Don’t Call Me Resilient

Across the globe, we're witnessing a rise in far-right movements. Just a few weeks ago, the far-right AfD party in Germany secured second place. This marks the first time a far-right party has gained this level of power in the country since the Second World War. Germany is not alone in this trend: Italy, Hungary, Finland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Croatia are now led by far-right governments. It may come as no surprise that many of these new leaders are increasingly hostile toward universities. In India, under Prime Minister Modi, universities have the lowest academic freedom since the 1940s. In Brazil, former president Jair Bolsonaro claimed that public universities transform students into leftists, gays, drug addicts and perverts. Meanwhile in the United States, Vice President JD Vance has called universities the enemy for allegedly teaching that America is "an evil, racist nation.” President Donald Trump even signed an executive order demanding higher education institutions dismantle their DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) programs. He’s also pulled federal funding from universities that allow "illegal protests”. The U.S. president has [also demanded that Columbia University's Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Departments be independently reviewed. But, despite this hostility, universities — and students — have historically been springboards for change. It was student protests 25 years ago that helped lead to the downfall of apartheid in South Africa. More recently, in Bangladesh, student protests helped topple the country’s authoritarian leader. This past year, students across the world have raised public awareness of genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, here in Canada, universities are facing financial pressure because of reductions in international student permits. This drop in revenue has caused alarming budget constraints at universities, revealing a deep reliance on international students as a revenue source. This has led to existential questions about our universities. With today’s world in crisis, what should the role of the university be? And why are our public universities so underfunded? And how can they continue to serve their communities? To help tackle these questions, we sat down with two education professors at the University of British Columbia to discuss the function of the university in a democracy — especially in times of crisis. In this, our final episode of Don't Call Me Resilient, we speak with Annette Henry — a Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education and cross-appointed to the Institute for Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice. Her work examines race, class, language, gender and culture in education for Black students and educators in Canada. We also speak with Michelle Stack, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies whose work looks at educational policy, university rankings and equity and education. At a time when critical conversations in higher education are under attack worldwide, can Canadian universities rise to the challenge and be a force for good? Thank you for spending your time with us. You can find links and more resources related to this episode here. This episode was coproduced by Ateqah Khaki (DCMR associate producer), Marsa Sittheeamorn (student journalist) and Jennifer Moroz (consulting producer). Our sound engineer was Alain Derbez. Josh Mattson provided onsite sound assistance. Thank you to the Journalism Innovation Lab and its crew and the Social Science Research Council of Canada for their generous support.

Virtual influencers are becoming more popular and prevalent everyday. A full-blown industry has sprung up around them – an industry with agencies and companies dedicated to creating and managing them, with some of the top personas earning into the millions annually. But our guest today has noticed a troubling pattern – many virtual influencers are crafted as young, women of color. But their creators? Often men with different racial identities, who work at marketing agencies. Jul Parke is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information specializing in social media platforms, digital racism, virtual influencers, and AI phenomena. She is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. Jul’s doctoral research explores what motivates companies and creators to produce these virtual, racialized women, which she says is a new form of commercializing gender and racial identity in digital spaces. As we enter the world of AI proliferation, it seems virtual influencers are here to stay. There are at least 200 of these digital personalities out there today, and platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok are rolling out new tools that enable everyday users to craft their own virtual personas. Given the absence of a governing framework for non-humans, the rise of virtual influencers on social media raises a whole host of urgent ethical questions about authenticity online. Visit here for a full list of the virtual influencers and resources discussed in this episode.

