s one example. I certainly hold other identities that are impact myexperience and how I show up in the world and the access I have and the places where Idon’t necessarily have access, so I think about my racial identity as a white person whatdoes that mean and the privilege that it carries and the responsibility I have to beundoing that privilege. I think about my social-economic status growing up in aworking-class family, I think about my faith as a Christian in a society whereChristianity has been predominant religion for a long time and has at times caused a lotof harm for communities or have been used to cause harm - I think about that inrelationship to my queer and trans identities specifically and for me my faith is also thething that gave me the strength to be who I am so having to reconcile the Church I grewup in and the type of Christianity as a part of with who I need myself be and had apretty difficult journey doing that. When I came out, I was raised in a southern Baptistchurch in rural North Carolina, so I think that my grandfather was this beacon, I was inChurch every time the doors were open, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesdaynight. I’d be dragged along to women’s auxiliary meetings, where I learned a lot aboutother people in the church, but not necessarily a lot about the Bible, that’s where thenews was spreaded. So you know I thi

In this Episode Shelvis Ponds sits down with Jen Fry of the Ungradate Research Support Office. Sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs at Duke University.

In this epsiode Shelvis Ponds sits down with Pierce Freelon, founder of Blackspace and Northstar Church of the Arts, to discuss how to read who space is for and how he came to create Blackspace in Durham, NC. Sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs at Duke University. Beginning of Transcript: Afronaut, and that is ‘Afronaut’ like an African astronaut, you know. I think of what we do here as a breathing space we create like an atmosphere, literally, figuratively, we burn sage, we burn palo santo, we make sure that when kids walk into the space it feels like they can exhale, they can take a deep breath. A lot of these structures out here, we’ve learned from Black feminists that there exists not just racism and patriarchy and sexism, but that they’re interlocked and oppression is intersectional and so when we want to dream about creating like a breathing space, you need to put your creative lense on to be able to envision that, in order tomanifest that, in order to experience that in slivers, because out there if you’re black on a predominantly white campus and dealing with microaggressions, if you’re a woman trying to go jogging at night, if you’re queer in a space where homophobic lyricsare popping on the radio, those things can be very literally asphyxiating, it can take the breath out your lungs and it can be depressing or it can be assaulting or distressing and so we hope to create a space where we don’t have to deal with any of that and so when we start from that point, what does it look like to feel, and to engage and to create amongst each other as Black folks doing our best to keep those things at bay in this space and to me the metaphor of a mask and a suit, a protective environment and atmosphere for liberation to be tasted and experimented on and experienced -that’s the source from which we are going to spring forward and say, “We’re not going to deal with this, we know what the alternative situation can be like. The alternativelearning environment can be like, we’ve dreamed up better situations than this one”. And I feel like there isn’t an ancestor out there, name one that wasn’t a dreamer for their time and the obvious cliche would be Martin Luther King Jr. “I Had a Dream”, we hear that every Black History Month, that’s in the McDonald’s commercial “I Have a Dream”, but take it back like Ella Baker -what type of world was she dreaming, what type of alternate reality was Pauli Murray talking about, Episcopal preacher queer Black? What planet are you living on, Harriet Tubman? You are on some other sh--as we need to be if we want to see through what we the Durham native who played pro-football and then quit the sport to be a painter and ended up painting “The Sugar Shack” painting, which was based in the Durham Armory. That was the setting for that beautiful painting, which was the cover of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You album that was on the beginning of “Good Times” --iconic painting from this football player from Durham who was a celebrity and an icon in his own right as an athlete, but was also an artist and a creative. And Ryan Coogler, in my mind, steps into that tradition of the Jim Browns and others that havestepped out of the sports arena to do not just creative work, but important, political creative work. So in grad school he had this short film called “Locks”, it was about a brother -spoiler alert –brothers, like, walking around basically being raciallyprofiled and he cuts his hair and as he walks out there’s all these dreads like looking at him like, “Man, like I get it, but damn man this is rough”. And then when he gets home, he takes his bag of hair and he throws it at his sister and she looks at himand starts crying and she takes her wig off and come to find out that he was shaving his head to be in solidarity with her because she had cancer, not because of the stereotypes, which do exist. It’s a silent film, there’s no dialogu

In this episode, Shelvis Ponds sits down with Dr. Adam Rosenblatt, Associate Professor of the Practice of the International Comparative Studies Program at Duke University. Sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs at Duke. Beginning of Transcript: SHELVIS PONDS: In this episode, we sit with Adam Rosenblatt, professor in the International Comparative Studies Department at Duke University, to discuss the importance of space, particularly his work with analyzing graveyards to better understand how suchspaces can indicate economic disparities among different social groups. Well, Adam, it is good to see you. I want to, you know, I’m here today to talk more about your thoughts on just space as it pertains to, you know, thinking about the work that you do surrounding cemeteries and learning how to read and using cemeteries as spaces to read and think critically about the lives they’re in, the voices they’re in and thinking about those spaces from a social justice mindset.ADAM ROSENBLATT: Yeah, so one thing I’d say is that you’re absolutely right that my work is partly about understanding the history’s that cemeteries embody, reflect, and also sort of perpetuate and keep going in some cases. But, it’s always a very passive way to construct the cemeteries:it’s like history happens and then it’s written on the cemeteries and we can read it. Right? It’s like cemeteries as text. But, my book is tentatively called Cemetery Citizens and part of the point of it is that cemeteries also create new kinds of communities. So my book is sort of about cemeteries, but much more than that is about the people who come and work in cemetaries, especially volunteers who are trying to reclaim cemeteries that are sort of neglected, marginalized, etc. So I don’t only see cemeteries as these passive spaces that reflect our history, but I also see them as spaces where history’s made or, you know, new kinds of communities of care and resistance are coming together, sometimes where people are arguing with each other about how to remember the dead and how to use a space. Should there be nature trails and a kind of very accessible colorblind outdoorsy reclamation project or should there be Black Lives Matter/Blacks Death Matter resistance-oriented lense? You know? These things, it’s notonly, the projects I’m studying, whether they’re around race or disability or whatever, it’s not only people coming together and being like, “Let’s clean up the liter, and have a barbeque! We all love each other!”. It’s also like these are contested spaces.SHELVIS PONDS: You mentioned neglected and marginalized cemeteries. Could you define what, is there a difference between a neglected and a marginalized cemetery? Because when I think of neglect, I think of care and upkeep. But, when I, I’ve never heardof a marginalized cemetery. What is the distinction between neglected and marginalized, if there is any? ADAM ROSENBLATT: Yeah, it’s a great question because I’ve been really struggling with these vocabularies a lot and I’ve been in dialogue with the folks that I'm working with who’ve worked in the cemeteries about it. The words neglected and especially abandoned, to me, are really loaded and it indicates, for example, the African-American cemeteries in Richmond, and for all I know, the case of Geer Cemetery here in Durham as well, you can spin that neglect or abandonment a lot of ways. But, it’s precisely that it’s a description that doesn’t immediately point to a responsible party that allows for a bunch of narratives not all of them, you know, are really fair or accurate. So, in Richmond at least a lot of the storyline goes like: How did this cemetary get to this point? You know, these kind of overgrown African-American cemeteries that have vandalism, they have illegal dumping. How did they get to this point? And then you look and you compare to just right across the street to like Oakwood Cemetery which has this

Welcome to the Just Space Podcast hosted by Shelvis Ponds. In this episode, Shelvis sits down with Jeff Nelson, a residence coordinator at Duke University. Sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs at Duke University.