Education for Black Liberation: Freire and Past/Present Pan-Africanist Experiments

Popular education has played a central role in Pan-African liberation struggles historically and in the present moment. In the period following African independence, social movements that emerged around and through education in Africa were informed by and in dialogue with related decolonial movements of the Global South. However, the specific contributions of Pan-Africanist revolutionaries to the broader philosophy and praxis of education for liberation is often under-appreciated. This paper explores this impact through Paulo Freire’s political and intellectual engagement with Pan-Africanist popular education movements, radical intellectuals, and broader revolutionary struggles. In considering Freire’s work in dialogue and practice with African revolutionary thinkers, this paper shows that, while Freire shaped elements of liberation education in Africa, he was also deeply shaped and influenced by the historical conditions of the time and key African revolutionaries who were struggling towards similar objectives. Additionally, we explore the continued salience of Freirean educational praxis in contemporary Pan-Africanist social movements, through the example of a present day online pedagogical experiment, the Pan-African Activist Sunday School and Solidarity Collective

Complete Genome Sequences of Mycobacterium smegmatis Phages Chewbacca, Reptar3000, and Riparian, Isolated in Las Vegas, Nevada

Here, we present the complete genome sequences of Mycobacterium smegmatis phages Chewbacca, Reptar3000, and Riparian, isolated from soil in Las Vegas, NV. The phages were isolated and annotated by undergraduate students enrolled in the Phage Discovery course offered by the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vega

Nitric Oxide Facilitates Delivery and Mediates Improved Outcome of Autologous Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells in a Rodent Stroke Model

Bone marrow mononuclear cells (MNC) represent an investigational treatment for stroke. The objective of this study was to determine the relevance of vasoactive mediators, generated in response to MNC injection, as factors regulating cerebral perfusion (CP), the biodistribution of MNC, and outcome in stroke.Long Evans rats underwent transient middle cerebral artery occlusion. MNC were extracted from the bone marrow at 22 hrs and injected via the internal carotid artery or the femoral vein 2 hours later. CP was measured with MRI or continuous laser Doppler flowmetry. Serum samples were collected to measure vasoactive mediators. Animals were treated with the Nitric Oxide (NO) inhibitor, L-NAME, to establish the relevance of NO-signaling to the effect of MNC. Lesion size, MNC biodistribution, and neurological deficits were assessed.CP transiently increased in the peri-infarct region within 30 min after injecting MNC compared to saline or fibroblast control. This CP increase corresponded temporarily to serum NO elevation and was abolished by L-NAME. Pre-treatment with L-NAME reduced brain penetration of MNC and prevented MNC from reducing infarct lesion size and neurological deficits.NO generation in response to MNC may represent a mechanism underlying how MNC enter the brain, reduce lesion size, and improve outcome in ischemic stroke

Political Training Grounds: Students and the Future of Post-Military Nigeria

This dissertation is an ethnographic investigation of experimental forms of political practice among Nigerian university students. With limited avenues for participation in Nigeria’s turbulent democracy, students imagine the campus and its urban environs as “political training grounds” which offer opportunities for political leadership—and aspirations to this effect—that are only newly available in the post-military era after the civilian transition in 1999. I analyze the ways in which this notion of higher education as a political training ground was experienced during a critical turning point in Nigerian politics when both constitutional democracy and student unionism activities were experiencing revitalization after many years’ absence. I argue that the emergence of the “politician” as a professional identity among university students is specific to the post-military era, when politics became a legitimate and particularly lucrative “profession,” after students had for generations acted as agitators against the state through student activism. The reinterpretation of the purposes of higher education indexes the ways in which “precariousness” has come to define the experiences of young Nigerians: students view schooling as a time for gaining non-academic experience because earning educational credentials no longer guarantees economic mobility or full social participation. Based on over three years of ethnographic fieldwork, over one hundred interviews, and focus group discussions between 2006-2012 in Ibadan, Nigeria’s third largest city and a key site for educational development, political administration, and urban mobility, the dissertation is organized into five thematic chapters that capture the most significant elements of campus political activity, as well as the different domains in which students attempt to acquire political experience and influence. I describe the historical relationship between the University of Ibadan and the city of Ibadan, arguing that the evolving relationship between the university and the city points to important transformations in how students understand their roles on campus and as citizens of Nigeria (Chapter One). I analyze important differences in student political cultures across different kinds of educational institutions by broadening my focus to three Ibadan campuses: a private university, a federal university, and a state polytechnic, which signal the ways institutional factors influence the professionalization activities students participate in to develop political identities (Chapter Two). Shifting to the relationships between campus and national politics, I analyze the most critical event of Nigerian politics—elections—with a focus on student and national elections in 2011 (Chapter Three). These events reveal the significant role of apprenticeship within the political system students are trying to gain access to, and the ways students move beyond the campuses to participate in wider political networks, many of which are defined by illicit economic relationships with political “godfathers,” who are important power brokers and elders in national politics. I highlight the emerging role of new media technologies in the political activities of young people, which offer spaces free from the authority of elders that dominate other political domains. In particular, I focus on the strategic use of the Facebook social media platform in the formation of political community and a public sphere, which offers students alternative ways of engaging in political discourse and ensuring the transparency of elected student leaders (Chapter Four). The dissertation also analyzes the role of campus and urban protests in student political expression with a discussion of the social movements, Occupy Nigeria and Occupy University of Ibadan in 2012, moments in which student politics transcended the campus to mobilize around broader urban and national questions and which also made deliberate connections to global social movements under the rubric of “occupation” (Chapter Five). In contrast to the focus of much of the existing literature on African universities as sites merely for reproducing privilege, or failed institutions that no longer guarantee social mobility, this work shows that higher educational institutions in Nigeria are more than institutional enclaves: they are key nodes within urban landscapes and the national political arena, in which students develop ideas about, and modes of practicing, future citizenship and political engagements. This move pushes scholars of politics and youth in Africa, and elsewhere, to consider the critical role of universities in the politicization of youth and nascent processes of democratization and other forms of political transformation in countries like Nigeria, whose post-colonial identity has been defined by the existence of military rule

Organizing Pedagogies: Transgressing Campus-Movement Boundaries Through Radical Study and Action

This article considers the speculative and pedagogical character of campus abolitionist organizing. Extending education research into the knowledge (re)producing functions of radical activism, we draw upon the Black Radical Tradition to theorize the intersections of learning and imagination in both activism and education

Details of different behavioral tests and scores.

<p>Details of different behavioral tests and scores.</p

L-NAME inhibits the beneficial effect of MNCs.

<p>(A) Chronic infarct cavity at 28 days after stroke in animals treated with saline or MNCs. Animals at 24 hrs after stroke received saline followed by IV MNCs (10 million cells), or L-NAME followed by IV MNCs (10 million cells), or saline only. Lesion size was reduced by MNCs at 28 days after stroke. However, pre-treatment with L-NAME before MNC infusion abolished this reduction in lesion size (§p<0.05 compared with saline). The lesion size was calculated as a percent of the contralateral cortex N = 8 per group. (B) Neurological deficits serially evaluated after stroke in animals treated with saline IP followed by IV infusion of MNCs or L-NAME IP followed by IV infusion of MNCs. At 28 days, animals treated with saline followed by MNCs showed a significant reduction in deficits compared with animals treated with L-NAME+MNCs or compared with animals treated with saline only (§p<0.05). The x-axis represents the time in days after stroke. Baseline refers to the time point before stroke. N = 8 per group.</p