Editor's note: This podcast episode is the first in our Don't Call Me Resilient live event series. Our next event — "AI-generated influencers: A new wave of cultural exploitation?" is coming up on Wednesday February 5th in Toronto — and we'd love for you to be there! Attendance is free. Click here to learn more and save your seat! Food is so much more than what we eat. It is, of course, nourishment — the food we put into our body to fuel ourselves. It can be joyful, like the the smell of pancakes wafting through the house on a Sunday morning, or when loved ones gather around a feast at the dinner table. It can also be deeply personal and defining, connecting us to ancestral history, and cultural and racial identities. And it is also political — especially in the United States — which is the key takeaway in a new book by law scholar Andrea Freeman. Last fall, we sat down with Andrea to discuss her book in the first conversation of our new live events series from Don't Call Me Resilient. In this new episode, we bring you an edited version of that conversation. The book — Ruin their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United State from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch (Metropolitan Books/Raincoast) — is a history of the use of food in American law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control. Freeman is a professor at Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles. Much of her work explores food oppression and examines how food and law policy are influenced by corporate interests, which disproportionately impact and harm marginalized communities. In her book, Prof. Freeman argues that food law and policy have created and maintained racial and society inequality in the U.S., which she says amounts to "food oppression." Our conversation was wide-ranging. We covered some fascinating topics, including the love/hate relationship with frybread, how milk became a symbol of white supremacy and how the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been using nutrition programs — including "government cheese" and the National School Lunch Program — as a dumping ground for unwanted agricultural surpluses since the Great Depression. Freeman's book also explains how this longstanding oppression has produced racial health disparities, resulting in higher rates of diabetes, disease and even premature death among Black, Indigenous and Latino communities. Although the picture is bleak, Freeman — a constitutional law scholar — provides some potential avenues for change, vis-a-vis reparations and the U.S. Constitution. In her concluding chapter, she writes: "Corporations do not feel compassion. Sickness and loss do not move them. Appealing to their humanity is not an effective political strategy. Looking to the White House and its agencies for solutions has yielded only temporary results at best. The Obama era saw improvements in school lunches that Donald Trump swept away during his brief tenure. Joe Biden reinstated stricter guidelines, and the corporations stood ready to beat them back down again. In the face of near-complete capture of the legislative and executive branches, it is time to turn to the courts." In addition to the podcast episode, you can read an excerpt from Freeman's book about frybread — a simple, versatile "comfort food" for many Indigenous communities that she says embodies the contradictions that have dictated Indigenous food and health in North America since colonization. If you'd like to stay up-to-date on the remaining events in our series, follow us on Instagram @dontcallmeresilientpodcast or sign up for our weekly newsletter. This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at Another Story Bookshop in Toronto on Nov. 14, 2024. The episode was hosted and produced by Executive Producer Vinita Srivastava and co-produced by Associate Producer Ateqah Khaki, with support from Consulting Producer Jennifer Moroz. Ryan Clarke was our on-site audio engineer and mixed the episode.

Don't Call Me Resilient is coming back to your podcast feed this month with a whole new series! We’ve been hosting some live events and we’re starting to roll them out as episodes in our feed. You can expect the same thoughtful conversations with scholars, shining a light on how systemic racism permeates our society. And we're diving into some fascinating topics... Like how the US government has used food to suppress and control marginalized communities. We’ll also be looking at the rise of AI-generated influencers… Who creates these virtual social media influencers? And why are so many of them young, racialized women? And that’s just the start! The first episode drops Thursday, January 23, with new episodes monthly after that for the next few months. So stay tuned. And follow us on Instagram @dontcallmeresilientpodcast to learn more about these events, and how to attend. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter on news stories that intersect with race and racism.

After seven seasons and 65 episodes, we really want to meet our listeners. So we’re going to be taking the podcast on the road, and recording some live episodes across Canada with a live audience. You can expect the same thoughtful conversations with scholars, shining a light on how systemic racism permeates our society. And we’ll be bringing those episodes to our feed in the New Year. Follow us on Instagram @dontcallmeresilientpodcast to learn more about these events, and how to attend - including the first one coming up on Thursday, November 14th in Toronto. You can also stay in touch by re-listening to past episodes, or by signing up for our biweekly newsletter on news stories that intersect with race and racism. We’ll see you back here in 2025!

