Radical Unlearning: Book Reading and Interactive Workshop

Radical Unlearning is described as "a road map for rewiring our brains to unlearn harmful beliefs, heal broken bonds, and transform our communities.

The beliefs that hold us back-inherited prejudices, self-limiting thoughts, destructive patterns-often feel permanent. But what if they're not? In Radical Unlearning, you'll learn about how neuroplasticity-the brain's ability to form new neural pathways-plays a key role in how we learn (and unlearn) behaviors and biases. Journalist and activist Lewis Raven Wallace likens the process to how footpaths are created by countless people walking the same route over years. We can choose to disrupt existing neural connections, to create new paths that lead to meaningful change.

Weaving personal stories with scientific research, Wallace shows how anyone can break free from harmful patterns and beliefs, no matter how deeply ingrained. This book invites you to begin your own unlearning journey with practical exercises and reflection questions."

Lewis Raven Wallace (they/ze/he), a first-year PhD student in history at Duke University, is the author of The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and Radical Unlearning: The Art and Science of Making Change from Within (Beacon Press, 2025). They hold a position as the Abolition Journalism Fellow at Interrupting Criminalization where they support abolitionist journalism and work to counter propaganda about policing.

As part of a career in independent journalism, Lewis has also been a 2022 Camargo Foundation Fellow, a 2021 Ford Global Fellow, a 2020 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab, a 2019 Heidrich Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Labadie Collection, and a 2019 Marguerite Casey Foundation Poverty Reporting Fellow. In 2018, they cofounded Press On, a southern movement journalism collective where they also served as the Director of Popular Education until 2022.

Lewis previously worked in public radio, and is a long-time activist engaged in prison abolition, racial justice, and queer and trans liberation. Lewis, a student of family history, environmental history, pigs and policing, and social justice, is white and transgender, and was born and raised in the Midwest with deep roots in the South.