Migrants in the Neoliberal University: Strikes, Solidarity & Resistance
Channel: UnisResist BorderControls
Date: 02/03/2022

Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC) panel discussion in solidarity with the 10-day #UCUstrike #FourFights. The panel discussed ways of resisting marketised higher education and border controls on campus from the perspective of migrant student and university staff voices drawing from anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and the radical possibilities of disrupt

Moderating the discussion is Sanaz Raji from Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC). 
 
Panelists: 
Khalfan Al-Badwawi: An Omani anti-imperialist political activist, he participated in the ‘Arab-spring’ uprising in 2011 and subsequently participated in organizing a number of demonstrations and campaigns against British imperialist policies and the tyrannical Anglo-Sultanic regime in Oman. After that, he was prosecuted, kidnapped, arrested, imprisoned and tortured several times in Oman, which led him fleeing the country in 2013 and sought political asylum in the United Kingdom in 2014, which was granted in mid-2016. Today he lives as a political refugee in Britain, where he continues his activism by exposing British complicity in the repression in Oman. Khalfan is now completing his undergraduate studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he is studying history on a sanctuary scholarship.


Ruilin Fan is a 3rd-year PhD student at Columbia University, studying early modern literature in the English Department. First as a TA and later as an instructor of record, she participated in both strikes organized by the Student Workers of Columbia in 2021, as well as the campaign to build a rank-and-file union in the summer. In the 10-week-long strike that began in November 2021, Ruilin and another colleague organized instructors who taught first year writing at Columbia--the largest contingent of instructors of record who withheld labor. She is planning to write her dissertation on labor and politics in early modern English literature. 

Shahd Abusalama is a Palestinian academic born and raised in Jabalia Refugee Camp, northern Gaza, now based in Sheffield and teaching at the Media Arts and Communication department at Sheffield Hallam University.  She has recently submitted a Ph.D. dissertation on the historical representations of Palestinian refugees in Gaza between 1917 and 1993. She is an artist, activist, the author of Palestine from My Eyes blog, and a co-founder of London-based Hawiyya Dance Company.

Unis Resist Border Controls (URBC): https://linktr.ee/urbc