Official reports have been declaring systemic racism in North America’s education system for more than 30 years. What will it take to change? Even before COVID-19, education experts were sounding the alarm about the future of racialized children in our schools. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only underscored — even deepened — the divide. On this episode of Don’t Call me Resilient, we speak with Kulsoom Anwer, a high school teacher who joined us from her classroom in one of Toronto’s most marginalized neighbourhoods. With her is Carl James, professor of education at York University. Together we discuss the injustices and inequalities in the education system and, in the conversation, we also explore some possible ways forward. Every week, we highlight articles that drill down into the topics we discuss in the episode. This week, both articles say that combating racism in schools is not only possible, but also that solutions are in the hands of educators. To make change, teachers must not only question existing power dynamics, but they must also acknowledge and validate the racism that is experienced by Black, Indigenous and racialized youth. For more information and resources, go here: SHOW NOTES A full transcript of the episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

In this reflective and personal episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, Prof. Cheryl Thompson of Toronto Metropolitan University and author of Beauty in a Box untangles the wending history of hair relaxers for Black women — and the health risks now linked to them. For decades, Black women have been using hair relaxers to help them “fit into” global mainstream workplaces and the European standards of beauty that continue to dominate them. More recently, research has linked these relaxers to cancer and reproductive health issues — and a spate of lawsuits across the United States, and at least one in Canada, have been brought by Black women against the makers of these relaxants. Prof. Thompson and I get into it: including her own relationship to using relaxers as a Black woman, the lawsuits and the wending history and relationship between these relaxants and Black women. We also — for obvious reasons — dip into The Other Black Girl, the novel that is also now a horror-satire streaming series about mind-controlling hair products. For more information and resource, go here: SHOW NOTES A full transcript of the episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

If you don’t pay close attention to news about COVID, you might think the pandemic is nearly over. But for the millions of people worldwide suffering from long COVID, that couldn’t be further from the truth. And the number of those experiencing long-term symptoms keeps growing: At least one in five of us infected with the virus go on to develop long COVID. The effects of long COVID are staggering. Researchers say it can lead to: blood clots, heart disease, damage to the blood vessels, neurological issues, cognitive impairment, nerve damage, chronic pain and extreme fatigue. And there is no treatment for long COVID. So why don’t we hear more about long COVID? Why haven’t governments warned people about the risks we face with infection? It might be that this debilitating disease is largely overlooked because of who gets it: Almost 80 per cent of longhaulers are women. And in the United States, where our guest on this episode is from, many of those suffering from the prevailing conditions of COVID are women of colour, with Black and Latinx people most likely to get the illness. Our insightful guest for this conversation on long COVID is Margot Gage Witvliet, assistant professor at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Margot is a social epidemiologist who studies health disparities, including as they relate to long COVID and has presented her research findings to the United States Health Equity Task Force on COVID-19. Margot is also a Black woman living with long COVID and has created a support and advocacy group for women of colour. For more information and resources, go here: SHOW NOTES A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we continue our conversation about forced famine and its use as a powerful tool to control people, land and resources. Starvation has, for centuries, been a part of the colonizer’s “playbook.” We speak with two scholars to explore two historic examples: the decimation of Indigenous populations in the Plains, North America, which historian David Stannard has called the American Holocaust and in India, the 1943 famine in Bengal. According to a recent BBC story, the Bengal famine of 1943 killed more than three million people. It was one of the worst losses of civilian life on the Allied side in the Second World War. (The United Kingdom lost 450,000 lives during that same war.) Although disease, environmental disasters and famine were features of life before colonialism, decades of research has shown how these occurrences were manipulated by colonial powers to prolong starvation and trigger chronic famine. In other words, starvation has been effectively used by colonial powers to control populations, acquire land and the wealth that comes with that. This colonization was accompanied by an “entitlement approach” and the belief that Indigenous populations are inferior to the lives of the colonizer. According to scholars, prior to the arrival of colonialists, both populations at the heart of today’s episode were thriving with healthy and wealthy communities. And although disease and famine existed before the arrival of Europeans, it cannot be denied colonial powers accelerated and even capitalized on chronic famine and the loss of life due to disease and malnutrition. As the famous economist Amartya Sen has said, famine is a function of repression. It springs from the politics of food distribution rather than a lack of food. Imperial policies such as the Boat Denial Policy and Rice Denial Policy meant that, as curator Natasha Ginwala wrote: “freshly harvested grain was set on fire, or even dumped into the river.” Joining on this episode were two experts on the North American and Bengal famines. James Daschuk is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina. He is the author of Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. We also spoke with Janam Mukherjee, an Associate Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan University, and the author of Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire. Mukherjee was recently a primary historical advisor on the BBC Radio 4 series “Three Million,” a five-part documentary on the Bengal famine of 1943. For more information and resources about this, go here: SHOW NOTES A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

