Are you searching for ways to make your classroom environment more collaborative, liberating and supportive? Have you been wondering what abolition means and looks like in an academic context?

Join the conversation during a panel discussion hosted by the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. Scholars and activists RaShelle Peck, Farima Pour-Khorshid, Conor (Coco) Tomas Reed, Calvin Smiley and Dave Stovall will share how their involvement in abolitionist groups, projects, and movements inform their classroom pedagogy and impacts their campus communities.

Abolition Pedagogies: Dismantling Carceral Logics & Practices
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
5-6:30pm, On Zoom
To Register: http://cuny.is/ab-ped

********

About the Panelists

RaShelle Peck is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at BMCC. Before coming to BMCC, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL) at Rutgers University (2019-2020) and in the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis with the Black Bodies Seminar (2018-2019). She teaches courses in African history and has taught courses in African politics, Black music, and Black performance studies.

Calvin Smiley is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Hunter College. His work focuses on issues related to race, inequality, and social justice. More specifically, as a critical sociologist and criminologist, he has studied mass incarceration and prisoner reentry. He is the author of the award winning Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023) and Defund: Conversations Towards Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2024). Additionally, he is the co-editor of Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century: Critical Perspectives of Coming Home (Routledge, 2020). He is currently working on a co-authored book with Jan Haldipur on how system-impacted people utilize social media in their reentry process, which is under contract with NYU Press. Smiley’s research focuses on justice and inequality, and he has been published in several academic journals and media outlets. Smiley is the Project Director for the CUNY New Paths @ ACS partnership between CUNY and New York City’s Administrative of Children’s Service to provide college-credit courses to system-impacted incarcerated youth. Outside of academia, Smiley is the founder and director of Till Everything Better LLC, which facilitates restorative justice programs in New York City youth detention facilities. More about Smiley’s work can be found at: http://www.cjsmiley.com.

Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed is a Puerto Rican~Irish, gender-fluid scholar-organizer of radical cultural and educational movements in the Americas and the Caribbean, and the author of New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (Common Notions, 2023). Coco has been immersed in almost two decades of struggles at the City University of New York and in New York City around transforming education and public space, anti-imperialism, police and prison abolition, solidarity with Palestine and Puerto Rico, reproductive rights, housing justice, and beyond.

Farima Pour-Khorshid is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. She is committed to abolition and healing-centered engagement within and outside of the field of education. Much of her work is rooted in healing centered initiatives with Flourish Agenda across the country, as well as community based and education organizing as she serves in leadership roles within the Teachers 4 Social Justice organization, the Abolitionist Teaching Network, and the National Education for Liberation Network, which organizes the Free Minds Free People conference.

Dave Stovall is a professor in the department of Black Studies and the department of Criminology, Law & Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His scholarship investigates three areas 1) Critical Race Theory, 2) the relationship between housing and education, and 3) the intersection of race, place and school. In the attempt to bring theory to action, he works with community organizations and schools to address issues of equity, justice and abolishing the school/prison nexus.

The panel will be facilitated by Kristi Riley, Jenna Queenan, and Janelle Poe from the Teaching and Learning Center.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

Are you searching for ways to make your classroom environment more collaborative, liberating and supportive? Have you been wondering what abolition means and looks like in an academic context?

Join the conversation during a panel discussion hosted by the Teaching and Learning Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. Scholars and activists RaShelle Peck, Farima Pour-Khorshid, Conor (Coco) Tomas Reed, Calvin Smiley and Dave Stovall will share how their involvement in abolitionist groups, projects, and movements inform their classroom pedagogy and impacts their campus communities.

Abolition Pedagogies: Dismantling Carceral Logics & Practices
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
5-6:30pm, On Zoom
To Register: http://cuny.is/ab-ped

********

About the Panelists

RaShelle Peck is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic and Race Studies at BMCC. Before coming to BMCC, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL) at Rutgers University (2019-2020) and in the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis with the Black Bodies Seminar (2018-2019). She teaches courses in African history and has taught courses in African politics, Black music, and Black performance studies.

Calvin Smiley is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Hunter College. His work focuses on issues related to race, inequality, and social justice. More specifically, as a critical sociologist and criminologist, he has studied mass incarceration and prisoner reentry. He is the author of the award winning Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023) and Defund: Conversations Towards Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2024). Additionally, he is the co-editor of Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century: Critical Perspectives of Coming Home (Routledge, 2020). He is currently working on a co-authored book with Jan Haldipur on how system-impacted people utilize social media in their reentry process, which is under contract with NYU Press. Smiley’s research focuses on justice and inequality, and he has been published in several academic journals and media outlets. Smiley is the Project Director for the CUNY New Paths @ ACS partnership between CUNY and New York City’s Administrative of Children’s Service to provide college-credit courses to system-impacted incarcerated youth. Outside of academia, Smiley is the founder and director of Till Everything Better LLC, which facilitates restorative justice programs in New York City youth detention facilities. More about Smiley’s work can be found at: http://www.cjsmiley.com.

Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed is a Puerto Rican~Irish, gender-fluid scholar-organizer of radical cultural and educational movements in the Americas and the Caribbean, and the author of New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (Common Notions, 2023). Coco has been immersed in almost two decades of struggles at the City University of New York and in New York City around transforming education and public space, anti-imperialism, police and prison abolition, solidarity with Palestine and Puerto Rico, reproductive rights, housing justice, and beyond.

Farima Pour-Khorshid is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. She is committed to abolition and healing-centered engagement within and outside of the field of education. Much of her work is rooted in healing centered initiatives with Flourish Agenda across the country, as well as community based and education organizing as she serves in leadership roles within the Teachers 4 Social Justice organization, the Abolitionist Teaching Network, and the National Education for Liberation Network, which organizes the Free Minds Free People conference.

Dave Stovall is a professor in the department of Black Studies and the department of Criminology, Law & Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His scholarship investigates three areas 1) Critical Race Theory, 2) the relationship between housing and education, and 3) the intersection of race, place and school. In the attempt to bring theory to action, he works with community organizations and schools to address issues of equity, justice and abolishing the school/prison nexus.

The panel will be facilitated by Kristi Riley, Jenna Queenan, and Janelle Poe from the Teaching and Learning Center.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.