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Call for Contributions for a Workshop in Gießen on July 18-19, 2024. Deadline: February 15, 2024

The University of Sydney welcomes applications for the position of Lecturer in Political Economy (Education Focused) (Level B)
The position is based at the School of Social and Political Sciences and will significantly contribute to the Discipline of Political Economy's pluralist, heterodox and interdisciplinary program of political economy teaching and learning at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The appointee will also conduct research in their field of study and/or in pedagogical practice, design and evaluation, and contribute to educational and other leadership and governance priorities in SSPS.
Full information about the role and application process is available on the University of Sydney’s Careers Website.
The post Lecturer in Political Economy (Education Focused) appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

I have a new piece at The Dispatch on the antisemitism hearing in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the poor performance of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and MIT. From the piece: The presidents' bad hand in the hearings did not stem from a lack of hate…

For our weekly "Ideas on Europe" editorial by UACES, the University Association for European Studies, we welcome Dr Patrick Bijsmans, from Maastricht University.
The post (De)internationalisation in the European Higher Education Area? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In "Educational Theory" (vol. 73, no. 2): Discourse Ethical Perspectives on Education in Polarized Political Cultures* Christopher Martin – "Symposium Introduction: Discourse EthicalPerspectives on Education in Polarized Political Cultures" (open access)* Julian Culp – "Democratic Citizenship Education in Digitized Societies: A Habermasian Approach"* Christopher Martin – "Educational Institutions and Indoctrination" (open access)* Anniina Leiviskä – "Truth, Moral Rightness, and Justification: AHabermasian Perspective on Decolonizing the University" (open access)* Krassimir Stojanov – "Inclusive Universalism as a Normative Principleof Education" (open access)* Darron Kelly – "Conceptualizing a Practical Discourse Survey Instrument for Assessing Communicative Agency and Rational Trust in Educational Policymaking"* Gertrud Nunner-Winkler – "Discourse Ethics: A Pedagogical Policy for Promoting Democratic Virtues"

Zeynep Gülru Göker (PhD), Sabanci University Istanbul, und Aslı Polatdemir, Doktorandin an der Universität Bremen, forschen zu Gleichstellungspolitiken an Hochschulen in der Türkei. Beide sprechen mit...

