Take Back Higher Education : Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Era

by Giroux, Henry A.; Giroux, Susan Searls

• ISBN13: 9781403964236
• ISBN10: 1403964238
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-10
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

igher education is under siege. No longer viewed as a public good, it is attacked by businesses who want to refashion institutions in the image of the marketplace. Higher education is the target of cultural conservatives who have undermined academic freedom and access by deriding the academy as a hotbed of left-multicultural-radicalism and anti-Americanism. The historic mission to educate students as citizens motivated by democratic values is overshadowed by profit margins. Giroux and Giroux argue that the greatest danger faced by higher education comes from corporatization and educational apartheid. If higher education is to meet the challenges of a democratic future, it must encourage students to be critical thinkers and citizens, as it vouchsafes conditions for educators to produce scholarship in the service of an inclusive democracy.

Author Biography

Henry A. Giroux holds the Global Television Network Chair in Communications in the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University in Canada. He is the author of many books, including Stealing Innocence, Channel Surfing, and The Abandoned Generation. Susan Searls Giroux is Assistant Professor in the English Department at McMaster University. She is co-author of The Theory Toolbox and co-editor of The Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural Studies. The Girouxs live in Hamilton, Ontario in Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction * The Post 9-11 University and the Project of Democracy * Race, Rhetoric, and the Contest Over Civic Education * Academic Culture, Intellectual Courage, and the Crisis of Politics * Cultural Studies and Critical Pedagogy in the Academy * The Multicultural Miracle: Depoliticizing Race in the Age of Privatization * Neoliberalism Goes to College: Higher Education in the New Economy * Youth, Higher Education, and the Breaking of the Social Contract: Towards the Possibility of a Democratic Future

Introduction * The Post 9-11 University and the Project of Democracy * Race, Rhetoric, and the Contest Over Civic Education * Academic Culture, Intellectual Courage, and the Crisis of Politics * Cultural Studies and Critical Pedagogy in the Academy * The Multicultural Miracle: Depoliticizing Race in the Age of Privatization * Neoliberalism Goes to College: Higher Education in the New Economy * Youth, Higher Education, and the Breaking of the Social Contract: Towards the Possibility of a Democratic Future