Obiits

Institute of Advanced Studies — Hard news from the heart of Bloomsbury. From the IAS blog, 23 February, 2026:

It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that the UCL Faculties of Social & Historical Sciences and Arts & Humanities have decided to close the IAS on 31 July 2026. […]

Needless to say, the “winding down” of the IAS is a huge loss for UCL and for the academic and intellectually engaged community.

The IAS has always been about community. Over the past ten years, an exceptional group of scholars and academics from across the world have brought their research to the IAS and joined in conversation with each other. The IAS community also encompasses over 20 Research Centres and Networks which found a home under the IAS umbrella, and whose directors and affiliates come from every faculty at UCL. Our community also extends itself, via our events and publications, to the public. Many of our event attendees come from outside UCL and have become familiar faces over the years. Last but not least, there is the community that is the IAS staff. A small, dedicated team, so invested, hands-on and responsive.

Intellectual exchange and conversation provide the ground for serendipitous opportunities, an often unaccounted for but indispensable element of research. But an increasingly utopian one in the current climate of academia. Maybe the IAS is, after all, a utopian island because of its often immeasurable research impact, engagement and outputs. An island sitting (unprotected) in a sea of hard facts and numbers. Maybe the IAS is too good to be true. Maybe.

Read the rest here.

Bars-tabacs — A study conducted by the French Center for Economic Research and its Applications (CEPREMAP) claims to have found a causal link between the closure of small-town “tabacs” (which sell tobacco, stamps, coffee and drinks) and a dramatic rise in the polls for candiates from the RN. These results, the authors write, reveal “a mechanism distinct from that of economic decline: the erosion of the social infrastructure which made deliberation possible.” Whatever conclusions one draws from their data, the fact is enormous: 18,000 locals closed in the last two decades.

Le Point du Jour — If not an institution, certainly an archive of many institutions, whose fruits could be measured in the floor-to-shoulder stacks of paperbacks which one had to shore up carefully in order to extract a layer from their middle; institutions of action and thought since World War II, never published in such glorious volume as in the decade before and the decade after ‘68. Yet Patrick Bobulesco opened Le Point du Jour in the early 1980s, that is, against the grain of an era. “L’idée était de maintenir des lieux où l’on puisse certes trouver de la littérature, mais aussi des espaces propices aux rencontres entre ceux qui réfléchissent à la manière de transformer la société, d’agir, sans tout attendre du pouvoir” (Actualitte). These encounters, in print and viva voce, will have to be found somewhere else; as will the conversation of the shopkeeper himself, whose daily café one would surely be glad to know.

FM radio in Brandenburg — In June 2025, medientanstalt berlin brandenburg (mabb) celebrated the privatization of three FM band frequencies hitherto accessible to non-commercial collectives of many stripes; the press release was cynically titled “Berlin's radio landscape is becoming even more diverse.”. The drastic rent increase pushed a huge number of (truly) diverse, self-created, non-commercial programs off the airwaves at the end of 2025. Of our air, free and common, four wavelengths were walled off: 106.8 MHz, 104.1 MHz, 91.0 MHz (ALEX), and 88.4 MHz and 90.7 MHz. The last two were shared by the incredible Radionetzwerk Berlin and Free Radios Berlin Brandenburg (FRBB). See FRBB’s response on June 20 and their detailed explanation.

A tour of FRBB’s explosive program schedule gives an idea of the daily prayers, with coffee in the morning, late at night in the kitchen, that have lost. Among others, pi radio, colaboradio, Studio Ansage and frrapó; reboot.fm and Cashmere Radio.

Digital traces remain, like reboot.fm’s incredible four day festival, “Latitude on air” (day one, day two, day three, day four). Clearly we’ll be reading more about the making of these institutions—which still exist! just without FM!—and what they have to teach, starting with the monoskop’s entry for Diana McCarty, co-founder of Radionetzwerk Berlin whose lobbying won the FM licenses which have just been lost.

Cashmere Radio traced their last ripple in the megahertz on October 24, mixing a requiem for the twilight of the airwaves.

Leftist or anti-war summer festivals in Croatia — In summer 2025, large groups (up to 100+) of nationalist men, dressed in black or in uniform and many drunk, intimidated cultural institutions and audiences, notably the Nosi se festival in Benkovac, which should have taken place from August 22 to 29. The far right militia’s intimidations and their physical attack on journalist Melita Vrsaljko succeeded in the suspension and postponement of the festival. Similar tactics were employed in Zagreb and Šibenik, unsuccessfully, and in Novi Sad, Zadar and Velika Gorica, successfully. (On these events, see: 1 and 2 in English, but also 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 for media / with a translator.)

Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy — Declared closed in July. PhD students are wrapping up, MA students have one more year with two staff members kept to finish it up. MA students had gathered here from around the world. Many had hoped to continue at the Centre as PhD students and are at a loss.

Le Jargon libre — Hellyette Bess’s anarchist community library and archive lasted a cumulative forty years: from 1973 to 1984 when closed by a court mandate, then from 1994 to the end of 2024 at its new location at 32 rue Henri Chevreau, Paris 20e. Its work was intergenerational. Hellyette, former member of Action Directe, was 95 years old in December when the library had to close.

“Le Jargon libre, c’est un îlot où le temps n’existe pas... C’est un lieu dans lequel on peut parler des livres des actions d’il y a cent ans comme des actions d’aujourd’hui. Et envisager celles de demain. Il y a des jeunes de 17 ans qui viennent discuter politique avec moi.”

“Pas mal de jeunes viennent me voir, souvent après une manif. Ils défilent pour que vive l’anarchie… Ils ne savent pas toujours ce que c’est ! Alors leurs aînés les envoient ici. Je leur explique, je conseille des livres.” (Read more here.)

First Voices Radio — This Indigenous call-in radio show, broadcast to reservations across the United States, aired its last episode in July after 33 years on FM radio.

Le Lieu-Dit — Founded by leftist exile Hossein Sadeghi in 2004, the Lieu-Dit is familiar to all who have packed in for a talk or a book launch, visited for the salon du livre politique, or followed an evening demonstration with a night of discussion. For Mediapart, the Lieu-Dit was a sorely needed institution, one of a sort that had grown scarce:

“Les espaces de débats politiques engagés se raréfiant, et les libertés académiques et associatives étant de plus en plus restreintes à l’université, le 6 rue Sorbier était devenu un rendez-vous d’autant plus important à Paris.”

AAAARG — AAAARG (2004-2024) was a social platform, not a data give-away. The library users posted reading lists for courses and topics, they requested resources and helped each other find them. In an interview in 2016, the institution’s founder described its context as a moment of institutional breakdown:

“The humanities are being decimated, largely through capitalist restructuring of universities and knowledge, but also through the humanities’ incapability or unwillingness to articulate a role for itself within the financialized university. AAARG plays a role inasmuch as this restructuring creates uneven distribution of access to knowledge and resources — as libraries are shut in austerity governments or books are destroyed in dictatorships, but hopefully it also plays a role in providing writers, artists, designers, philosophers, and organizers with some theoretical tools for producing the humanities that we need to confront what is to come (conceptually, ecologically, politically, etc.).”

Creating Conscious Communities with People Outside — Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of Portland (OR) partnered with homeless advocacy groups in the city to put together three large-scale outdoor shelters. The groups involved were beautiful institutions in our sense, bursting with experience and knowledge after decades of collective experiment. These included (Right 2 Dream Too)[/#r2dtoo], which had by then rebuilt itself in its new home. That is, from R2DToo came C3PO: Creating Conscious Communities with People Outside. For its first year, C3PO was run by these “people outside” in tandem with institutions which had been dedicated for decades to treating people outdoors as responsible, competent agents of their world. The Portland Mercury (again!) presents a beautiful portrait these communities’ first year.

[O]rganizers allowed the villages to be self-governed, meaning residents would be responsible for setting community rules and deciding who is allowed to join the village (or who should be kicked out). Big decisions would be made in weekly village meetings, where every resident would have equal input. Each resident would be responsible for contributing 16 hours of volunteer time each week to running the community, whether that meant sanitizing public areas, monitoring the front entrance of the village, or picking up trash. The larger organizational responsibilities fell on staff paid by R2DToo.

By investing time and energy into the village, Dregs [a resident since September 2020] said villagers felt true ownership of their home. [...] “We built bonds through just being around each other each day, making big decisions that affect all of us together,” said Dregs. “If someone was causing harm to our community, we were quick to address the problem with them… a lot of times it was ‘You either have to quit this or you’re leaving.’ We kept each other safe.”

Then follows a familiar story of pulverization by expertise.

In September, the city transferred leadership of C3PO villages to a new nonprofit called All Good NW. R2DToo had decided months earlier to cede oversight of the village program, as the nonprofit’s leaders saw their goals diverge from what local government had in mind for C3PO villages moving forward.

R2DToo protested, to deaf ears.

“We think we have demonstrated that many of Portland’s houseless residents are extremely capable and can manage themselves without the intensive and expensive oversight being utilized in JOHS’s model,” reads the letter from the R2DToo board [to the county]. “The resources spent on C3PO could easily have paid for market-rate housing for all villagers at the camps, with money left over for needed services, which the camps were also doing their best to provide.”