 Alligator has to be the best University Mascot"What is happening in Florida will not stay in Florida." From the AAUP's Report on FloridaThere is no shortage of critical responses to what is happening to higher education in Florida. There is the report from the AAUP cited above, and the podcast I co-host even dedicated an episode to it. In many, but not all of these cases, these responses have dovetailed with DeSantis' political career, focusing on the person, the policy, and the overall strategy. See for the example the great episode of Know Your Enemy. While there is much to be said about that, I watched the following clip below and was struck by its ability to mobilize and tap into existing frustrations against higher education.Leaving aside, at least for a moment, the attack on DEI, There are three prongs to this attack. The first is on tenure. The attack on tenure can be understood as a kind of negative solidarity, in that job security and protection can seem like an egregious excess for an elite class when so many, even those within academia, are subject to absolute precarity and instability. I have been talking about "negative solidarity" for a long time, ten years (and I did not even coin the term), and one of the things that I focus on in my forthcoming book is that negative solidarity has to be understood as a kind of affective constitution of politics. To cite a passage from that book:  "Negative solidarity can be understood as a particular affect, indignation at those who are perceived to not work hard enough, are not engaged in real work, or who rely on political power or corruption (these two things are seen as more or less synonymous) to keep their jobs. This affect, this anger, aimed at everyone from those who benefit from the last remnants of social protection to those public employees who still have union protections, has to be seen as both an exclusion and an inclusion. As much as it excludes those who do not work or who are not perceived as working, it does so in the name of a loose collectivity A popular bumper sticker in the US reads, "Keep Working: Millions of Welfare Depend Upon You," defining a particular kind of indignation. The person affixing such a bumper sticker car is not just angry at the person who is supposedly living off of their labor, but, as it addresses, or interpellates, its imagined audience, it draws them together in shared indignation. There is a sense of a "we," a collectivity of "real" workers, "real Americans," an imagined universality albeit a weak one defined by both work and its ethical norm that is being harmed. This is what puts the solidarity in negative solidarity. There is a unity, a community, albeit loosely defined in and through their shared engagement in work, in productive work. Work that is defined through both its physical difficulty, or at least the stoic fortitude it takes to endure it; its economic centrality, or perceived economic centrality; and ethic of individual commitment, rather than collective protections. The solidarity is negative in the sense it both eschews any collectivity, unions are seen as the deviation rather than the expression of this collectivity precisely because they undermine the shared commitment to work that defines it, and in the way that it functions as a strategy. Negative solidarity can only see any improvement, collective bargaining, protection of employment, and so on, as not only partial, and thus some sense corrupt, but also as a deviation of the fundamental ethical basis of work itself, which demands individual strength and fortitude. As much as negative solidarity is aimed at others, at those who are perceived not to work, seeking to discipline those who rely on state spending or those who are protected by union agreements, it ultimately further the attenuation of class struggle, obscuring actual divisions with imagined ones. The attachment to work and independence ultimately undermines its own status in the world, as individual workers are left to fend for themselves."Tenure, the idea of job security supposedly independent of effort seems absolutely antithetical to a world where effort, hard work is supposed, to be the basis of not only continued employment, but one's very existence and worth as a person. There is nothing more out of sync with the contemporary regime of work subject to constant surveillance, evaluation, and examination than the idea of someone continuing to work with no other motivation than their own particular passion and interest. One important difference between the tenured academic and the other figures of the negative solidarity imaginary, such as the welfare queen and lazy school teacher, is that there is an actual injustice here. It is not the one that DeSantis imagines, of tenured faculty as deadweight (although I am sure that happens as well), but the fact that people doing the same job, and probably even more work, are doing it for a fraction of the salary and with no job security or stability. This is worth imagining because the attack on tenure that is starting in Florida, Texas, and other states is an attack on an already divided and demoralized labor force. I cannot really imagine the thousands of adjunct faculty rallying to defend tenure when it already has been effectively eroded for so many (often with tenured faculty doing little to stop this transformation). Moreover, while some people have responded to the attack on tenure in Florida to argue that this will make it difficult to attract talented teachers and researchers, making it ultimately self defeating. I would argue that such an argument overlooks the truly desperate and demoralized state of the academic job market. Many talented researches and teachers are already working for poverty wages at multiple institutions. Some of these people would gladly take jobs in Florida even without the prospect of tenure if those jobs would at least pay for rent, food, and maybe even insurance. Negative solidarity is at its strongest when it is able to mobilize actual grievances and frustrations, attaching them to illusory objects and fictitious goals. The "Keep Working" bumper sticker referenced above is fueled by an actual frustration, the experience of working hard with no real improvement of one's life. It is this sense that something has gone wrong with work that fuels its indignation. It imagines the cause of this condition to be the welfare queen rather than say the CEO, to put it simply, or, more accurately, the structure of capital. It is an inadequate idea in Spinoza's use of the term, reflecting more the imagination and bias of the one using it than anything about the world. Its inadequacy in terms of a grasp of the world does not diffuse