Syllabus - A Crash Course

Movement syllabi, a concept first introduced to me by the Bivens, et al. reading, really translates to a crash course on a particular movement. In this way, the term syllabus makes sense. It also explains why there might be some who find the term pretentious. I should note that I think the term is apropos and it is understanding the term that helped me understand the concept of it in Movements. The authors talk about us being in an "era of orchestrated right-wing attacks on academics" and that it could be a reason to not "intellectualize" a movement. I submit that this is precisely why we do it. Information, data, history, case studies are all part of the empirical process. Much like how we assert the importance of education, we must continue to elevate the knowledge of people as much as possible. It is true that academia is its own culture. And there is a reason for that. We go to school, we learn, we research and we analyze. This is not a process that is always intuitive. However, it is how we learn to get answers to questions, to adapt and make things better. Within the Pro-Choice movement, for example, there is always a push to share personal stories about how reproductive health care or lack of it impacts an individual's quality of life. We need to remember, though, that policy changes, especially at the government level, needs more. We need the data and the analysis to show empirically how something affects public health. A syllabus can be a way to merge the two, using history, examples, and scholarly readings and media. In the same way we learn concepts in a course in school. As long as there is credibility and fact checking, the use of syllabi in online activism can only help a cause.