Podalot is the podcast of the Aydelotte Foundation at Swarthmore College, an interdisciplinary research center that supports the creation and dissemination of knowledge about liberal arts education as it exists across the broadest possible range of contexts and institutions. The podcast facilitates conversations about critical investigations into higher education and the liberal arts. You can subscribe on Spotify, Amazon or Apple Podcasts to keep up to date with new episodes as they are released.
Ep. 7 Sum Ruminations, Part 1: jaamil olawale kosoko, Dahlia Li, and JS Wu in Conversation
This episode of Sum Ruminations is a recorded conversation, produced and recorded with generous production support from Herman Pearl at PearlArts Movement & Sound in Pittsburgh, between artist collaborators jaamil olawale kosoko, Dahlia Li, and JS Wu.
Across two episodes the three collaborators, friends, and artists discuss how formative childhood experiences of estrangement, queer/femme sociality, quixotic experiences of race, mystical experiences with media, and the various joys and difficulties of embodied artistic labor shape what it means to make and be made through aesthetic practice. More information about this episode can be found here.
Sum Ruminations appears on Podalot, the podcast of the Aydelotte Foundation at Swarthmore College. This limited series builds on the work of the “Just Art” faculty/staff research seminar. More information about Just Art and Aydelotte can be found here.
Ep. 6 Delegitimizing Knowledge: Lauren Lassabe Shepherd and Nayanika Ghosh in Conversation
This episode is the recording of an event held at Swarthmore College on October 27, 2025. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd and Nayanika Ghosh discussed the history of discursive and institutional tactics deployed to delegitimize knowledge-making in the humanities and in the sciences.
Lauren Lassabe Shepherd is a historian of US colleges and universities. Shepherd is the author of Resistance from the Right (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) and host of the American Campus Podcast. Her forthcoming book projects are Degrees of Liberation with John R. Legg and Inventing the Liberal University.
Nayanika Ghosh is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Duke University. Her research brings interdisciplinary scholarship on science, race, and gender in conversation with the histories of U.S. higher education, the New Left, and the Cold War. She is currently working on her first monograph, Genes and the Left: Sociobiology and the Backlash Against Radical Science.
Ep. 5 Liberal Education and the Current Crisis: Ruth Simmons and Anthony Bogues in Conversation
This episode is the recording of an event held at Swarthmore College on April 14, 2025 between Ruth J. Simmons and Anthony Bogues. They were discussing “Liberal Education and the Current Crisis.
This event was presented by the Aydelotte Foundation at Swarthmore College’s Series on Race, Racism and the Liberal Arts, and the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Slavery and Justice at Brown University.
More information about this episode can be found here.
Ep. 4 On “South Africa to Gaza” with Ahmad Shokr, Sangina Patnaik, Alejandra Azuero-Quijano, and Sabeen Ahmed
Aydelotte Foundation director, Patricia White, speaks with four Swarthmore faculty members who have organized the speaker series, “From South Africa to Gaza: World History and the Politics of Responsibility.”
More information about the series and additional recordings can be found here.
Ep. 3 Universities and Democracy with Vineeta Singh, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Donna Murch, and Davarian Baldwin
In late February, Andy Hines and Dennis Hogan organized a symposium at Haverford College called, ”Universities and Democracy: The Politics of Higher Education Today.” It brought together researchers, organizers, elected officials, and many others in the Philadelphia region to discuss the local and national transformation of the political economy of higher education. Published on the same day as the AAUP’s national day of action for higher education, we bring you four of the talks from that symposium by Vineeta Singh, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Donna Murch, and Davarian Baldwin. We plan to broadcast more of the talks from this event in the future.
Episode Two: “Land Grab Universities” with Tristan Ahtone and Maria Parazo Rose
Tim Burke, Rachel Buurma, and Andy Hines speak with Tristan Ahtone and Maria Parazo Rose about their work on “Land Grab Universities,” a project that makes a direct, irrefutable claim about how the wealth of land-grant universities is linked to indigenous dispossession. The discussion considers how to understand the present ramifications of the Morrill Act of 1862, how the process associated with land-grant universities might extend to other institutions, and the next phase of their project. Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is Editor at Large at Grist. Maria Parazo Rose is a spatial data analyst at Grist, where she writes and makes maps about Indigenous affairs, conservation, and climate migration.
Episode One: ChatGPT and Cheating in South Africa with Stephen Sparks
Tim Burke, Rachel Buurma, and Andy Hines speak with Stephen Sparks take a somewhat different approach to talking about every professor’s favorite subject, namely ChatGPT and AI generally. It is not just an issue for American academics: faculty in South African universities are also reckoning with its impact. The problem of technologically sophisticated strategies for cheating (as well as some of the classics) is painfully familiar there as well as here, all the more so during the pandemic. Stephen Sparks is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Historical Studies at University of Johannesburg.