Land has so much meaning. It’s more than territory; it represents home, your ancestral connection and culture — but also the means to feed yourself and your country. One of the things that colonizers are famous for is the idea of terra nullius – that the land is empty of people before they come to occupy it. In the case of Palestine, the Jewish settlers in 1948, and the British before that, viewed the desert as empty — something they needed to “make bloom.” But the land was already blooming. There is a long history of Palestinian connection to the land, including through agricultural systems and a rich food culture that is often overlooked by colonial powers. Our guests on this week’s episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient have been working on a film about the importance of preserving Palestinian agriculture and food in exile. Elizabeth Vibert is a professor of colonial history at University of Victoria. She has been doing oral history research to examine historical and contemporary causes of food crises in various settings, including Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Salam Guenette is the consulting producer and cultural and language translator for their documentary project. She holds a master’s degree in history. For more resources and information about this, go here: SHOW NOTES A full transcript of the episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

Every year thousands of migrants come to work in Canada. From harvesting the food in our stores to caring for the elderly, these workers form a vital part of the economy. Yet despite being critical, they often face harsh conditions, isolation, abuse, injury and even death as a result of immigration policies designed to leave them powerless. Documentary filmmaker and OCAD University professor Min Sook Lee has been documenting the voices of migrant farm workers in Canada for two decades. What she has to say about the treatment of these workers during COVID-19 shatters any remaining myths about “Canada the Good.” How do we treat the workers who put food on our tables? For more resources and information about this, go here: SHOW NOTES A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we take a look at the ongoing struggle for land rights and some of the women on the front lines of that battle. These women are the land defenders fighting to protect land against invasive development. Both our guests have stood up to armed forces to protect land. Their work is about protecting the environment. But it is much more than that: it is fundamentally about survival and about the right to live openly on what is stolen land. Ellen Gabriel has been resisting land encroachment for 31 years. She was at the centre of the 1990 Kanehsatake resistance, (known as the Oka crisis), a 78-day standoff to protect ancestral Kanien’kéha:ka (Mohawk) land in Québec. It was a moment in history that many say helped wake them up to Indigenous issues. Anne Spice is a professor of geography and history at Toronto Metroppolitan University. Anne, who is Tlingit from Kwanlin Dun First Nation, was recently on the front lines in the defence of Wet'suwet'en land. After she was arrested on Wet'suwet'en territory last year, a viral video showed the RCMP pointing a gun at the land defenders. Anne can be heard shouting, we are unarmed and we are peaceful. These are the moments that capture our collective attention. But Ellen and Anne’s work goes well beyond what the cameras show. For more resources and information about this, go here: SHOW NOTES A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

