#PoliceFreeCampus Podcast (2023)

The #PoliceFreeCampus Podcast engages organizers, practitioners, and scholars in discussing the challenges and possibilities for colleges and universities without the police. This public scholarship program builds on the Campus Abolition Research Lab’s ongoing research focus on campus policing (i.e., #PoliceFreeCampus Project) and highlights the work of other scholars and organizers who focus on issues of harm, accountability, criminalization and punishment in higher and postsecondary contexts. In particular, each episode challenges common myths about policing in college and community contexts to include the ways police are both unnecessary and insufficient in addressing root causes of systemic violence and interpersonal harm.

 

Longitudinal Depictions of Student-Led Organized Resistance

The purpose of this multimodal, ethnographic research project is to reflect both the breadth and depth of contemporary student political engagement at the intersection of campus and community. In particular, through the use of ethnographic photography (see attached), film, and digital media artifacts (see attached), this project provides a series of audiovisual snapshots from the contemporary campus abolition movement (CAM). Building on the earlier work of Rhoads (1998),  Morgan and Davis (2019), and Davis (2019), Longitudinal Depictions of Student-Led Organized Resistance (LDSOR) serves as an ongoing digital research project that captures how activism and grassroots organizing traverses the social, symbolic, and spatial boundaries between postsecondary institutions and the communities in which they operate. 

LDSOR is grounded in more than a decade of (digital) ethnographic inquiry conducted in 24 cities and across more than three dozen postsecondary institutions (including two-year colleges to 4-year universities, public and private institutions, historically Black colleges and universities, and historically white-serving institutions). In part, this project aims to connect and convert readers of higher education activism and social movements scholarship to viewers and listeners of campus-community organizers actively engaged in sociopolitical and institutional transformation.

Longitudinal Depictions of Student-Led Organized Resistance Vol. 1: Ethnographic Film, Photography, and Digital Artifacts from the New Student Movement (2019)

Longitudinal Depictions of Student-Led Organized Resistance Vol. 2: Ethnographic Film and Documentary Photography from the Campus Abolition Movement (2022)

 

Saving Tomorrow, Today: The Curriculum of New America (2016)

Saving Tomorrow, Today: The Curriculum Of New America is a feature-length documentary that examines how educators, creatives and critical thinkers are collectively working to create spaces where Black and other racially marginalized students can grow. The film was written and hosted by Dr. Charles H.F. Davis III, directed by Charlie Mysak, and produced in conjunction with Lighthouse Films and InteractiveOne and supported through funding provided by the University of Phoenix.

Saving Tomorrow Photo Gallery

Photo Credit: Charles H.F. Davis III

 

American Matthew: Vignette of a Patriot (2014)

In his directorial debut, Charles H.F. Davis III presents American Matthew: Vignette of a Patriot, a rugged documentary short film that chronicles the story of multidisciplinary artist Matt Nelson. Beginning in 2013, in the wake of Zimmerman trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, the film documents the process of creating an original work inspired by and in homage to Black boys and men subjected to state and state-sanctioned violence. One year after the verdict was delivered, Charles reunited with Matt in his hometown Dallas-Ft. Worth to reflect on his work, life, and criticism of contemporary American society.