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Sukaina

@sukaina.bsky.social
606 followers 1.2K following 39 posts

Philosophy prof at UPenn working in moral psychology, normative ethics, and Ancient Greek philosophy // www.sukaina-hirji.com

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Reposted by Sukaina
Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 04/10/2026
I find this claim, which is now common in right-wing ed discourse, really astonishing. It rests at the core of the post-truth vision of "viewpoint diversity": we should not teach the conclusions that research shows to be correct; rather, we should validate empirically discredited ideas just because.
Fostering this civic orientation does not mean teaching students the “right” way to think or act
according to a preferred political or moral perspective. A transformative education is premised
on developing sound judgment, not on delivering correct conclusions.
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
this really speaks to me thank you
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
all of this to say: no, we did not get too woke! it is not a mistake to fight aggressively for social justice!!! the mistake is to let yourself be convinced you can achieve largely material goals through largely symbolic means!
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
/8 More than anything this paper is a love letter to the Gaza solidarity encampments of the Spring of 2024 and to the students who had the courage and clarity to act when so much of the world around them was telling them they were wrong. Long live
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
/7 Very glad to be able to engage with so many friends and comrades in this paper including Phil Yaure, @vickyacab.bsky.social, @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social and Geo Maher (some of whom also visited my class where this paper was birthed)
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
/6 Though we don’t say this directly in the paper one goal in our book is to show that a lot of good organizing takes this form: it takes seriously that you can’t change people’s beliefs without at the same time materially intervening on the world and vice versa
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
/5 In the paper we’re not interested in the qu of whether particular protests are justified or strategic but in the more basic qu of how they work, and how to evaluate their success beyond their stated goals
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
/4 for example, a strike can challenge the belief that “the boss runs the factory” and the inevitability of exploitative capitalist relations by actually making it the case, even just temporarily, that it is the workers who decide when and how the factory will run
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
/3 We’re interested in protests between these extremes, what we call “world making projects”: protests that challenge how we see what is good/possible/necessary by remaking what the world is like. This cuts across the civil vs uncivil distinction, including strikes, boycotts, riots, encampments etc
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
/2 Our goal in this paper is to get beyond the usual ways of categorizing protests (violent vs non violent, civil disobedience vs direct action, civil vs uncivil) and instead place protests on a spectrum between purely symbolic and purely material interventions
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Thrilled to tell you that my paper “Protests as World Making Projects” with bestie Lidal Dror is now forthcoming and available open access on early online view at Nous 🧵 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Protests as World‐Making Projects
On one common way of distinguishing forms of protest, civil disobedience is a communicative act that aims to achieve its goals through moral persuasion, whereas direct action has as its goal to direc...
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
wow i’m going to start asking my greek questions here 😭 anyways co-sign all the above
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
unfortunately for you this is a very cool paper that people should read!!!
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
seriously. i think a lot of academics lose a grip on what matters in life outside of weird status games in their niche field
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The Drift @thedriftmag.com · 19/08/2026
Andrew Baker was also a “token black professor” at Bates College. But his perspective on the events Tyler Austin Harper recounts in his Atlantic cover story is very different. Read Baker’s side of the story online today. newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/racism-and...
newsletter.thedriftmag.com
Racism and labor at Bates: the other side of the story
Andrew Baker responds to Tyler Austin Harper
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Artie Vierkant @avierkant.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
“This book is about why all superhero movies are the same, why in 2021 Disney sent lobbyists to stop the Biden administration from sharing the coronavirus vaccine with the Third World, and why the explanation for those two things is the same” @vickyacab.bsky.social
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
The choices that Christopher Nolan makes in his adaptation of “The Odyssey” go well beyond the politics of representation, peeking behind the curtain of the story itself and ideologies it has served.
dissentmagazine.org
The Odyssey Belongs to All of Us - Dissent Magazine
In many ways, Christopher Nolan’s film is not a faithful adaptation. But it takes seriously both what the text is doing and how it has been read since. Why, then, have Emily Wilson and other scholars been so dismissive?
