Historian, organizer, and theorist Haki Shakur on New Afrikan Independence

In the Spring Semester of 2026, Dr. Derek R. Ford taught an Education Studies course titled, “Education and Urban Rebellions” at DePauw University. The class examined the relationship between education, geography, and urban insurrections primarily in the domestic borders of the u.s. Additionally, the class addressed how the state, capital, and university responded to those rebellions through incorporation and repression. The last book assigned was Shaka A. Shakur‘s Manifestations of Thought: When the Dragon Comes (New York: 1804 Books, 2025), to which Haki Shakur wrote the preface.

Shakur’s book, as Dr. Jared Ball remarked, doesn’t teach “us what to think but how to think and and to arrive at difficult and necessary conclusions.” To help the course learn how to think and arrive at such conclusions, they were honored to be joined by Haki Kweli Shakur, a longtime New Afrikan organizer, historian, and theorist. Haki Shakur has deep roots in the New Afrikan Independence Movement, having served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs for The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika.

Yet he is not just embedded in struggle and does not just possess a profound intellect; he also has a unique ability to relate to a wide variety of people and to translate difficult conclusions and concepts into accessible language and metaphors.

With Haki Shakur’s consent, we present the dialogue between himself, Ford, and the Education Studies students at DePauw University. They touch on a range of issues, covering the history of the RNA and NAIM, the historical evolution of the New Afrikan nation, the importance of uniting different struggles for liberation, the role of Political Prisoners in the movement, and why there is no contradiction between self-determination, independence, and equality between different nations.

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Course description

A pre-requisite for engaging in questions of education, revolution, and rebellion is the problem of violence, and this is where we will begin. We’ll distinguish between different forms and categories of violence because, whatever definition we get it, there’s no such thing as a “non-violent” revolution (nor is education violence free).

Only after examining violences can we begin our collective study of the urban and its relationship to education and social transformation. We’ll begin this section with a book on precisely the relations between these three themes, enabling us to refine our understanding of education and pedagogy, grasp the production of space, and examine how educational systems fit within political economic systems and how particular politics relate to specific pedagogies. We next attend to the specific dynamics of urban revolution, discovering how and why the urban is the product of—and produces—radical transformations.

If the urban is a site and form of rebellion, it’s also a site and form of repression, and in our next section we analyze the political-national economy of the repression of revolutionary movements, populations, organizations, and individuals, culminating in “mass incarceration” (NOT the “new Jim Crow”).

Our last section brings together the educational, geographic, national (or racial), and architectural aspects of urbanism through a series of studies of urban rebellions in New York City. We’ll see exactly how the urban is produced by—and productive of—revolutionary struggles through this example as well as our own research projects.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Jul 01

Two Americas at 250: Celebration—or liberation?

July 1, 2026 | 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Indianapolis Liberation Center

Two Americas at 250: Celebration—or liberation? The masses are not rallying around the flag while the capitalist class continues its war on basic democratic rights.

Learn More