In this episode of Reading the World | قراءة العالم, Ali Alhajji sits down with Dr. Sheldon Greaves to treat the “guerrilla scholar” as a figure of knowledge production—a way of thinking about what counts as knowledge, who gets to authorize it, and what changes when serious intellectual work happens outside formal academic structures.

We begin with a thesis-level prompt—define “guerrilla scholar” in one sentence—and then follow the question where it leads: legitimacy, rigor without institutional supervision, reading as a method of judgment (not just information), and the practical infrastructures that make independent learning possible.

On-record note: This conversation was recorded in both audio and video; the episode is released primarily as audio, with short video clips occasionally shared.

In this conversation, we explore:

• What the term “guerrilla scholar” is actually naming in how knowledge is organized and legitimized
• What makes intellectual work “count” outside universities—and who gets to decide
• What replaces peer review: feedback, rigor, correction, and the social life of legitimacy
• Reading as method: slow reading, interpretation, and why the core issue is judgment
• Community as infrastructure (without romanticizing isolation)
• Limits and tradeoffs: sustainability, credibility barriers, mentorship gaps, and the risk of romanticizing precarity
• A closing question designed to unsettle one assumption about learning and knowledge

Guest

Dr. Sheldon Greaves is the author of The Guerrilla Scholar’s Handbook. He earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley while living and working in Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, developing an approach to intellectual life shaped by constraints, independence, and a long career doing serious work outside academia.

Reading the World | قراءة العالم — one question at a time.

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Reading the World | قراءة العالم
A bilingual podcast (English and Arabic) exploring world literature, culture, and higher education as ways of understanding how meaning is produced, circulated, and contested.

Each episode takes one question at a time—carefully, clearly, and without oversimplification.

Follow the podcast to continue the conversation.

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Artificial intelligence is increasingly involved in how knowledge is produced, summarized, translated, and circulated. But what kind of knowledge does AI generate—and on whose terms?

In this episode, we explore the relationship between AI and the humanities, asking how data, language, institutions, and power shape what AI systems present as knowledge. Approaching AI through the lens of critical reading, the conversation treats AI not as a neutral or purely technical tool, but as a cultural and interpretive system—one that inherits assumptions, hierarchies, and exclusions embedded in its training data.

Through a reflective dialogue, the episode examines the difference between pattern and meaning, fluency and understanding, and speed and judgment. It considers how AI reshapes authority and trust, why critical interpretation remains essential in an AI-driven world, and how the humanities provide tools for reading AI outputs rather than accepting them at face value.

The episode also reflects on education, voice technologies, and the ethical stakes of using AI as a shortcut to answers instead of a prompt for deeper inquiry.

Reading the World | قراءة العالم takes one question at a time—carefully, clearly, and without oversimplification.

In the next episode, we turn to another question:
What happens when ideas travel from one language to another?

Reading the World | قراءة العالم
A bilingual podcast (English and Arabic) exploring world literature, culture, and higher education as ways of understanding how meaning is produced, circulated, and contested.

Each episode takes one question at a time—carefully, clearly, and without oversimplification.

Follow the podcast to continue the conversation.

كثيرًا ما تُوصَف المعرفة بأنها «موضوعية» ومحايدة، منفصلة عن السياسة والسياق. لكن في العلوم الإنسانية، لا تُعد الحيادية نقطة انطلاق بقدر ما هي سؤال يحتاج إلى فحص.

في هذه الحلقة، نتأمل كيف أن كل فعل معرفي ينطلق من موقع محدد: لغة، وتاريخ، ومؤسسة. فما ندرسه، وكيف ندرسه، وأي الأسئلة تُعَد مشروعة، كلها قرارات غير بريئة، تشكّل فهمنا للعالم قبل أن ننتبه إلى أثرها.

من خلال أمثلة تمتد من الخطة الدراسية إلى الإعلام، والتقارير السياسية، والبيانات، توضّح الحلقة كيف تُنتَج المعرفة داخل علاقات السلطة، دون أن يعني ذلك اختزالها في الدعاية. فالمعرفة ليست زائفة بالضرورة، لكنها مُتموضعة، مرتبطة بسياقها وشروط إنتاجها.

تدعو الحلقة إلى قراءة العالم بعناية عبر طرح أسئلة أساسية:
ما الافتراضات الكامنة في الخطاب؟
وأي منظور يُقدَّم بوصفه عالميًا؟
وأي التجارب تُدفع إلى الهامش بوصفها «سياقية»؟

كما توضّح أن القراءة النقدية لا ترفض الخبرة، بل تتعامل معها بجدية كافية تتيح مساءلتها. ومن هنا تبرز أهمية العلوم الإنسانية، لا لأنها تقدّم إجابات سهلة، بل لأنها تعلّمنا كيف تُنتَج الإجابات أصلًا.

في زمن يختلط فيه التفكير النقدي بالتشكيك أو العدميّة، تذكّرنا هذه الحلقة بأن النقد ممارسة أخلاقية، وطريقة للبقاء مسؤولين أمام تعقيد الواقع.
فقراءة العالم تعني رفض الاختصارات، والبقاء مع الصعوبة وقتًا كافيًا لفهم ما الذي هو على المحك.

قراءة العالم | Reading the World
سؤال واحد، في كل مرة.

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Reading the World | قراءة العالم
A bilingual podcast (English and Arabic) exploring world literature, culture, and higher education as ways of understanding how meaning is produced, circulated, and contested.

Each episode takes one question at a time—carefully, clearly, and without oversimplification.

Follow the podcast to continue the conversation.