Pedagogic Paths to Liberation: Personal Struggles, Institution Building and the Rise of the Walter Rodney School of Groundings Praxis in Atlanta

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jinte.2.1.0006
• Pages: 6-30
• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018
• Author: Jesse Benjamin,Seneca Vaught
• Subject Matter: Walter Rodney,pedagogy,Paulo Freire,Friends World College,praxis,groundings,coloniality,activism,landless people,ethnography

6Volume Two, Number One

Pedagogic Paths to Liberaon: Personal Struggles,

Instuon Building and the Rise of the Walter Rodney

School of Groundings Praxis in Atlanta

Jesse Benjamin

Kennesaw State University

Interviewed by Seneca Vaught

Kennesaw State University

Abstract: Dr. Seneca Vaught interviewed Dr. Jesse Benjamin about his personal pedagogical

background and process, its intersections with activism and scholarship, and how this led him to working

with the Walter Rodney Foundation and various associated projects in the Atlanta area. The discussion

moves from research at a radical experimental Quaker international college, to activism and research

in upstate New York, at Binghamton University, and nally to work as an engaged community professor

in Atlanta. Also covered are the establishment of a Coloniality Research Working Group and a Walter

Rodney Study Group in New York, and the inuence of Sylvia Wynter. The discussion concludes with

an overview of institution building activities in Atlanta, conjecturing the rise of Walter Rodney School

of Praxis.

Keywords: Walter Rodney, pedagogy, Paulo Freire, Friends World College, praxis, groundings,

coloniality, activism, landless people, ethnography

Seneca Vaught (SV): Alright, Friday December 7th at 3:09 pm, this interview is with

Jesse Benjamin in Kennesaw, Georgia taking place at Amir’s Middle Eastern Restaurant on

Cobb Parkway, over some especially good Middle Eastern vegetarian cuisine.

So the rst question is, could you please tell me about your background, where you’re

from? Where are your parents come from?

Jesse Benjamin (JB): Well, I grew up all over the world. I was born in the Middle East,

in Israel/Palestine, and as a one-year-old, I ended up in England briey; and then I lived in rural

Nova Scotia, Cape Bretton Island, where my brother was born, when I was two and three years

old, and I grew up in Toronto after that. As a Torontonian raised in the snow until age 10, I lived

all over that huge city, but then moved to a small town in upstate New York for a few years, before

spending my teenage years in Brooklyn. In the last years of the 80s, I went to an international

college where I studied in the Middle East—mainly in Israel, Egypt, and Palestine—my rst and

third year. I did my second year in Europe, focused in London, returned to the Middle East for a

year, and then my nal two years in Kenya, all (except London) based around eld work in rural

communities. My research there as an undergraduate continued to be my research focus as a

Masters and PhD student and now as a professional scholar, so I have long running projects that

go back to East Africa and to the Middle East that continue to be the core of my work.

The Journal of Intersectionality

7Volume Two, Number One

SV: Out of all these places that you mentioned thus far, which one of them do you

think made the most important impact on your world view in the present?

JB: It’s hard to say, all of them are important to me and I carry them with me.

Being a person who moved around a lot, in and of itself, shaped me I think, and made me less

comfortable with fundamental ethnocentrism because I saw the arbitrariness, the relativity of

cultural constructions. In every community, I saw a bunch of kids who were trying to be cool

based on their cultural knowledge, but things that were cool in one community were not cool in

the next community. I just saw how arbitrary a lot of it was and how socially constructed. That

was a formative thing as a young person, to see that. I think Toronto, at the age I was there—

three to ten—was very formative for me and I still feel very Canadian culturally in a lot of ways;

there are still vestigial accent elements that show up, that people who know me really well still

make fun of sometimes.

But I think Brooklyn, even though it was a short three-year period, is really where I

feel culturally the most at home, partly because my parents and grandparents and my great

grandparents on all sides of my family were from New York, and so I was already culturally a

New Yorker. And when I lived in Brooklyn it just felt like home, and when I go back to New York

it still feels energy-wise like home—their normal level of intensity is sort of mine and everywhere

else I go people are like: “Whoa! Calm down.” But it’s just a normal day, a normal state of mind

for me as a New Yorker.

SV: So just roughly speaking, was it like in the 90’s or 80’s?

JB: Brooklyn was the mid-80’s. Rap was on the streets, crack cocaine vials started

popping up in the gutters the year after I arrived. It was the gritty 80s, mostly rough-neck in

Brooklyn, yuppies taking over Manhattan.

SV: The 1980’s okay.

JB: Yeah it was mid-80’s and I was in my high school years.

SV: Tell us a little bit about your transition from high school to college. You have

some really interesting experiences abroad.

JB: My transition was weird because I was leaving a very religious educational system

I had been plunged into after arriving in Brooklyn in 1984. I was actually kind of kicked out

of two religious schools for things I didn’t think were grounds for dismissal (once for going on a

date, once getting suspended for writing positively about Marx). So I became a rebel at a young

age within that system; and I also started ghting with increasing seriousness against the deeply

entrenched and often hardcore racism I found so contradictorily lodged in this ultra-religious

community. After 11th grade, I was actually a high school drop out for the summer of ‘87 and

wasn’t at all sure what my future had in store. It’s weird for me, technically being a high school

dropout, because I was always a really good student, a straight A student, and I was very diligent,