In this episode we are joined by Muhannad Ayyash, Heidi Matthews, and Nathan Kalman-Lamb to discuss the corporatization of North American universities and their crisis of legitimacy in the wake of the pro-Palestinian encampments that protested the ongoing genocide of October 7th, 2023. Warning us against false hope, they share with us the challenges and potentialities for academics working from within Canadian universities complicit in genocide and war in Palestine, Iran, and beyond.

Muhannad Ayyash was born and raised in Silwan, Al-Quds, before immigrating to Canada where he is Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University. He is also a policy analyst at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He is the author of Lordship and Liberation in Palestine-Israel (Columbia University Press, 2025) and A Hermeneutics of Violence (University of Toronto Press, 2019).

Heidi Matthews is Assistant Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. She researches and teaches in the areas of international criminal law, the law of war, international legal history and political theory. Her work theorizes contemporary shifts in the practice and discourse of the global legal regulation of political violence, with particular attention to history and gender, as well as political, critical and aesthetic theory.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick, where he teaches on social theory and the sociology of sport. His work appears in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Toronto Star, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and many other venues. He is co-host of The End of Sport podcast and co-author of The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game (UNC Press, 2024).

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The Everyday Orientalism Podcast explores how Orientalism continues to have deep ramifications in our everyday lives, for how we think about settler-colonialism, liberation, and how empire and capitalism continue to exploit and dehumanize the majority of us. Defined by Palestinian American literary scholar Edward Said, Orientalism is “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” Our podcast celebrates the 10th anniversary of the platform Everyday Orientalism.

Host: Girish Daswani
Editor and producer: Taylor Stark
Research assistant: Sophie Plotkin
Intro music: Madame Salame – Decaf