Trinity Welcomes Maya Wind and Davarian Baldwin to Deliver Their Thoughts on Higher Education & Global Justice

Lucy Sheldon ’27

News Editor

 Author and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Riverside Maya Wind and Trinity American Studies Professor Davarian Baldwin joined Trinity Professor Isaac Kamola in the Smith House on March 11, 2025, for a discussion on higher education and global justice. Wind and Baldwin took the opportunity to promote their respective publications and research while fleshing out their thoughts on the role and responsibility of institutions of higher education, particularly within the context of global injustices, race, capitalism and colonialism. The books each panelist brought and promoted included “Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom” by Wind and “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities” by Baldwin. 

Throughout the colloquy, the panelists demonstrated such respect and admiration for each other and their respective works that it yielded an easy yet productive dialogue on rather difficult topics. Wind attributed much of her political thought and development of higher education and race, capitalism, and colonialism to Baldwin and his research. She stated, “I feel indebted to Davarian and [wanted] to be in lineage of him in a number of ways. As soon as I read Davarian’s book, I was thinking: Who are my comrades, who is doing this kind of work? And it was really hard to find something that really resonated with the kind of project I was trying to do. But as soon as I read Davarian’s work, I went: that’s it! When you know, you know. That was the model.”

Wind opened the panel by delineating her research for “Towers of Ivory and Steel.” She explained that her approach to understanding higher education stems from her experiences organizing against militarism. Her entry point into politics and organizing was her fight against the Israeli draft system in Jerusalem as a high school senior. Because her resistance efforts led to her imprisonment, she was incredibly interested in the intersection between the prison system and the military. “When I was organizing against the draft, our basic premise was that the occupation [of Palestine] required labor and if you could withhold labor the whole system would crumble.” So when she began thinking about universities, she came at it from the orientation of: “How can institutions be reproduced? And more importantly, how can they be interrupted?” 

What formally launched Wind into her analysis of Israeli universities was how they were narrated in the United States. Wind was aware that since 2004, Palestinians — specifically Palestinian scholars — had called for an international boycott of Israeli universities. She wanted to bridge the dissonance between the Western narrative of Israeli universities and the Palestinian experience with them. While Israeli Universities gesture at being inclusive to Palestinian and Arabic students by admitting them into their institutions, they simultaneously suppress their right to free speech and right to assemble. A reality that is seldom acknowledged in Western narratives of Israeli Universities. In effect, Wind felt obligated to take her settler privileges seriously and her linguistic and physical access to try to be of service to the Palestinian community. She wanted “to try to tell a different story and interrupt some of these narratives that were so pervasive. Again, a Western consensus that totally ignored and sidelined a longstanding Palestinian analytic and analysis and a call [to boycott Israeli Schools] that was totally unanswered.”

On the topic of universities ubiquitously being regarded as “good” and providing a “public service,” Baldwin jumped in with his thoughts. Baldwin explained that the narrative of private education as public service stands at odds with the reality of universities and colleges. They are the biggest low-wage employers, real-estate holders, and policing agents; as a result, it begs the question, “What do we mean by good?” Baldwin posed the question: is the public-good status assigned to schools because of all of these other services, or is it because of the classes they offer and the research they conduct? Because, at this point, teaching and learning have become one of the smallest things schools do. Baldwin concluded that the public good framework has become a strategy to extract public dollars from governmental services with very little public oversight. So when scrutiny is applied to these schools, instead of embracing it and addressing concerns, schools reject the notion of being anything more than a college or university. 

Baldwin emphasized that as we unpack and dismantle the violence of higher education, we cannot precipitously transport terms and frameworks from one sector to another. For example, when some call for the abolition of colleges, this term and framework is appropriate for the abolition of slavery and prisons. However, it is perhaps impetuous to call for abolishing higher education. While Baldwin acknowledged there are aspects of universities that cannot be redeemed, like their role in settler colonialism, Indigenous land seizure, and enslaved bodies, he also said that we need to reconcile that universities have been a “landing spot for all of these resources of power.” He distinguished that there is both an intellectual and political conversation to be had. Ultimately, he called for communities to be thoughtful and disciplined as they move forward with their political action against higher education.