This week on the podcast, meet some of our amazing producers who work to put out Don't Call Me Resilient. We chat about what motivates us to cover race and current affairs. We also revisit some of our favourite episodes from the past. And then every two weeks this summer (starting next week), we’ll be sharing some of their picks as full episodes in our "Flashback" Don’t Call Me Resilient feed. To make this summer “Flashback” series, we listened back on our catalogue. In doing so, we realized each one of these conversations has a shelf life beyond its release date. The stories are timeless and explore complex issues in accessible ways, regardless of the news that may have prompted them. There’s a lot to revisit: We’ve produced 65 episodes over 7 seasons! And each one of them covers an urgent topic with insightful guests. By looking at issues through an intersectional lens, our guests help to unpack some of the major issues of our time: the uneven impacts of the climate crisis, the search for missing Indigenous children at Residential School sites, Black health matters, Gaza and policing. Our listeners are active and engaged Our recent listener survey confirmed that our listeners are engaged. You listen and take action, whether it’s sharing an episode or reaching out to a local politician, or in the case of university and public school educators, adding our episodes to your curriculum. Whether you’re a dedicated listener, a dabbler or a newbie, we’re glad to have you as a part of the Don’t Call Me Resilient community. Stay in touch and pitch us your podcast ideas Please stay in touch: send us questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes at DCMR@theconversation.com — or on Instagram @DontCallMeResilientPodcast. We are thinking ahead to Season 8! If you are a scholar, and are considering sharing your research through podcasting, we’d love to hear from you. To find out more, read the criteria and fill out this pitch form (select Podcast from the drop down menu).

Can you believe we’ve now produced 65 episodes over 7 seasons? Every two weeks over the summer, we will be re-running some of our favourite episodes from past seasons on our podcast feed. Join us next week for a special bonus episode. You’ll get to meet some of our amazing producers who work hard behind the scenes to produce this podcast. We’ll chat about what motivates us to cover race and current affairs every week. We’ll be revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the past. There's a lot to revisit … so many great topics and guests and conversations. It all starts next week - and then every two weeks after, we’ll be bringing you the best of Don’t Call Me Resilient all summer long.

In this episode of 'Don't Call Me Resilient', Nisrin Elamin, Assistant Professor of Anthropolgy and African Studies at the University of Toronto, paints a grim picture of life in Sudan today. She says the current war, which exploded on April 15, 2023, is devastating both rural and urban communities. Elamin also identifies small pockets of hope. In the absence of a properly functioning government and looming famine, grassroots groups are stepping in to help people survive. Since last April, Sudanese people in both rural and urban areas have been caught in the middle of a violent conflict between two warring military regimes - the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Human rights groups say the RSF and allied militias are responsible for large-scale massacres targeting specific ethnic groups in the capital Khartoum and the region of Darfur. As a result of the war, more than 10 million people have been displaced from their homes, making Sudan home to the largest displacement of people in the world. A new report by a Dutch think tank says that if no changes occur on the ground, 2.5 million Sudanese people could die of famine by September. Elamin explains how the current war is part of a long legacy of corrupt military rule and land dispossession that have plagued Sudan since its independence from British rule in 1956. She also urges Canadians to pay attention to Canada's possible role in Sudan's war. "This is big business," she says. In fact, she says Canadians are likely complicit in most wars occurring in 2024. "We are complicit...through our pension funds, our university endowments, some of our personal investments. This is big business. I think a lot of people aren't paying attention to what's happening in Sudan because they feel like it's so far removed and it has nothing to do with them. But that is a lie. It does, and it might be closer than you think it is. " Credits Associate producer, Ateqah Khaki and freelance associate producer, Latifa Abdin are co-producers of this episode. Other team members include: Jennifer Moroz (consulting producer) and Krish Dineshkumar (sound designer).

