Navid Farnia is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of African American Studies. He received his PhD in African American and African Studies from Ohio State University in 2019. His research broadly explores the relationship between racial oppression in the United States and U.S. imperialism. Navid’s book manuscript, National Liberation in an Imperialist World: Race and the Modern U.S. National Security State, traces the national security state’s evolution by examining how U.S. officials responded to national liberation movements at home and abroad between 1959 and 1980. The book looks at several cases, including the Cuban Revolution, the 1960s Black urban rebellions, the Viet Nam War, the Black Panther Party, and Zimbabwe’s independence struggle. In doing so, it highlights the interrelated strategies the U.S. used to export racial oppression while simultaneously importing the violent machinations of its global empire. Ultimately, the project makes sense of the national security state’s historical evolution by illuminating how the strategies and tactics used against liberation movements triggered modern forms of policing and warfare. These strategies and tactics culminated in the national security state’s present configuration.

Navid joins Princeton from Wake Forest University, where he taught in the Department of History. He has taught courses on African American, African, U.S., and Atlantic history. His past courses include the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Contemporary America, U.S. Interventions in the Long Twentieth Century, and Race, Policing, and Warfare, among others. In addition to Wake Forest, Navid has taught at Eastern Illinois University, Portland State University, and Ohio State. In December 2019, he organized an event at Eastern Illinois on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassinations of the Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. As part of the event, Stan McKinney and Henry Nesbitt, Panther members from the Party’s Illinois chapter visited campus, shared their experiences with students, and spoke about Fred Hampton.

Navid has also written for the African American Intellectual History Society. His article, “On ‘Looting’ in an Apartheid State,” challenges the racially loaded discourse on “looting,” which resurfaced after the 2020 protests against state violence in Black communities.  In his spare time, he writes about race and current events and enjoys watching sports, particularly basketball and soccer.