(2021). Affect, Biopower, and 'The Fascist inside You': The (Un-)Making of Microfascism in Schools and Classrooms. Journal of Curriculum Studies, v53 n1 p1-15. This essay demonstrates how Deleuze and Guattari's notion of 'microfascism' is of crucial importance to understanding the complexities of contemporary pedagogical efforts to combat populism, right-wing extremism, and fascism. The author discusses how 'affect' and 'biopower' are entangled in everyday processes of discipline and control, and argues that these concepts are pivotal for appreciating the affective relations and capacities of microfascism. To illustrate how affect and biopower are intimately linked to microfascist practices in schools and classrooms, the author analyzes two examples–one in health education and another in citizenship education. Finally, the author suggests pedagogical strategies that could contribute to unmaking microfascist subjectivities, emphasizing that it is crucial to pay attention to the connections between micro- and macro-level fascisms…. [Direct]
(2021). Feminists against Fascism: The Indian Female Muslim Protest in India. Education Sciences, v11 Article 793. This article explores contestations around ideas of India, citizenship, and nation from the perspective of Indian Muslim female university students in Delhi. In December 2019, the Hindu majoritarian government introduced new citizenship legislation. It caused widespread distress over its adverse implications for Muslims and a large section of socio-economically deprived populations. In response, millions of people, mainly from Dalit, Adivasi, and Bahujan backgrounds, took to the streets to protest. Unprecedentedly, young Muslim female students and women emerged at the forefront of the significant public debate. This situation disrupted the mainstream perception of oppressed Muslim women lacking public voice and agency. Drawing on the narratives of the Indian Muslim female students who participated in these protests, this article highlights their conceptions of, and negotiations with, the idea of India. In doing so, this article reflects on the significance of critical feminist… [PDF]
(2018). American Educators' Confrontation with Fascism. Educational Researcher, v47 n1 p46-52 Jan-Feb. This historical study explores how educators in the United States responded to the rise of fascism between the World Wars. By considering and then ultimately rejecting the fascist approach to education and philosophy, American educators defined democratic education in contrast to fascist/totalitarian approaches to education by rejecting indoctrination and propaganda. The author argues that fascism provided a catalyst for pushing epistemological issues surrounding propaganda, indoctrination, relativity, and absolutism to the center of their collective consciousness in ways that parallel the controversies of today over "fake news" and "alternative facts."… [Direct]
(2021). Higher Education for Democracy: The Role of the University in Civil Society. SUNY Press Democracy and higher education are inextricably linked: universities not only have the ability to be key arbiters of how democracy is advanced, but they also need to reflect democratic values in their practices, objectives, and goals. Framed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing crisis of structural racism, "Higher Education for Democracy" explores academe's role in advancing democracy by using a cross-national comparison of Los Angeles, New Delhi, and Hong Kong to develop strategies that universities can employ to strengthen democracy and resist fascism. William G. Tierney argues that if academe is to be a progenitor in the advancement of democracy, then we need to consider five areas of change that have been significant across national contexts amid both globalization and neoliberalism: inequality, privatization, the public good, identity, and academic freedom. Taking a comparative approach and drawing on scholarly literature, archival research, and interviews,… [Direct]
(2024). Zapatista Micropolitics and Antifascist Education. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, v46 n3 p410-421. A critique of both homogenizing and vertical power runs through the Zapatista social project in Chiapas, Mexico, lending a distinctive character to both Zapatismo's political vision of self-governance and to the educational vision of its community schools. Zapatismo's critical practices may thus offer valuable contributions to antifascist praxis and pedagogy. This paper considers anti/fascism through a micropolitical lens, focusing on two prevailing tendencies: binarization of power relations and homogenization of identities. It then suggests that Zapatista practices undermine microfascist tendencies in social-political life through subversion of command relationships, plural identification, critique of representation and safeguarding of alterity. The paper concludes by tracing the manner in which a critique of state schooling within Chiapas's indigenous communities has led to the development of Zapatista autonomous schools, examining ways in which these schools refuse totalization… [Direct]