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
yes we do not with our one precious life have to engage in every argument that comes our way. in fact we can preserve our time and energy for the convos that matter with people who might help us think and learn
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
i think we actually need to just be more explicit about what the stakes are. there are a lot of theoretical debates (eg gender) that have v high costs but settle very little that matters in the real world and i wish it was more of a practice/expectation to be clear about this
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
i think it’s a mistake to think someone’s intentions settle the question of whether it’s a good idea to engage. often it’s about what an argument does in a particular context regardless of whether the person trying to have the convo is sincerely interested in knowledge
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
i think there’s the bad faith interlocutor case where their behavior belies political goals they might not make explicit in the specific argument (eg kirk) and then there’s the cases where someone is acting in good faith but they themselves are a mark and you engaging makes you one too
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
refusing to take the bait/ redirecting energy and attention is actually a very good, non violent, liberal-friendly tool!! it helps to preserve the value of civil discourse in the public sphere!! /4
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
even if you’re fully bought into liberal ideas of the importance of civil discourse, it’s an imperfect duty and you can decide when and how and with whom to engage, with attention to what an argument might do in a context and whether your interlocutor is acting in bad faith /3
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
there’s also an assumption that as long as the content of a view is reasonable/worthy of engagement, we should engage. but there’s plenty of subjects about which we could have nuanced convos (definitions of gender, fascism, genocide) but that in certain contexts DO things beyond what they say /2
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
yes and part of how this propaganda works is that people who will never be convinced of anything will insist that it is illiberal or anti intellectual of you not to engage, that refusing to engage is equivalent to deplatforming or cancelling, that their opinions are the only ones that matter /1
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
exactly this. you don’t have to take the bait when you have every reason to think your interlocutor is acting in bad faith for political ends they have been exceptionally clear about
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Over the last few days I've watched highly politically engaged, educated people who are otherwise clear and careful thinkers attempting to litigate the obvious facts of the matter with respect to the late Arday's obvious layers of misconduct, taking their turn wheeling the horse into the gates. 11/
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Philosophers often bring up the "principle of charity": a willingness to assume good faith in an interlocutor and treat them accordingly. It's good to do in many circumstances. But it is worth formulating a principle of not being a fucking mark. If not during the rise of fascism, then when? 12/
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
thank you for reading!!
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is the story of an empire in decline—one that resonates with American viewers in the midst of Donald Trump’s second presidency, nearly three years into a live-streamed genocide in Palestine bankrolled by our own government.
dissentmagazine.org
The Odyssey Belongs to All of Us - Dissent Magazine
In many ways, Christopher Nolan’s film is not a faithful adaptation. But it takes seriously both what the text is doing and how it has been read since. Why, then, have Emily Wilson and other scholars been so dismissive?
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Sad to hear of David Charles’ passing. Back when I was post undergrad, working in restaurants and figuring out what to do with my life, I went to visit a friend in Oxford and David let me sit in on his Aristotle class. It was really formative for me. He was so kind and loved what he did.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Christopher Nolan’s Odysseus is, of course, us—a nation coming to terms with the fact that it cannot return to how it once understood itself because of the violence it has inflicted on the world. It is the story of an empire in decline.
dissentmagazine.org
The Odyssey Belongs to All of Us - Dissent Magazine
In many ways, Christopher Nolan’s film is not a faithful adaptation. But it takes seriously both what the text is doing and how it has been read since. Why, then, have Emily Wilson and other scholars been so dismissive?
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Jennifer M. Morton @jennifermmorton.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
A fantastic piece by my colleague @sukaina.bsky.social about the Odyssey and the academic hot takes. Read it!
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
fair!! let a thousand more and better homers bloom!!!
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
thank you for reading!
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
I think a reading of the text that is ambitious and creative is likely to fail along some dimensions, but i’d rather see a film that challenges our expectations in an attempt to speak to the present than one that rehearses more familiar readings
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
thank you for reading it and thinking about this with me! I agree of course with many of your criticisms but maybe where we disagree is that the starting point of criticism of the film should be that Nolan is having a smart and serious convo with the text (unlike Troy)
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Jill Galvan @jillgal.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Awesome many-pointed analysis of the film and its turmoiled uptake, in a similar spirit to the excellent Defector humanities piece going around but adding a third, public dimension.
