by Clare Richardson-Barlow
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| Judith Butler |
Amid all the other breaking news consuming the United States this month, the University of California, Berkeley, arguably the nation’s most elite public university, gave the Trump administration a list of 160 names of faculty, staff and students, as part of an investigation into “alleged antisemitic incidents”. While all the names on this list are significant, one name in particular that UC Berkeley handed over to the Trump administration stands out: Judith Butler, the eminent queer theorist, literary theorist and philosopher, and one of the most famous public intellectuals in the United States today. In addition to Butler’s name representing one of the most high-profile academic scalps demanded by the Trump administration in its campaign against higher education so far, Butler’s name is also notable for another reason: Butler is proudly and publicly Jewish, and has written extendively about their Jewish identity and how it informs their politics. In the name of “fighting antisemitism”, the Trump administration is publicly making an example out of arguably the most famous Jewish public intellectual in the country today. —The Guardian, September 22, 2025
as though paper could hold a body.
Butler’s among them—
the one who told us
gender is a stage,
a script rehearsed until it feels like bone.
Now the government calls their name,
writes it as accusation,
as though thought itself
were treason.
I think of the mothers in Palestine,
their daughters’ names whispered
to checkpoints and borders,
written into files,
circulated in offices
where no one sees their faces.
A name becomes a burden to carry,
a permission denied.
Butler compared it to Kafka—
to McCarthy, to lists, to silence—
and I believe them.
A list is never just a list.
It is the beginning of forgetting
and the rehearsal of fear.
And still,
I return to the crib
where my baby curls her hand around mine,
her pudgy fist the size of a plum.
She cannot ask yet what it means to be a girl,
but already the world
is writing her story,
already she is among the daughters
who must learn to abide.
Butler’s voice is not just theirs.
It is the echo of every woman
who has been told to hush,
every mother
who has watched her child’s name
crossed out by a hand of power.
What is silenced will not stay silent.
What is written down
will be read again.
Even in exile,
even in mourning,
Her many voices endure—
not performance,
but song.
Clare Richardson-Barlow is a writer, political economist, and lecturer at the University of Leeds. Her work spans academic, policy, and creative forms, with a focus on climate, energy, and justice. Before academia, she worked in Washington, D.C. think tanks on international policy. Her poetry and essays often explore womanhood, memory, and myth, especially how women’s voices are silenced and reimagined as strength. Originally from Oregon, she now lives in Yorkshire.