(2019). Ethnocentrism and Higher Art Education: Lingering Legacies, Imperative Nondualities. International Journal of Art & Design Education, v38 n4 p840-852 Nov. Art education in the USA has made great progress toward greater inclusiveness and is generally a force against resurgent fascism. Nevertheless, higher art education theory is dominated by Euro-Western philosophical legacies, encumbered by dualism, which impede art education's emancipative democratising potential. Recent debate about the uselessness of aesthetics illustrate this ethnocentrism. This article analyses the ethnocentrism that lingers in the postmodern legacies that undergird the debate; then shows how engagement with nondualist philosophies, predominantly non-Euro-Western, can make a profound difference to art education theory and practice. They are imperative to comprehending hybridity promoting global citizenship, resisting fascism and advancing global equity…. [Direct]
(2024). Working with Critical Reflective Pedagogies at a Moment of Post-Truth Populist Authoritarianism. Teaching in Higher Education, v29 n1 p93-110. This paper considers critical reflection as a pedagogical strategy in UK higher education at a moment of an amplification of populist, reactionary discourses. It draws on written reflections of foundation-level students in a case study cohort and offers insights into their lived learning experiences and perceptions of the value of reflection. This is situated within the UK 'Brexit' context, alongside a proliferation of far-right populist voices, emboldened supremacies and rising fascism. Accompanying this has been a normalisation of reactionary 'anti-social justice' discourses. It is vital that HE practitioners recognise, pre-empt and interrupt such discourses, developing pedagogies and curricula in response. Yet there are inherent challenges in a climate of 'post-truth' anti-intellectualism. This paper argues that critical reflection contributes a useful approach to learning, fostering development of students' personal, intellectual and political capacities to navigate this complex… [Direct]
(2020). German Fascism, Soviet Communism, and Latvian Nationalism in the Education of Latvia (1940-1944). Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, v56 n5 p624-641. This article focuses on the position of leading Latvian pedagogues in cooperation with Nazi occupiers and the paradoxical transformation of Latvian nationalism into resistance against fascism and communism. Latvian attitudes towards Nazism were formed during Soviet occupation in 1940 when Latvian society, especially the intelligentsia, suffered under severe Communist oppression. Upon occupation by the Nazis in July 1941, teachers expected to return to the "good old days" of the nation state. However, the new occupiers had their own agenda, which did not coincide with Latvian interests. We discuss planned Nazi reforms for the Latvian education system and Latvian pedagogues' interpretations of the Nazi concept "Volksgemeinschaft" by comparing the Education Monthly (EM) journal published from 1937 to 1939 with EM published from 1942 to 1944. We conclude that Latvian pedagogues viewed "Volksgemeinschaft" and its associated reforms as a means to unify the… [Direct]
(2022). Merit and "Ressentiment": How to Tackle the Tyranny of Merit. Theory and Research in Education, v20 n2 p173-181 Jul. My contribution to this special issue engages with Michael Sandel's "The Tyranny of Meritocracy" and its significance to the academic conversation about meritocracy and its discontents. Specifically, I highlight Sandel's diagnosis of the rise of populism and his proposed remedy for the 'tyranny of merit'. First, building on Menno ter Braak's writings on the rise of fascism, I explore the sources of "ressentiment" in contemporary societies as stemming not from disillusionment with meritocracy but from the broken promise of liberalism and democracy more generally. Second, I consider Sandel's proposals to reform elite university admissions and to 'recognize work', explore their wider applicability, and reflect on their limitations to meaningfully change how success and failure is socially experienced and morally understood…. [Direct]
(2022). Rethinking Political Socialization in Schools: The Role of 'Affective Indoctrination'. Educational Philosophy and Theory, v54 n14 p2480-2491. The purpose of this essay is to revisit the notion of indoctrination in education by providing a summary of the field and highlighting the role of affects and emotions in the aftermath of the 'affective turn'. It is argued that "affective indoctrination"–defined as the emotional coercion or manipulation that, arguably, any form of education might use in order to be effective–is likely to invoke harm in students, intentionally or unintentionally. Hence, it is suggested that education theorists and educators in general need not only to acknowledge affective indoctrination as a possible component of all education, but also to explore and take measures how to minimize the extent to which indoctrinal teaching may be facilitated through cultivating certain affects and emotions. Theorizing affective indoctrination can offer new insights into how and why educators and students adopt or resist particular political beliefs (e.g. democracy or fascism)…. [Direct]
