The Rise and Fall of Student Debt
Feinberg Series Panel with Leigh-Ann Naidoo, Astra Taylor and Kelly Gillespie
Rising tuition and skyrocketing student debt have fundamentally reshaped higher education in recent decades, with toxic effects on all of society, both in the U.S. and globally. Join filmmaker and Debt Collective co-founder Astra Taylor and South African academics and organizers Leigh-Ann Naidoo and Kelly Gillespie (moderator) for a conversation on student debt, the crisis of global capitalism, and global movements fighting to end debt and transform higher education.
This panel is a follow up event, offered in conjunction with a screening of You Are Not a Loan on February 24. The film is directed by Taylor and stars Naidoo, among other leading U.S. and international activists and academics.
View full details and register on the Feinberg Series website
Leigh-Ann Naidoo is an educationalist who works at the University of Cape Town, School of Education. After the sports boycott was ended, she represented South Africa at various international tournaments, finally competing in beach volleyball at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where she was one of a handful of out queer Olympians. She has worked inside and outside of the formal education system. She was involved in #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall struggles and formed part of the 2016 all-women international flotilla mission that attempted to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. She is interested in knowledge production outside of the confines of the academic project and is working collectively to develop daily pedagogies that confront the violences that are the reality of the majority of people on the planet, to work toward some form of resistance and repair. She continues to be involved in reimagining the university as an institution with the potential to radically change society.
Astra Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors. She is the author of numerous books including The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together As Things Fall Apart, Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It Is Gone, The People’s Platform (winner of an American Book Award), and Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea (co-author). She is the director of What Is Democracy?, Zizek!, Examined Life, You Are Not a Loan, and other films. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, n+I, the Baffler, and elsewhere.
Kelly Gillespie (University of Cape Town) is a political and legal anthropologist who writes and teaches about law and justice, urbanism, sexualities, race, and the praxis of social justice. Gillespie has been involved in work on the decolonization of the university in South Africa, supporting student movement activism and disciplinary and curriculum reconstruction. With Leigh-Ann Naidoo, Gillespie is co-author of several articles in critical university studies, including “Abolition Pedagogy: Force Fields of Critique” and “Between the Cold War and the Fire: The Student Movement, Anti-assimilation, and the Question of the Future in South Africa.” Gillespie also works beyond the university in popular education projects supporting a broad range of social justice formations.
The 2024-25 Feinberg Series
What Are Universities For? Struggles for the Soul of Higher Education
The 2024-25 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series explores the historical roots of present-day political, economic, and ethical crises in higher education. It is presented by the UMass Amherst Department of History in partnership with numerous co-sponsors. The Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible thanks to the generosity of UMass Amherst history department alumnus Kenneth R. Feinberg ’67 and associates.
Departmental (co)sponsorship of various types of events does not constitute an endorsement of the views expressed by the presenters, either at the events in question or in other venues. Rather, sponsorship is an endorsement of the exploration of complex and sometimes difficult topics. The UMass History Department is committed to promoting the free and peaceful exchange of ideas, one of the most important functions of the university.