its hold on the imagination, and one could argue it is all the more convincing in that it refers to imaginary causes and less to the actual causes and conditions of the world. This becomes even more the case as these figures, the welfare queen, the radical professor corrupting the youth, the lazy school teacher become part of a powerful mythology circulated though pundits and the media. This is what Yves Citton refers to as a mythocracy and, as he argues, these myths and some sense function by acting on and channeling existing frustrations, anger, and indignation. The more these myths circulate, the more they become the common sense that we grasp the world. Case in point people still believe in the "welfare queen" in millions living off of welfare long after the program has become gutted and subject to disciplinary work regimes. Beneath the Boardwalk, The Gators All of this is a rather long preamble to discussing the video above. Two things strike me in DeSantis discussion of his crackdown on higher education: the increasing cost of higher education and its inability to deliver a better job to those who graduate. These are real sources of frustration. Of course neither of these things have much to do with what DeSantis is proposing, but, as with the idea of the "Millions on Welfare" the important matter is how DeSantis is mobilizing actual frustrations towards imaginary targets. Eliminating majors in things like Women and Gender Studies, Black History, or other sorts of Ethnic studies will do little to reduce the cost of tuition. DeSantis invokes the figure of the taxpayer, arguing that the taxpayer should not bear the costs of such niche and unmarketable majors. The taxpayer could be understood as a kind of stand in for the the citizen, but, as theorists such as Wendy Brown have noted, the shift from the political to the economic has a fundamentally anti-democratic function. The taxpayer is a figure of both individual sovereignty and mass conformity. With respect to the former, it is more akin to a consumer than a citizen, as in the often repeated phrase uttered at school boards, teachers, and city halls, "I pay your salary." The citizen gives consent, elects officials and passes laws, but the taxpayer pays the bills and always reserves the right to get its money back. The taxpayer never alienates some of its liberties or claims in exchange for rights, as in a social contract, but demands to be treated as a customer, and the customer is always right. At the same time, however, the taxpayer is a figure of the majority. The taxpayer is a figure of a kind of silent majority, taxpayers only pay for the general good and, in our society, the general good can only take one form, jobs: it can only be private self interest. This is the second claim of DeSantis speech, that such majors are not well positioned to be employable. We could argue about the employability of majors in women studies, ethnic studies, philosophy, etc., Or we could even talk about the fact that the university's role is to prepare people for more than just work, preparing them for political and cultural life. However, both responses miss the point that the university has, at least in the US, been touted for decades as the only solution to declining wages, automation, and globalization, replacing unions, collective action, and legal protections as the path to a "good job." The solution to every problem with work has been "go to college; get a good job." There are many faults to such a slogan. It overlooks the many "good jobs" that do not involve college, as well as the inherent limitations of such an individual solution to getting, acquiring, and protecting good jobs--leaving everyone to compete with everyone else in getting classes, credentials, and other investments in human capital. It also seems wholly inadequate to the changes of work in recent decades. Education cannot contend with the structural forces of deskilling, offshoring, and casualization that have made work more precarious, less financially rewarding, and just worse. Many students work through college only to return to the same service jobs when they graduate; or, as Communique from an Absent Future put it, "We work and we borrow in order to work and to borrow.  And the jobs
we work toward are the jobs we already have." All of which is to say that DeSantis is drawing on existing frustration and indignation with the university. Rising tuition combined with failures to deliver on social mobility have made many people frustrated at the university system. What DeSantis is offering is targets and directions for that frustration; it does not matter that these targets have little to do with the real problems with the university. In fact one could argue that the targets he picks are all the more effective in that they tap into existing myths about race, professors, and universities. The imagined nature of the targets should not overlook the real problems. College cost and with it college debt have been increasing at exponential rates. Students find themselves massively in debt upon graduation only to go into jobs that might require college degrees, as it becomes the new high school diploma, but do not offer the same class mobility. Thus it would foolish to respond to DeSantis by simply defending the university as it is, defending academic freedom, tenure, and so on. Any defense of the university has to be against both the assaults on freedom and the neoliberal university that makes those assaults possible. What I hear when I listen to speeches like the one above is the beginning of a larger assault on the university that will come to every state not because DeSantis will be President, but because it is fueled by real frustrations, college costs, jobs, uneven labor protections, and imaginary enemies. (In retrospect I should have called this post De te Fabula Narratur part two, emphasizing less the exceptional state of Florida and more the general condition). As this struggle spreads from state to state  I fear that a rearguard defense of the university as it exists is just not going to be enough. Any attempt to confront the right's attack on the university is going to have to take on rising costs and also address head on the university's role in the meritocratic mythocracy which claims that the solution to the collective condition of work is individual education and advancement. I realize that these two propositions are nothing less than revolutionary, but it appears that we are living though, once again, the lesson that revolutionary change is the most effective opposition to fascist creep (and fascist creeps). I decided to illustrate this post with pictures of Alligators from my recent trip to Florida

