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SLC.edu / Magazine / The Company We Keep / On Campus / Spoken Word

Spoken Word

“I’ve been in prison because of working in an African language. So how do I fight the state? How do I defy the state? By writing in an African language. My first novel in the Gikuyu language was written on toilet paper in a maximum-security prison with materials supplied for me by the state. With my teachers being the prison wardens and my fellow prisoners.”
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kenyan novelist and critic1

“Producing knowledge is not neutral. Knowledge can be weaponized.”
Trevor Paglen, artist and experimental geographer2

“I am not an ‘animal lover’ in the sense that people love the company of dogs and cats. I have a strong contempt for abuse of power, and a strong empathy for the victims of this abuse.”
Peter Young, animal rights activist3

“Nations, like individuals, are capable of acting rationally after they have exhausted all other options.”
Avi Shlaim, scholar of the Arab-Israeli conflict4

  1. “Writing, Language and the State: Readings from Wizard of the Crow,” October 14, 2008. An exiled Kenyan native, Ngugi wa Thiong’o is director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. Sponsored by the Linda Ashear Fund for Visiting Poets and the Elaine Oakley Behr Visiting Writers Fund.
  2. “Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights,” November 17, 2008. Paglen’s book by the same name documents the CIA’s use of modified commercial aircraft for extraordinary rendition. Part of the Environmental Studies/Science, Technology, and Society colloquium series.
  3. “Peter Young, former Animal Liberation Prisoner,” November 5, 2008. Young was imprisoned after releasing mink from fur farms. Hosted by Students Promoting Awareness of Animal Rights.
  4. “The United States and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process: Challenges Facing the Next US President,” September 23, 2008. Sponsored by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Chair in Middle Eastern Studies and Inter-national Affairs.

Watch the complete talks by Herbert, Alexander, and Ngugi wa’ Thiongo at slc.edu/magazine/groups/media