The Robinson Archive Initiative operates as a living archive that connects past and present struggles
A living archive of internationalist resistance, scholarship, and community media
A living archive of internationalist resistance, scholarship, and community media
Upcoming Conference
Upcoming Conference
“Archiving Resistance: Activating the Black Radical Tradition" Conference
October 9–10, 2026 | UCSB
About the Archive
The Cedric J. and Elizabeth P. Robinson Archive Project is a collaborative initiative hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara, supported by the University Library, the Division of Social Sciences, the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor, and the Department of Black Studies. The archive contains a collection of research and teaching papers, ephemera, and digital materials related to the Robinsons' careers, renowned for their seminal scholarship and activism.
The Robinson Archive Project creates a living archive that uses participatory and community-based strategies to develop an international network of scholars and activists to carry out research, writing, and teaching centered on key topics encompassed in the Robinsons’ life work. The archive serves as an important anchor for the larger project and will enable global research, teaching, scholarship, and sociopolitical and cultural activism for future generations.
A living archive of internationalist resistance, scholarship, and community media
While that old ditty ‘They’re rioting in Africa . . .’ seems to remain the governing principle behind most corporate media coverage of the Third World, we have tried to present a broader, more dynamic perspective. We do not speak of the global ‘South’ because we recognize the Third World as a condition, not a place. In recent years, we have covered the former Soviet Union and the Roma, even as social, economic and political realities have degraded in those areas and for those people. And we recognize that the Third World exists in LosAngeles, Detroit, London, Marseilles and other parts of the First World. Perhaps TWNR is the mosquito on the elephant’s behind, but we must always remember that resistance starts with tiny bites which nourish imagination and audacity.”
–Elizabeth Robinson, “Twenty-Five Years of Third World News Review”
“In the “exemplary” tales which constitute the interrogation of fascism, the hero is the West; the value is individual freedom (in material or spiritual terms); the interdiction is authoritarian mass movements; the villain, charismatic leaders; the misfortune, fascism; the rescuer, bourgeois democracies; the struggle, the Second World War; the moral: “The hero was imprudent but managed to redeem himself on his own.”
From the perspective of many non-Western peoples, however, the occurrence of fascism – that is militarism, imperialism, racialist authoritarianism, choreographed mob violence, millenarian crypto-Christian mysticism, and a nostalgic nationalism – was no more an historical aberration than colonialism, the slave trade, and slavery. Fascism was and is a modern social discipline which much like its genetic predecessors, Christianity, imperialism, nationalism, sexism, and racism, provided the means for the ascent to and preservation of power for elitists.”
–Cedric Robinson, “Fascism and the Response of Black Theorists”