All Good brought on 60 staff to replace the work previously being done by volunteers and residents—and then some. Unlike the earlier iteration of C3PO villages, All Good hired case workers to work directly with residents to help them with anything from securing permanent housing to applying for health care. All Good informed all residents who had been employed by R2DToo that they could keep their jobs only if they agreed to move out of the village within six months.

Which did not so much close the institution as destroy it:

“We used to have discussions and then make decisions together, but now at the meetings, we’re just being told what decisions have already been made without our input,” said Dregs. “It’s demoralizing not to have control of your own home.” Dregs said that, with the arrival of All Good, the sense of community felt at the QA Village was dampened. People have stopped hanging out in common spaces, and instead leave the property to meet up in places where they feel more comfortable.

The only thing to add to this story is that the director of All Good NW is currently being sued for retaliating against a whistleblower. The latter had raised questions about incongruous consulting fees and and massive overbillings at a sibling non-profit, Sunshine Way. (Source: Willamette Week)

Sisters of the Road Cafe — Sisters of the Road Cafe has been the backbone of solidarity in Portland since 1979. It was never just a charity, but a place for gathering and an institution made with and by those who dined there or joined in its convivialities. It proposed and hosted events attended by a truly heteogeneous public. Sisters has provided an essential point of anchor for political and charitable initiatives in Portland for the last forty years. Not to mention its work of decoding and publicizing bills in state congress and questions in discussion at the city council. They even proposed and campaigned successfully for a law that allowed them to accept EBT/SNAP/Food Stamps as payment in the cafe in 1987. They also operated on the basis of barter: “where you can trade some time volunteering in the cafe for a fresh, healthy meal via our Barter Credit system.”

After lockdown reached Oregon on March 12, 2020, Sisters of the Road kept a pick-up window. But the cafe did not reopen after lockdown ended. There were problems with the building, and it looked like the right moment to purchase something permanently. Sisters of the Road had announced on July 7, 2023 that they had purchsed a nearby building where landmark House of Louie served Dim Sum until 2018. It also in Old Town, the heart of institutions like Street Roots, Sisters of the Road itself, and multiple kitchens and shelters. In 2024, the deal fell through. “It was news Matt Chorpenning [vice president of Sisters of the Road’s board of directors] never wanted to deliver,” wrote Courtney Vaughn for the Portland Mercury: “It started to become clear to us at the tail end of summer here, that we were just not meeting the fundraising goals,” he said. “The philanthropic climate right now is just challenging.” Sisters of the Road still exists and are moving to southeast Portland this year. Yet their departure from Old Town is an awful loss. House of Louie still stands empty, and it’s hard to understand who any of this helped.

Sisters has inspired, and continues to inspire, an ecosystem of other institutions like Street Roots and Dignity Village. Some of its kin have, unfortunately, appeared on this bulletin. Creating Conscious Communities with People Outside (C3PO) hatched from Right 2 Dream Too (R2DToo), itself a shoot of Right 2 Survive (R2S). These institutions were energized and nourished by Sisters of the Road’s experiment/experience. And what it had learned, it taught. Sisters is still learning. Its history page ends with these words:

When we reopen the cafe in a new space, we will revisit our operational procedures and consider revising them based on staff, volunteer, and community input and needs. As this process unfolds, we’ll post more information here, but in the meantime consider this page a historical record.

For more information and to sign up for Sisters of the Road’s updates, see the Move to SE Q&A. Their rich 1994 home-print manual, Dining with Dignity, is available on their website.

Right 2 Dream, Too — A self-governed camp at W Burnside and NW 4th Ave (Portland, OR) was expelled after an investor sued the city. They have managed to relocate and are going strong, but the place they made live for six years has gone lonely.

Right 2 Dream Too was born from another institution, itself called Right 2 Survive. It finished the sentence.

We’ve put together some of their story, including some beautiful descriptions from local journalist Amelia Templeton into a kind of R2DToo scrapbook, here.

In an interview with the Portland Mercury, its founder Ibrahim Mubarak described the kind of knowledge it involved, thinking about how to keep it and share it:

I went to San Francisco, went to Denver, and Phoenix and Tucson [to advocate for a peer-run shelter]. That works better than your traditional shelter, where [the people running it] go to school, they gather knowledge, but then once they graduate they rely on those books instead of reality and what’s happening in the streets. I’m adamant about telling social workers to go out in the streets and meet people where they’re at, so they can know, but most of them still rely on the books.

Another thing I want to do is open a class to teach people how to survive on the street, teach people about homelessness. They don’t teach us about that in college or school.

Also I would like to go throughout the country and connect all the tent cities that I consult to come together and create a mass mobilization of houseless people throughout this country, so we can have interchanging personnel. Somebody from Michigan could come here and see how we do things. Somebody from here could go to San Jose. Somebody from San Jose can go to Denver. We can learn from one another and support one another.