Psychoanalysis and Syed Hussein Alatas

On October 24th, I had the opportunity to present my work on Syed Hussain Alatas and his concept of the “Captive Mind” at the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society conference, held at Rutgers University. The theme of this year’s conference was “The Psychoanalytic Subject in a Fractured World: Culture, Power, and the Politics of Existence.” The article my presentation was based on was included in a special issue on Psychoanalysis and Colonialism in the journal, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. A link to the article can be found below.

Alatas Decolonizing Psychoanalysis Download

October 26, 2025 0

“Critical Theory in an Age of Social Disintegration” – ICST Conference in Bristol, UK

On July 17-19, the Institute for Critical Social Theory hosted their inaugural conference at the University of Bristol, UK. I was a great honor to welcome so many scholars to the ICST event. We had thirteen presentations, two plenary addresses, and a round table discussion about critical theory during times of war (See the schedule below). We are looking forward to our next conference in 2026, with Istanbul being the agreed upon destination. Keep an eye out for that Call for Papers.

ICST 2025 Conference Schedule Download

If you’d like to listen to my plenary address, wherein I discuss what it means to be critical in an age of social disintegration, you can find it on YouTube:

For more information on the Institute for Critical Social Theory, please visit our website: ICST

July 25, 2025 1

Resisting Fascism: Father Alfred Delp

On May 3rd, 2025, I had the opportunity to discuss with the critical theorist and theologian, Dr. Rudolf Siebert, the life, times, and martyrdom of the Jesuit priest, Father Alfred Delp. Born of his Catholic faith, Delp was a staunch anti-Nazi, and was part of the Kreisau Circle that envisioned a new and radically different society that would come after the fall of the Nazis. Because of this, and because of his tangential connection to Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed assassination plot against Hitler, Delp was arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, beaten, and eventually stood trial in front of the communist-turned-fascist judge, Roland Freisler. Found guilty, Delp was executed on February 2, 1945. This discourse was sponsored by Ekpyrosis Press and the Institute for Critical Social Theory.

May 7, 2025 0

Remembering Malcolm X in an Age of Crisis

On February 21st, 2025, we remembered the anniversary of Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination at The University of Olivet, at my annual Malcolm X Lecture Series. For an audience of students, faculty, and administrators, I gave a presentation entitled, “Remembering Malcolm X in an Age of Crisis: 5 Lessons from a Revolutionary Life.” In this presentation, I focused on what we can learn from Malcolm X’s own life in a time of social disintegration, racial and religious antagonisms, and political-economic strife, and how we can apply those lessons to our own time, as we experience the rise of populist parties and figures, attempting to negate the progress that has been made in Western society. This event was sponsored by the Department of Arts and Humanities at UO.

Some years ago, Seyed Javad Miri and I edited a volume of essays on Malcolm X, which is available through Haymarket Books: Malcolm X: From Political Eschatology to Religious Revolutionary. Get your copy now!

February 22, 2025 0

“Transforming Catastrophe into a Catalyst for Change” – MLK Day at UO

On January 22, 205, I had the honor of speaking at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Inaugural Luncheon held at The University of Olivet. My speech was entitled, “Transforming Catastrophe into a Catalyst for Change,” wherein I talked about taking MLK’s radicality seriously, what created his radicality – as a response to systematic racism and episodic racism, and how Dr. King understood Hegel’s philosophy of history: from regress comes great progress, as long as we’re willing to do the work! I was joined on stage by President Steven Corey, Dr. Tonya Bailey (Oakland University), and the motivational speaker, Dr. Eric Thomas. The music was outstanding! We heard musical performances by the Olivet Choir/Choral, Robert Kyle II, MJ and the Band, and the flautist Brandon Marceal. The event was arranged by the amazing Joshua Gillespie (UO) and the Hiram Archer Student Success Academy (HASSA) at UO. It was a powerful event honoring a prophetic brother, Dr. King.

January 23, 2025 0

Talking Erich Fromm with Dr. Rainer Funk

On Thursday, November 14th, 2024, I had the great pleasure of welcoming Dr. Rainer Funk into my course on Erich Fromm, “Visionary Thinkers: Freedom and Fear.” Dr. Funk spoke with my class via Zoom from Tübingen, Germany, where he is the Director of the Erich Fromm Institute, the Co-Director of the Erich Fromm Study Center at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU) in Berlin, and a practicing psychoanalyst. He is Erich Fromm’s sole Literary Executor and among his publications are the 10-volume German edition of Erich Fromm Collected Works (1980 and 1981; expanded to 12-volumes in 1999). We were pleased to benefit from his knowledge of Erich Fromm and wisdom about the world.

November 21, 2024 0

NEW PODCAST on Ali Shariati

My dear brother and colleague, Seyed Javad Miri, and I had a wonderful opportunity to discuss Ali Shariati with Jacek Drozda, the host of the “Emancypacje” (Emancipation) podcast out of Warsaw, Poland. We discussed Shariati’s life, work, influence on the 1979 revolution in Iran, and most importantly, Ali Shariati’s Liberation Theology.

Here’s the introduction to the podcast: We begin our new mini-series “Liberation Theologies” where we look at the intersection of emancipatory politics and religion with an exciting conversation about Ali Shariati, a renowned Iranian revolutionary, sociologist, political theologian and theoretician. Our guests are two major specialists in this field: prof. Dustin J. Byrd (The University of Olivet) and prof. Seyedjavad Miri (Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Tehran). As regular collaborators they authored and edited several important books together, including “Ali Shariati and the Future of Social Theory: Religion, Revolution, and the Role of the Intellectual” (Brill, 2017). Take a deep dive into Shariati’s contribution to political philosophy and the Iranian Revolution the victory of which he did not live to see.

Liberation Theologies Pt. 1 on Soundcloud: Ali Shariati, Revolution, Islamic Modernism, and Red Shi’ism.

October 29, 2024 0

Gynocracy and Gynophobia; a discussion with Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert

On October 26th, 2024, I had the pleasure of discussing a very contentious subject: “Women in Power: Gynocracy and Gynophobia,” with the critical theorist, Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert. November 2024 could see the election of the U.S.’s first woman president. Or, it could see the re-election of Donald J. Trump, who has not only a long record of misogyny and adultery, has also been adjudicated to have engaged in “sexual assault” against E. Jean Carroll, and has been accused of much more by many other women. The rise of women to powerful positions has caused a backlash in the “manosphere,” wherein many men, born of deep-seated insecurities and fears, are not prepared to see a women in the most powerful position in the world. Feeling emasculated, they have retreated into a juvenile form of masculinity, one that politicizes the historical gender antagonisms. Dr. Siebert and I believe it is important to work for a democratic relationship between genders, steered on the principle of equality, as opposed to one that privileges one gender over the other in the family, civil society, and the state. This discourse was sponsored by Ekpyrosis Press and the Institute for Critical Social Theory.

October 27, 2024 0

Discourse on “Political Violence,” with Rudolf J. Siebert

On August 24th, I had the great pleasure to speak with the critical theorist, dialectical religiologist, and theologian, Rudolf J. Siebert, to talk about political violence. Spawned by the latest attempt to assassinate the former U.S. President, Donald J. Trump, we discussed the long history of political violence and assassinations, the reasons why they continue to happen, and the potential for future violence in the name of political change. This discourse was sponsored by Ekpyrosis Press and the Institute for Critical Social Theory.