Sara Ali introduces the #TheorizingWhileBlack Symposium.

Kamari Maxine Clarke uses Michael Manley’s metaphor of going up the down escalator to show how some states and peoples are privileged over others in the international sphere.

Robert Knox grapples with the question of #TheorizingWhileBlack through a Marxist lens to engage with the concepts of power, erasure and knowledge production. Knox critiques the dichotomy of either using law or abandoning it altogether.

Babatunde Fagbayibo asks whether contemporary international law has the capacity to ‘advance ideas and strategies for Africa’s human and material development’ in the face of the erasure of black thought, and posits a useful framework for future international legal scholarship.

Valarie Waboose reflects on the Indian Residential School legacy with the intent to educate those who know little or nothing about the treatment Indigenous children received in Indian Residential Schools. By educating more people, this dark chapter in Canadian history will produce more awareness and understanding of the quandary of Indigenous peoples in Canada.

In January 2020, E. Tendayi Achiume & Aslı Ü. Bâli convened the UCLA Law Review symposium, ‘Transnational Legal Discourse on Race and Empire’. In this reflection, they situate the symposium within its broader intellectual context: renewed momentum among Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars to engage Critical Race Theory (CRT) scholars in collaboration, aimed at deeper understanding of issues of shared concern.