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Eric Brown @sophisteuein.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
It's still the Summer, dammit, and that means it is still the Summer of the Odyssey. This will be the best thing you've read about it yet.
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Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
For scholars of antiquity, it has been equal parts bewildering and gratifying to see Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of "The Odyssey" stir up such charged reactions. At the heart of the discourse lies a perennial question: Who gets to determine what a text means, and who it is for?
dissentmagazine.org
The Odyssey Belongs to All of Us - Dissent Magazine
In many ways, Christopher Nolan’s film is not a faithful adaptation. But it takes seriously both what the text is doing and how it has been read since. Why, then, have Emily Wilson and other scholars been so dismissive?
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
My take for @dissentmag.bsky.social about the politics of adaptation and why, even though Nolan’s Odyssey is flawed, scholars like (my wonderful colleague) @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social have too quick to dismiss what Nolan is trying to do
dissentmagazine.org
The Odyssey Belongs to All of Us - Dissent Magazine
In many ways, Christopher Nolan’s film is not a faithful adaptation. But it takes seriously both what the text is doing and how it has been read since. Why, then, have Emily Wilson and other scholars ...
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
agreed! reading virgil back into homer was a really cool way to tie the trojan horse story into the violations of hospitality theme that actually is in Odyssey, and allowed a nice tension between the criticism of the greeks and the celebration of odysseus’ cleverness in ending the war
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
- i missed the “nobody” joke with polyphemus and generally odysseus in that register -right amount of laestrygonians and did not miss nausica (yawn) -no interesting takes on the female characters but it’s nolan, and at least the reflection on masculinity was quite moving -argos was a good dog
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
- the “sea people” revelation / “are we the baddies” moments made up for the ways Odysseus was sometimes too good of a man - i liked the ambiguity of what the gods are really responsible for / the choice to tell a human story - need a clytemenestra movie, but not made by nolan
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
of note: - the Sinon addition and casting of Elliot Page was really cool. Woke (non derog) - the reading of Virgil’s Trojan horse back into the text to have the through line of violating rules of hospitality really worked for me - loved Circe as horror witch, love that he had his own read of her
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
My take on Nolan’s Odyssey as someone who isn’t an expert: overall I was surprised how much I liked it! Nolan took the text seriously, made real interpretive choices, some of which were smart and interesting. Not everything I’d want but every serious interpretation of an ancient text is a gift imho
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Hannah Čulík-Baird @opietasanimi.com · 08/02/2025
I'm in Santa Barbara today to hear discussion of papers by Erin Lam, Sukaina Hirji, Kelly Nguyen, Hannah Silverblank, and Adriana Vazquez for the "Minoritizing Classics" workshop. How can Classics engage in minoritized perspectives ethically without co-opting or consuming them?
Poster of the Minoritizing Classics colloquium at UCSB, with pictures of the speakers. Colloquium co-organized by Erin Lam and Helen Morales. Confirmed participants include: Sukaina Hirji (Penn); Kelly Nguyen (UCLA); Hannah Silverblank (independent scholar); and Adriana Vazquez (UCLA). What does it mean to do classics and classical reception studies in a time when the need for decolonizing the field has become increasingly urgent? how might classics engage more with minoritized perspectives in ethical ways without co-opting or consuming them? the participants in the colloquium will consider answers to these questions that emerge from their work on critical race studies in classics and reception studies. readings will be circulated in advance.
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Sukaina @sukaina.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Aristotle with a side of meme!! I’m so jealous
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
once again sending this starter pack around for those of you local to other places go.bsky.app/2Fq4P6e
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#first-genphilosophers @firstgenphilos.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
NEW POST! "Flourishing in the Academy: Complicity and Compromise" By @jennifermmorton.bsky.social www.firstgenphilosophers.com/contribution... #firstgenphilosophers
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