From May 28-June 1, the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes hosted a delegation of 176 scholars, staff, and students from around the world to examine the state of risk for scholars in increasingly hostile environments at home and abroad. This gathering was a unique space where humanities scholars, practitioners, and administrators considered the fundamental questions of humanities research alongside the practical challenges of humanities research and program management.
Over five days, the participants engaged with many UC Berkeley faculty in the humanities and arts, who lent their leadership, creativity, and critical expertise to the panels and informal discussions.
Judith Butler delivered a keynote address, "Academic Freedom in a Time of Destruction: Reconsidering Extra-Mural Speech," which spoke to current shifts in public consensus on a faculty member's right to express their viewpoints outside the classroom without fear of retaliation.
Solmaz Sharif (English) organized the opening keynote poetry reading and wrote a new work for the occasion addressing the theme of risk. The reading also included an introduction by former Chancellor Carol Christ and a reading by poet Polina Barskova (Slavic Languages & Literatures).
Damon Young (Film and Media, French) chaired a session introducing the foundational question of the conference——what is a scholar at risk——and Mario Telò (Ancient Greek & Roman Studies, Rhetoric, and Comparative Literature) organized a session examining critical perspectives on home and exile, which also included Debarati Sanyal, director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry.
Humanities centers from fellow University of California campuses provided snapshot presentations under the theme of "California at Risk: Regional Responses to Global Challenges," and featured UC Merced addressing scholars at risk, UC Santa Cruz on the humanities' role in AI, and UC Irvine on the environmental humanities.
This conference served as the annual meeting for the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), which is housed within the Townsend Center. The CHCI Annual Meeting is an international conference for leaders in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Each Annual Meeting is hosted by a member center or institute and focuses on a theme chosen by the host director. Stephen Best, director of the Townsend Center and president of CHCI, will host the next annual meeting of the consortium in Berlin, Germany in June 2025.
Recordings are available below:
Full conference playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcGGJ2Ftn_PYsF-hVKqL-c7ST021cdZ-U
Damon Young's panel: https://youtu.be/uERzV0RrT9c?feature=shared
Mario Telo's panel: https://youtu.be/a1nuquYp3hc?feature=shared
Stephen Best, Director of the Townsend Center and President of CHCI, opens the conference and introduces Chancellor Carol Christ.
June 14, 2024