Category: Education

The 2023 Rutgers Wall-to-Wall Strike

Taking the Class Struggle in Higher Education to a New Level

Lessons from the historic and broad-based Rutgers strike.

review

Rage Against the Machine

Chicago Democratic Politics and their Contradictions

Guy Miller reviews Gordon K. Mantler’s “The Multiracial Promise,” an account and analysis of Harold Washington’s mayoralty in Chicago in the 1980s.

I’m Sick to Death of Florida’s Racism

Before the Florida Department of Education issued its curriculum directive that slavery in the United States did, after all, produce “personal benefits” for the enslaved in the form of a well-stocked resumé of trades, useful after Emancipation in 1863, the board members might have consulted a seminal document in the literature of the oppressed—Angela Davis’s 1971 essay, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves.”

Fighting the Right-Wing Attacks on Education

An Interview with Jesse Hagopian

Phil Gasper interviews radical educator Jesse Hagopian about attacks on anti-racist education in the United States.

The Jewish Labor Bund’s Medem Sanatorium: 1926-1942

Children at the Medem Sanatorium reading the Bund’s daily newspaper, the Folkstsaytung
Secularism and enlightenment swept through the insular world of East European Jewry, starting in the middle of the 19th century, and ending in the 20th with the . . .

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“Cancel Culture” and Its Perils

There is no question that “cancel culture” is a legitimate tool of a vibrant democratic culture, especially as it allows the powerless to redress the abuses and the offensive behavior directed at them by powerful public figures.

Voting Ends Soon in UFT Elections: A Referendum on Leadership the Past Two Years

Unity Caucus Logo

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest teachers’ union local in the country consistently left members unsafe, confused, ill, and even dead.

Education Reforms and Capitalism’s Changes to Work

Lessons for the Left

Weiner discusses education reform and prospects for resistance in recent years.

Education Reforms and Capitalism’s Changes to Work: Lessons for the Left

[Editor’s note: An archived version of the event can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/newpoliticsmag/videos/263390032588738/]
Join us January 20, 7:30pm (Eastern) to discuss what we need to learn and do to resist changes capitalism has made to labor and schools since Trump’s election . . .

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Education Reforms and Capitalism’s Changes to Work

Join us for a webinar Jan. 20, 2022, 7:30 pm (EST) as Lois Weiner and teacher union activists discuss how the revived attacks on teachers and their unions reflect capitalism’s chilling alteration of work. Details will be posted shortly.

Liberals Look To Weingarten, Again, To Betray Teachers, Parents, and Students

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, is once again doing the work of big money.

Tenure is the Easy Target but the Wrong One

The attacks on tenure are really just part of an orchestrated attempt to lower labor standards by decreasing job security for workers across the board while weakening higher education.

School Board Meetings Become Violent as Republicans Fight Over Health and Race

Local school board meetings in the United States have for the last three months become the site of intense arguments and even violence as parents fight over both health policies and teaching about race.

What is Left in the Neoliberal University?

The neoliberal university exploits intellectual labor under a veneer of liberal-humanist values — a false consciousness which emerging working-class academics must overcome.

Contingent Faculty Activism Pushes Legislation into Congressional Budget Reconciliation

The rising movement among contingent faculty has pushed bills onto CA Gov. Newsom’s desk and into the budget reconciliation process in Congress.

“Conscious Linkage”

The Proletarianization of Academic Labor in the Algorithmic University

The attempt to deskill teaching in higher education is hardly new. Technology is being used to transform the academic worker into a “conscious linkage” of the machine.

How Contingent Faculty Organizing Can Succeed in Higher Education

Power Despite Precarity is not just a solid guide to best practices in day-to-day trade union work within higher education. It’s also a rousing call for the contingent faculty movement to embrace grassroots, rather than top-down, organizing.

The Unions Our Educators & Communities Deserve

This action dialogue on Monday, May 3 will focus on the many roles of unions during these increasingly complex times for educators, learners, families, and communities. Speakers include New Politics editorial board member Lois Weiner.

Heads up! Chins down! Resisting the New Bipartisan Neoliberal Project in Education

Teachers’ work is being transformed beneath our collective nose. We have missed an opportunity to combat the project in its earliest stages but we cannot delay in understanding and combating the new iteration of neoliberalism’s global project in education.

Reply to Klyczek

We shouldn’t assume that union and community efforts will inevitably succumb to corporate co-optation.

Community Schools and the Dangers of Ed Tech Privatization

Bottom-up democracy through community schools sounds like a great idea, but there are many dangers from these ‘charter schools on steroids.”

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