We were lucky to catch up with Anjali Nath recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Anjali, thanks for joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

I’m an educator and have worked in adult education for my entire career. Before founding Liberation Spring, I worked at multiple universities in what’s called ‘the academic industrial complex.’ On such college campuses, knowledge gets bought and sold as a commodity like sneakers or roofing. That really damages the quality of what we allegedly know. In these corporatized campuses, highly-paid administrators who are rarely educators themselves call the shots regarding who gets to teach and what they teach. This ivory tower approach has little to do with what supports our students and their unique learning needs. let alone what’s best for society!
At the end of 2015, I took a leap and founded Liberation Spring, a grassroots adult education program. Leaving academe behind, I had the freedom to create curricula that was directly geared to the learning needs of my students and their communities. I didn’t have to assign an outdated exclusionary canon of materials, but could get creative in ways that were customized to this moment in history.
Also, corporatized educational environments are cost prohibitive. I probably don’t need to tell any of your readers how wildly financially inaccessible college has become in the US in the past couple decades! Within my organization, though, we have a donation-based, pay what you can, with no one turned away for lack of funds policy. This means that people who want to learn are welcome to apply for our courses, even if they aren’t able to financially contribute to the project. Revolutionary spaces must be accessible to poor and working class folks so it’s an honor to steward a project that runs on this accessible model. As a matter of fact, we’ve had plenty of incredible students come through the project who didn’t make any financial contribution- and they’ve been an integral part of our learning community.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Anjali Nath Upadhyay & I’m academically trained as a political scientist, philosopher, and professor. At the core, though, I’m a life-long nerd with a love of sharing curiosity in the service of collective liberation. I got into education as a bookworm who comes from a long line of community educators in my family. I find learning incredibly pleasurable and my grassroots adult education project (Liberation Spring) makes space for (un)learning to be delightful. I teach group classes and one-on-one independent studies for people who want to get free and contribute to collective liberation. Our classes delve into the intersection of liberation and a wide variety of themes, like food, revolution, the erotic, technology, decolonization, madness/sanity, witchcraft, and more.
In those spaces, I help people make their impact as good as their intentions. Millions of people want to make the world a better place. Yet they often get caught up in false starts or diversions that drain their energy without yielding the results they seek. How can there be so many change-makers spending lifetimes on purpose-driven work, yet our world is more oppressive and unjust than ever before? I make space for unlearning the propaganda, half-truths, and colonial lies that taint our best efforts.
Educators who work on university campuses have to tow various party lines to be in good standing with the departments, colleges, and universities. Learning within the system confines you to a super limited set of resources to learn from and approaches to awareness that even ‘count’ as legitimate. Since I left the university system to teach in community, though, I’ve been able to teach in a much more expansive way. In Liberation Spring classes, we read essays and learn from experts. Yet we also learn from the wisdom of our bodies, our ancestors, plants, our dreams, the most vibrant social movements active today, and so many more sites.
I’m most proud of diving into the areas of taboo, controversy, and silence where mainstream educators and intellectuals don’t dare veer. You see, many of us who are oppressed based off certain aspects of our identities feel the pressure to practice respectability politics. For instance, as a woman of color political scientist, I’d be pressured to focus on elections, law, campaigns, international relations and the like. Since my accountability is to our communities and the brilliance of my ancestors, though, I teach politics (in part) through the personal. In class, students are welcome to bring up the power dynamics in their relationship, the silences in their families, the unwritten norms in their workplace, and more.
For instance, what are you afraid to say at the risk of being called ‘crazy’, a ‘conspiracy theorist’, a ‘witch’, a ‘terrorist’, or whatever other term has gotten wielded against us? I teach a whole class called ‘Gaslight the System: the Politics of Madness & Sanity’ where we learn about the very contours of such value judgments. And oh my- the power of shedding such fear that keeps us small and ‘in our place.’
The more discerning we are, the more we can take back our power from the forces that seeks to weaponize it against us. And therein lies a whole lotta revolutionary potential and promise : )

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Integrity- hands down. Before I founded Liberation Spring, people in my area had already been asking me how they could learn more from me. When I was teaching at the last university where I worked prior to leaving academe, I invited curious community members to sit in on one of the graduate-level courses I was teaching. They wanted to continue learning from me, but I was too busy working on campus full-time to craft a substantial alternative. Taking it back even further, when I was in college and graduate school, I was consistently offering free community education on the side. This included hosting documentary nights, creating grassroots fairs, holding DIY book studies in the homes where I lived, making consciousness-raising circles, and more. Over all those years of holding space, I never imagined they’d culminate in Liberation Spring. Looking back, though, I see that all the popular education I offered as a labor of love in the past nineteen years was preparing me to step into the role of doing popular education full-time.
Also, it never sat well with me teaching on campus that only matriculated paying students were allowed in my classes. I’ve always had a strong sense of justice and fairness so the classism & elitism in that setup consistently felt out of alignment. Since I’d had an enduring practice of inviting community members on-campus & taking the teaching off-campus, I already had a reputation when I founded my organization. What a testament to following your purpose with humility. We never know entirely what fruits may come of the seeds we plant.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The biggest pivot of my career was when I left my PhD program after the fourth year. I’d figured for many years that I’d probably become a professor since sharing curiosity is one of my greatest passions.
In the US, the majority of professorships require a PhD to even apply for the job. This is definitely the case in my fields of Political Science, Women’s Studies, & Philosophy.
By making the decision to drop out of my program, virtually everyone around me presumed that I wouldn’t be able to devote my life to offering adult education anymore.
Yet there was consequential censorship required for me to finish, let alone dealing with toxic professors who I didn’t want to taint the dissertation I was writing.
Who would’ve thought that studying politics was political?!
Many graduate programs have unfortunately abusive dynamics where students are made to believe that they’ll be adrift in the world without finishing.
Mine was no exception.
So I knew that my conscience was mandating that I leave.
Yet this meant that the clearly defined career track of completing my doctorate, applying for professorships, getting one, and spending the rest of my career as a professor was dashed.
As impoverished as the imaginations of the people around me were, I knew that I had to give myself a chance to see what else was possible.
I left in August 2014 and by the end of 2015, Liberation Spring was born.
Co-creating with the unknown to birth this grassroots alternative has been one of the greatest, and most joyful, accomplishments of my life. Had I not given myself the chance by cutting my losses from an oppressive structure, I would’ve never realized what was possible.
Give thanks for our ability to notice when a space isn’t nourishing us and the courage to walk away.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://liberationspring.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liberationspring/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiberationSpring
• Linkedin: Anjali Nath Upadhyay
• Twitter: @libspring
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKskexpXNUKU1O16qWxL0Sw

Image Credits
Sunshine Velasco for the black and white image