Cedric J. Robinson and Elizabeth P. Robinson Collection on Third World News Review

Cedric Robinson (1940-2016) was a radical and a cross-disciplinary theorist; a political scientist; a scholar of media and film studies; a co-creator and producer of multiple long-standing left community media outlets; an educator and professor; and an activist and organizer dedicated to international solidarity movements. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, he became the director of the Center for Black Studies Research. He was the author of multiple texts including, but not limited to: The Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership, (1980, republished in 2016); Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, (1983, republished in 2000 and 2020); Black Movements in America (1997); and Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film Before World War II (2007). He is well-known for theorizing the framework of racial capitalism.

Elizabeth Robinson is an educator and social worker; a community media-producer and former associate director for media at KCSB Radio; an organizer and activist; and the long-time host of No Alibis, a radical news outlet that provides commentary, from a left and community-based perspective, on local, national, and international stories.

Along with University of California, Santa Barbara student Corey Dubin, Cedric Robinson created Third World News Review (TWNR), a long-standing community-led radio show on KCSB 91.9 FM that provided a counter-narrative news source aimed at destabilizing the ways in which mainstream media outlets report on politics and foreign policy in the so-called Third World. Though TWNR was initiated by Cedric Robinson, Corey Dubin, and Gerard Pigeon, the show must be more fully understood as having been produced collectively. Elizabeth Robinson, alongside Beth Anderson, was TWNR's co-producer in both its radio and television program formats. The show invited a wide range of scholarly and activist dialogue, with numerous correspondents and guests over the life of TWNR.

Third World News Review first aired in 1979 in the wake of what was known in Western media circles as the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Recognizing a general lack of understanding and awareness of international politics beyond the framing of U.S. imperialism amongst United States citizens, TWNR was born. The hour-long show ran weekly for 35 years and covered a range of subjects including the "Dirty War" in Argentina; the U.S. invasions of numerous Latin American countries; the Iraq War; the first and second intifadas in Palestine; the independence of Zimbabwe; and U.S. manipulation of elections in the Philippines, El Salvador, Afghanistan, and Venezuela. At every point in its three decades of production, TWNR supported global liberation movements — in particular, those in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. TWNR aired its last episode on October 26, 2015.