(2024). Anatomies of Desire: Education and Human Exceptionalism after "Anti-Oedipus". Educational Philosophy and Theory, v56 n3 p252-261. In line with Andrew Culp's work "Dark Deleuze" (2016) and in opposition to the tendency in some education studies communities to selectively engage affirmative and vitalist dimensions of Deleuze's work, this article engages the radical critical theory foundation of "Anti-Oedipus" (1972/2009) by exploring anatomies of desire at work around students and animals in educational practice. Desiring-machines, with their capacity to produce repression as much as revolution; freedom as much as fascism and slavery take on specific and outlandish manifestations in the presence of animals in different educational settings. Drawing on ethnographic data from upper secondary school and higher education, the article identifies the subjectivation of students to implements of animal killing and control, and to the risk of physical harm accompanying work with wild animals, as constitutive anatomies of desire in these settings. The article argues that the way society and education… [Direct]
(2024). Authoritarianism and Democratic Education: A Paper for Martin Thrupp. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, v59 n2 p671-689. This paper examines the contribution that Martin Thrupp made to educational policy and teachers' practice in the light of the present threat to democracy presented by the authoritarian right. Martin's work on school composition is extended to an analysis of the prospects and practice for a education for democratic citizenship. It focuses on the challenge to an education for democratic citizenship at the level of pedagogy, the individual school and the wider context of the threat posed to democracy by the authoritarian right and those from more mainstream parties that adopt elements of its programme. It argues that teaching the history of fascism and colonialism are key to such an education and that in contrast to shallow pedagogies (Balarin and Rodriguez in Global Soc Chall J 3:49, 2024) pedagogy should engage students in controversial issues. It reports on key examples of the ways that this can be undertaken in the work of Kidman and O'Malley in Memory Stud 13(4):537-550, (2018),… [Direct]
(2020). Speaking Truth to Power: Core Principles for Advancing International Journalism Education. Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, v75 n4 p392-406 Dec. A confluence of forces has brought journalism and journalism education to a precipice. The rise of fascism, the advance of digital technology, and the erosion of the economic foundation of news media are disrupting journalism and mass communication (JMC) around the world. Combined with the increasingly globalized nature of journalism and media, these forces are posing extraordinary challenges to and opportunities for journalism and media education. This essay outlines 10 core principles to guide and reinvigorate international JMC education. We offer a concluding principle for JMC education as a foundation for the general education of college students…. [Direct]
(2019). When Arts and Crafts Education Meets Fascism: The Friuli Mosaic School, 1922-1943. History of Education, v48 n6 p751-768. This paper examines the early history of the Friuli Mosaic School (FMS), an Italian arts and crafts school specialising in mosaic and terrazzo. The history of the FMS opens up a rare window into an often-overlooked field in the history of education: arts and crafts schools in Fascist Italy (1922-1943). Then, the FMS excelled in mosaic education and production and gained the trust of the regime, which notably commissioned the school to produce large mosaic works for the Foro Italico sports complex in Rome. Yet, as this paper contends, the FMS–Fascist Italy relationship was primarily functional rather than political. Similarly, the FMS adopted a pragmatic approach in times of economic hardship by becoming an active agent for its students and alumni who were compelled to emigrate. The migrant trajectory of alumnus Ettore Lorenzini to the United States was paradigmatic of this…. [Direct]
(2024). From Inevitable Disaster to Ineradicable Possibility: Critical Pedagogies of Ecocide, Educational Privatization, and New Technology. Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, v46 n1 p183-199. From climate disaster to the specter of nuclear annihilation to the rise of fascism and destruction of democracy to the advent of AI and other potentially destructive technologies, a number of material threats are matched by symbolic threats that undermine the capacities of people to respond. The war on public and critical education and the public sphere, the erosion of investigative journalism, ideologies of cynicism, and the crises of critical theoretical tools and literacies undermine individual and collective agency to respond to these threats. The result of these material threats and crises of agency is political paralysis, cynicism, and despair. This article focuses on three material and symbolic disasters: (1) climate crisis and natural disaster; (2) the privatization of public education in continuing and new digital forms as part of the broader rightist war on the public; and (3) the rise of authoritarian anti-democratic movements. The threats posed by these phenomena are… [Direct]