Film Screening: You Are Not a Loan

In February 2020, filmmaker and Debt Collective co-founder Astra Taylor assembled a group of activists and academics to discuss the crisis of higher education and next steps for the growing movement to cancel student debt and make college and university tuition-free. Released by *The Intercept* in January 2021, *You Are Not a Loan* is a record of that encounter.

Collectively, the U.S. public owes a total of $1.7 trillion in education debt. How did we get to this point? What would truly free college—meaning both without cost and aimed at liberation—be like? How have racism and capitalism sabotaged public education as we know it? What do we mean by the word “public”? Where is our power to change things?

Taylor writes, “*You Are Not a Loan* puts current events and the deepening crisis of higher education into a broader context. It explores past decisions that set us on our current path while pointing toward a utopian horizon we can still reach for—a horizon where education is decommodified and democratized, available to all who want to learn. Most importantly, it offers a reminder that we will only shift course if regular people organize and fight back.”

The Debt Collective is a debtors’ union fighting to cancel debts and to build a world where college is publicly funded, healthcare is universal, and housing is guaranteed for all.

Part of the 2024–25 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series, "What Are Universities For? Struggles for the Soul of Higher Education."