Requiring political disclosure would increase trust in the university system at relatively low cost. Rather than massive cutbacks in funding, it is better to let the light of day restore faith in US higher education.
The post Increasing Transparency Can Restore Trust in Higher Education appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

In my MSc dissertation, I examined the association between interethnic contact in national schools, the lack thereof in ethnic-exclusive education institutions, and the extent of homophily in the friendship networks of Malaysian university students. Malaysia offers a unique context to study ethnic relations due to ethnic segregation in education pathways. These findings suggest that friendship … Continued

In this piece, Dr Iman Dawood analyses the intersecting factors impacting Salafi women’s access to university, including issues with gender-segregation, interest on student loans, and class-based barriers. The subject of Muslim women's education has repeatedly made headlines in recent years. Global news stories about attacks on female students in Nigeria and Pakistan by actors claiming … Continued

Higher education is at the core of the political challenges confronting the Albanese government, principally of boosting capital accumulation whilst safeguarding aspects of social reproduction. The Albanese government has prioritised skills training and an industry policy focusing on green energy, but this is at the expense of social reproduction including in areas of education.
The Accord is designed to support the production of 'labour power' via skill training and subsidisation of employers for job training but notably recognises that higher education is at the heart of the current social reproduction crises – evident in the shortages in trained employees in areas that are essential to ensure that labour is available for capital. Yet, at the same time, it shifts the cost of this to students - international and domestic- whilst remaining committed to fiscal austerity. The current student debt crisis speaks directly to this contradiction. By 2024 student debt is around $78 billion, ten times the figure of 2005, caused by governmental policies particularly three rounds of student contribution increases and the Coalition government's student loan schemes, plus high inflation that is indexed into yearly HECS/HELP repayments, which has resulted in 3 million students in debt.
The post The University Accord: Plus ça change… appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Interventions into the education landscape began subtly at first, but over the years, they were replaced with efforts to reform the curriculum along more religious lines and deeper control mechanisms.

Perhaps the most important bill under the radar in
this year's regular session of the Louisiana Legislature would rein
in excesses against free expression in the state's higher education system.

SB 486 by
Republican state Sen. Alan Seabaugh
would prohibit preferential treatment based upon race, color, ethnicity,
national origin, political affiliation, or sex; discrimination in the
recruitment or admission of students or in the recruitment or employment of
employees; requiring as a condition of admission or employment that the
applicant submit an ideological statement; promoting instruction that the moral
character, racial attitudes, and responsibility or guilt for past group actions
of an individual is determined by race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or sex;
and would ban compelled expression contrary to a student's personal political
ideas or affiliation.

During a Senate
Education Committee hearing last week, Seabaugh noted behaviors the bill
would prevent at present occur at state institutions. Several examples he drew
from Louisiana State University, despite
a fake pullback from formal diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies
and information dissemination, moves publicized in leftist media. He emphasized
that bureaucratic name changes and public removal of media that glorified what
the bill would make illegal hadn't stopped these practices behind the scenes.

For example, he said LSU from at least some job applicants
still required a diversity,
equity, and inclusion statement, a pledge that invites a prospective or
current employee to demonstrate commitment to DEI, often through a written
statement that factors into hiring or retention or promotion. He also accused
the school of differentially enforcing regulations on expression depending upon
the content of the political messages involved, as related to him by eyewitnesses.

He stated the behavior occurred at other
institutions as well. At Northwestern State University, those involved in
student governance had to pledge fealty to a "land acknowledgement statement,"
which recognize indigenous communities' "rights" to territories seized by "colonial"
powers. He distributed at the meeting documentation demonstrating these and
other practices that the bill would nullify.

It didn't come to a vote because of some last-minute
amendments Seabaugh wanted to make and others he couldn't because some schools
wanted these appended to which he was amenable but they hadn't delivered these to
him yet. He extracted a promise from the committee chairman GOP state Sen. Rick
Edmonds that the bill would receive a vote this week with whatever amendments Seabaugh
deemed necessary.

Actually, the bill is less far-reaching than those
that have become law in five other states, with around 20 others considering
similar laws. It doesn't demand
dismantling DEI bureaucracies, regardless of their appellations, nor limits
the kinds of programs delivered or dollars
spent on these. It does prohibit teaching "woke" precepts of racial guilt and
neo-racist disguised as anti-racist interpretations of social and economic
policy, which some states' present and forthcoming regulations don't address
and others limit to just general education coursework that all students must
take, and it would not be inconsistent with the bill's purpose to prohibit that
instruction only for general educational requirements and/or to require that
any teaching of those precepts occur in a balanced fashion genuinely critiquing
the many scholastic warts of that approach.

While outreach efforts to encourage in higher
education greater participation and success of students and employees from
disadvantaged backgrounds serve a legitimate purpose, these have become warped
into a self-righteous defense and propagation of policies privileging such individuals
at the expense of the rights of all others, a subversion based upon an ideological
imperative inimical to the purpose of the university as a place that fosters
critical thinking and free inquiry. SB 486 minimizes that possibility and therefore
must be advanced into law.

University rankings and their subsequent league tables presuppose higher education institutions exist in a linear hierarchical structure and that presenting information in this way is useful to prospective students. Deploying a comparable methodology to the rankers, Kyle Grayson and Paul Grayson argue that English universities largely fall into two non-hierarchical groups with comparable characteristics. The … Continued