A discussion with Max Czollek and Mohamed Amjahid and Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge for the Yurok Tribe.
“Radical Diversity” is a discussion series presented by several Goethe-Institut locations in North America in collaboration with its Goethe Pop Ups, the Thomas Mann House, and the Institute for Social Justice & Radical Diversity under the sponsorship of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung North America.
Right-wing extremism, everyday racism and racialized microaggressions, and pressure to “assimilate” – all of these constructs affecting racialized minorities result from an inability and unwillingness to respect and appreciate the radical diversity that underscores our societies.
Max Czollek (“De-integrate Yourselves”) and Mohamed Amjahid (“Among Whites: What It Means to Be Privileged”) are two Millennial generation voices that have emerged from Germany in recent years. With a critical, multidimensional approach, Czollek and Amjahid will examine the challenges faced by German and North American societies, as well as various visions for progress, by discussing them with experts in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.
For this year’s second installment of Radical Diversity in San Francisco we have invited Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge for the Yurok Tribe in Klamath/California. The Yurok Tribe is currently the largest in California, with more than 6,000 enrolled members. Max Czollek and Mohamed Amjahid will speak with Abby Abinanti about differences in value systems and traditions, about her way of helping revive the tribe’s values, and her community-based, restorative approach to justice.
Speaker:
Courtesy of the Yurok Tribe
Abby Abinanti, Yurok Chief Judge is an enrolled Yurok Tribal member, she holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of New Mexico School of Law, and was the first California tribal woman to be admitted to the State Bar of California. She was a State Judicial Officer (Commissioner) for the San Francisco Superior Court for over 17 years assigned to the Unified Family Court (Family/Dependency/Delinquency). She retired from the Superior Court in September 2011 and on July 31, 2014 was reappointed as a part-time Commissioner for San Francisco assigned to Dependency, and Duty Judge for that Court where she served until 2015. She has been a Yurok Tribal Court Judge since 1997 and was appointed Chief Tribal Court Judge in 2007, a position she held in conjunction with her Superior Court assignment until 2015.
Moderators:
© Konstantin Boerner
Dr. Max Czollek completed his doctorate studies at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin. Since 2009, Czollek has been a member of poetry collective G13, which has published books and organized lectures. In 2018, his essay
Desintegriert Euch! (Disintegrate!) was published at Carl Hanser. His second essay,
Gegenwartsbewältigung (Coping with the Present), was published in August 2020.
© Mohamed Amjahid
Mohamed Amjahid studied political science in Berlin and Cairo, and conducted research on various anthropological projects in North America. Mohamed is a political reporter for the weekly newspapers Die Zeit and das Zeit Magazin. Anthropologically and journalistically, Amjahid focuses on human rights, equality, and upheaval in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Amjahid is a 2020 Thomas-Mann Fellow.
