WMP #006: Inciting Change Through Courageous Thought + Action feat. Glenn Wallis

Nov 12, 2018

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In this episode, I interview Dr. Glenn Wallis, a scholar of Buddhist Studies and Founder and Director of Incite Seminars—a series of animated humanities seminars that agitate personal awareness and incite social engagement amongst the general public in Philadelphia.

Here, we discuss:

(1) His journeys within and beyond educational institutions

(2) Intrinsic barriers to the creation of new kinds of subjects (people) within academic training

(3) How political concerns have reshaped his scholarly work
(4) How the unexamined assumptions of Buddhism, mindfulness, and psychology undermine the liberation they claim to promote
(5) How he is creating space for inciting, public dialogues beyond the ivory tower

Key Quotations:

“Go ahead and write as you want to write and say what you want to say…I was told by my faculty mentor committee that [doing so] would jeopardize my tenure chances. I’m going to get tenure on my terms or I’m not going to get tenure. You think I’m going to spend my life writing about things I’m not interested in so I can keep writing about things I’m not interested in? It’s ridiculous…My advice is just to have courage, whatever the consequences might be”

-Glenn Wallis

“[Laruelle’s Stranger-Subject is] the person who is constantly resisting and at odds with these forms of thought, ways of being, structures that want to capture the individual and form him in its image…Maybe a wild mind is a stranger in many regards”

-Glenn Wallis

Key Themes:

Glenn’s history of resisting the constraints of stultifying educational environments beginning in childhood
Differences between the educational systems in Germany and the United States
His experience in doctoral study at Harvard resisting the mandate to produce the research expected of him
His journey teaching within mainstream and alternative higher education settings
Contending with the fact that the problems that pervade academia are perpetuated by actual people
How the election of Donald Trump inspired him to launch Incite Seminars in Philadelphia
Forging critical community-based teaching environments with eager, adult learners
Disillusionment with meditation as a mode of practice despite years of practice and scholarship on Buddhism
Key concerns raised in Glenn’s new book, A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real
Liberatory resources found in François Laruelle’s “non-philosophy”, including the “Stranger-Subject”