We’re bringing you an extra episode this week. This episode comes from The Conversation Weekly, our sister podcast from The Conversation UK. The episode, which we're running in full, centres around medically assisted dying. In Canada, medical assistance in dying (Maid) became legal in 2016. And the government intends to extend eligibility to people whose sole reason for ending their life is mental illness. But that planned expansion, now twice delayed, is deeply controversial. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Gemma Ware speaks with Karandeep Sonu Gaind a leading psychiatrist from the University of Toronto about why he's a vocal opponent of the law’s expansion. Canada's expansion of its medically assisted dying law to people whose reason for wanting to end their life is mental illness. Gemma starts the episode with The Conversation Canada’s Health and Medical editor, Patricia Nicholson, who explains how assisted dying works in Canada. In this conversation, Professor Gaind explains the intersectional factors around this issue, including race, class and gender. If you’re interested in hearing more conversations like this one, subscribe to The Conversation Weekly wherever you get podcasts.

Currently the largest electorate in history is heading to the polls in India, where - of course - politicians and political parties are trying their best to influence voters. Film and popular culture have always provided a reflection of the country's political culture, but in this election, they are being used more than ever to *sway* voters - especially by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP. Vinita sits down with two scholars who look at the intersection of politics and popular culture to uncover how Bollywood is creating storylines that support Modi's BJP - and how big a role it might play in the outcome of the world's largest election. Political scientist Sikata Banerjee is Professor Emeritus of Women’s Studies at the University of Victoria She looks at Indian politics through the lens of cinema. And Rakesh Sengupta is Assistant Professor in Department of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto.

Collectively, the global student protests demanding university divestments from Israel are one of the largest mass protests in recent history. Student protesters are risking their futures as they demand their institutions financially divest from Israel and companies connected to supplying weapons and technology to Israel’s government. Last week, in Calgary, police descended on the University of Calgary campus with riot gear, using shields, batons and rubber bullets, to forcibly remove a group of protesters from an encampment set up on campus. On today's podcast, Vinita speaks with Pratim Sengupta, professor of learning sciences at the University of Calgary. Sengupta was there the night police engulfed the protesters and says the violence he saw shook him to his core. Also on the podcast is Sarita Srivastava, a university leader of a much smaller arts and design campus in downtown Toronto. Srivastava (sister to Vinita) is a sociologist by background and author of the recent book, "Are You Calling Me a Racist?" Together, they look back on what's been happening on campuses amid this mass protest but also plot out a new - gentler - way forward than the one we've been witnessing.

As we approach the start of gardening season, we figured it’s a good time to bring you one of our most talked-about episodes about the complicated, colonial roots of gardening - which have affected what we plant and who gets to garden. How we garden is deeply tied to colonialism — from the spread of seeds and species around the world to the use of forced labour and slavery that went hand in hand to the collection and commodification of plants. But there is a growing shift away from the status symbol of the lawn and manicured gardens, in favour of pollinator-friendly native plants. And there is a growing understanding that centuries-old Indigenous knowledge and practices — like controlled burns — can help foster a more resilient landscape. With concerns about our climate crisis growing, one of the possible avenues for creating more sustainable cities may very well lie in our gardens. Could we have an impact simply by thinking a little differently about the seeds we sow and the "weeds" we pull? Vinita gets into it all with researcher Jacqueline L. Scott and community activist Carolynne Crawley, who leads nature workshops that integrate Indigenous teachings into practice.

Research shows social media apps are designed to entrap children who are even more susceptible than adults to its harms. Plus, technologies are not neutral: They’re embedded with and actively reinforce structures of racism. A recent survey of Canadian children in grades 7 to 11 found nearly half of participants reported seeing racist or sexist content online, and youth from marginalized groups were more likely than others to encounter this type of content. So, what’s to be done? Five school boards in Ontario have recently sued the makers of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat for $4.5 billion, arguing the social media giants are causing mental health issues and other harms that are making the jobs of educators much harder. The Ontario Premiere has called the lawsuit a waste of time and money, and announced its government was doubling down on a 2019 ban on cellphones in schools as a way to address the problem. It also pledged $30 million to a surveillance program they think will help solve problems in school like cell phone and vape addictions. On today's episode, Vinita gets into it with two education researchers, both former teachers, who challenge the idea of a ban and think there are better ways to address the problem.