Zaheer Ali
Zaheer Ali
ATWIAD Roundtable
ATWIAD Presentation
Teacher, Why Won't Jimmy Pledge Allegiance?
Prince as Citizen
On August 23, 1984, at the Republican National Convention nominating Ronald Reagan for re-election to his second term as President, Ray Charles closed out the ceremonies with his soulful rendition of “America the Beautiful,” a version that he had made popular through his 1972 release A Message from the People. The original song, long celebrated as a popular alternative to the American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” celebrates American greatness, prosperity, and Providential favor—all themes Reagan effectively exploited during his presidency. Less than a year later, Prince released the album Around the World in a Day, featuring the song “America,” which borrowed both a musical and lyrical phrase from “America the Beautiful”’s chorus: “America, America, God shed His grace on thee.” However, in Prince’s “America,” the soaring chorus was transgressively rendered with a growling lead guitar, verses warned of the perils of inequality, and the chorus includes both a prayer and a warning: “Keep your children free.” In an almost Hendrixian way, Prince’s interpolation of “America the Beautiful” had turned a patriot’s anthem into a citizen’s jeremiad against the perils of Reagan-era policies, with a call to government and society to live up to its democratic ideals, or suffer a divine and political chastisement. To date, “America” was Prince’s most explicit, but not only, critique of state power. Beginning with a close examination of “America,” this presentation seeks to draw out Prince’s often overlooked political concerns during the first decade of his career, and challenges us to appreciate Prince’s early artistic voice as citizen.
Zaheer Ali is a historian and scholar of 20th-century United States and African-American history. He is currently the inaugural executive director of the Lawrenceville School’s Hutchins Institute for Social Justice. As an adjunct lecturer at New York University, he taught a Spring 2017 course titled, “Prince: Sign of the Times,” an examination of Prince’s life and legacy in American history and culture. He’s presented his scholarship on Prince at conferences at Yale, Salford University in Manchester, England, and the University of Minnesota; and is currently developing the Prince Syllabus, exploring the life and work of Prince as a catalyst for social change.
Elliott H. Powell
Elliott H. Powell
ATWIAD Roundtable
Elliott H. Powell, Ph.D., is the Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Sounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music, which received the Woody Guthrie Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, as well as the Philip Brett Book Award from the American Musicological Society. He’s currently at work on a new book titled Prince, Porn, and Public Space, which examines the intertwined worlds of music and sex in Minneapolis during the 1980s.
De Angela L. Duff
De Angela L. Duff
Symposium Creator & Curator
What Did Prince Do This Week? #WDPDTW Co-Host
ATWIAD Roundtable
De Angela L. Duff is an Associate Vice Provost at New York University and Industry Professor in Integrated Design & Media (IDM) at NYU Tandon. She also curates music symposia as polished solid, including this virtual celebration and the upcoming Prince #EroticCity40 Symposium (2024), celebrating 40 years of Prince’s Purple Rain, The Time’s Ice Cream Castle, Sheila E.’s The Glamorous Life, and Apollonia 6’s eponymous debut and Prince #Come30 Virtual Symposium (2024), celebrating 30 years of Prince’s Come; presents about music, design, and technology, internationally, at numerous conferences and events including All 7 Years: The Past, Present, and Future of Prince Studies at the University of Minnesota (2023), Black Portraiture[s] VII (2022), Pop Conference 2021, Prince 78-88: An Interdisciplinary Conference (2021) and 2nd Dayton Funk Symposium (2021), writes about music most recently in Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls (Super Deluxe Edition) (2023), AMP: American Music Perspectives (2022), Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture (2022), and the edited book volume Prince and Popular Music: Critical Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Life (2020); speaks about music, most recently at Prince’s Paisley Park (2023), on WNYC, Minnesota Public Radio radio, and BBC Manchester radio shows; appears in documentaries such as We Want The Funk! (2025) and Prince: The Final Secret (2023); and produces and co-hosts What Did Prince Do This Week? #WDPDTW, a weekly online book club series. You can view her past and present work at polishedsolid.com or subscribe to her newsletter at polishedsolid.substack.com.
Anil Dash
Anil Dash
ATWIAD Roundtable
Anil Dash is recognized advocate for more humane, inclusive, and ethical technology through his work as an entrepreneur, activist, and writer, honored by the Webby Awards with its lifetime achievement award in 2022. Today, he leads Fastly’s Developer Experience team, which provides the tools that the world’s most innovative developers use to build experiences that make the internet better for billions of users every day. Dash joined Fastly with its acquisition of Glitch in 2022, where he served as CEO of the friendly coding community beloved by millions of developers.
Dash also serves as a board member for organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the pioneering nonprofit organization defending digital privacy and expression, The Markup, the leading nonprofit investigative newsroom pushing for tech accountability, and the Lower East Side Girls Club, which serves girls and families in need in New York City. Previously, Dash was an advisor to the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy, was co-chair of the Obama Foundation’s tech advisory council, served for a decade on the board of Stack Overflow, the world’s largest community for coders, and was a founding board member of the Data & Society Research Institute, which researches the cutting edge of tech’s impact on society. Today, he continues to advise respected startups and non-profits including DonorsChoose, Medium, The Human Utility, and Project Include. In 2009, he led a MacArthur-backed research project carrying out pioneering research on social media’s impact on public policy making. And, during his tenure as CEO of Glitch, the company became the first tech startup ever to voluntarily recognize its workers’ union.
Described by The New Yorker as a “blogging pioneer”, and by the New York Times as a “Prince scholar”, his personal website has been cited in hundreds of newspapers, academic papers and journals. As a writer and artist, Dash was a contributing editor and monthly columnist for Wired, has written for publications including The Atlantic, Rolling Stone and Businessweek, co-created one of the first implementations of the technology now known as NFTs, had his work exhibited in the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and collaborated with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda on one of the most popular Spotify playlists of 2018.
Back when Twitter was relevant, Time named @anildash one of the best accounts on Twitter, and he is the only person ever retweeted by both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Prince, a succinct summarization of Dash’s interests. Dash has also been a keynote speaker and guest in a broad range of media and events ranging from the Aspen Ideas Festival to Desus and Mero’s late-night show, and has guested on a surprisingly large number of your favorite podcasts.
Dash is based in New York City, where he lives with his wife Alaina Browne and their son Malcolm. Like most people, he has never played a round of golf, drank a cup of coffee, filed a patent, or graduated from college.