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The expansion of intellect is a primary tool to any prophet of revolution…

To focus on education itself as direct action suggests that we can transform public space into mobile classrooms—in public parks and community centers, as well as in street intersections, board rooms, and bridges. Future Free University initiatives can include radical think-tanks, hosting classes inside other classes, projecting our stories on various walls around the city, and performing pop-up Free U's at annual city-wide events. We're establishing the foundations for future attempts at dual power with such projects as People's Boards of Education that decide and implement our own education plans while refusing those dictated from above.

Conor Tomás Reed, "Occupy and the Future of Public Education"

#occupy #occupy theory #cuny #free cuny #free higher education #critical university studies #critical higher education studies #free university

Morris Justice, "Community Safety Wall"

Morris Justice, "Sidewalk Science"

As a PAR project action has taken many forms and has been woven through each step of our research. Our research is designed to become a part of the everyday conversation in the streets around Morris Avenue, to communicate to parts of the city not targeted by the NYPD, and to inform policy-makers.

Morris Justice, "Action"

#morris justice #public science project #public science #participatory action research #par #Stop and Frisk

Public Science Project, "This is our home."

#morris justice #public science project #participatory action research #Stop and Frisk #nypd #critical university studies

Mapping has been an important part of our project, from defining the boundaries of our study, to documenting and analyzing policing patterns. We call our process 'critical mapping' because we use maps [to] interrogate and speak back to the 'official' maps that label our neighborhood a 'hot spot' of crime.

Morris Justice, "Critical Mapping"

#morris justice #public science project #public science #participatory action research

[W]e conducted focus groups of local residents, and created and analyzed a comprehensive survey that we distributed corner by corner in the 40 blocks around the Morris Avenue section of the South Bronx (from Sheridan Avenue to Park & Webster, between 161st and 167th streets). 1,030 residents took our survey, sharing with us their attitudes and experiences with police. Here's what they said."

Morris Justice, "Report"

#morris justice #public science project #public science #participatory action research

Morris Justice is a Participatory Action Research (PAR) Project. PAR is an approach to research rooted in the belief that valid knowledge is produced only in collaboration and in action, and that those typically 'studied' should be architects of the process. Morris Justice is guided by the critical social knowledge of residents of a NYC 'hot spot,' a neighborhood that is subjected to a disproportionate amount of aggressive and discriminatory policing in the name of 'community safety.' It is an in-depth investigation into the lived experience of NYPD's 'hot spot' policy and 'stop and frisk' practices, and the *community's* vision of community safety.

Morris Justice, "Research"

#morris justice #the public science project #public science #participatory action research #par #critical university studies #critical higher education studies

The Morris Justice project, "Stop and Frisk in the South Bronx"

#participatory action research #critical academic practice #critical university studies #critical education studies #critical higher education studies #stop and frisk #public science project #par

[T]here is no simple answer to the question 'Is college worth it?' Some degrees pay for themselves; others don’t. American schoolkids pondering whether to take on huge student loans are constantly told that college is the gateway to the middle class. The truth is more nuanced, as Barack Obama hinted when he said in January that 'folks can make a lot more' by learning a trade 'than they might with an art history degree.' An angry art history professor forced him to apologise, but he was right.

The Economist, "Is College Worth It?"

#the value of higher education #the value of college #critical education studies #critical university studies #critical higher education studies

"[M]any of us resist the instrumentalization of higher education and the attendant decline of interest in the liberal arts and sciences not just because we want current generations to have the same general education we had but because otherwise we fear that our students will not have the intellectual tools (or predispositions) necessary to fully engage with the collective challenges we face, as a society, a nation and a world."

Nicholas B. Dirks, "Utopian Pasts and Futures"

#liberal arts education #critical education studies #critical university studies #critical higher-education studies #value of higher education

The modern concept of a Caucasian race, which students my age were taught in school, came from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach of Göttingen, the most influential of this generation of race scholars. Switching from skulls to skin, he divided humans into five races by color—white, yellow, copper, tawny, and tawny-black to jet-black—but he ascribed these differences to climate. Still convinced that people of the Caucasus were the paragons of beauty, he placed residents of North Africa and India in the Caucasian category, sliding into a linguistic analysis based on the common derivation of Indo-European languages. That category, Painter notes, soon slipped free of any geographic or linguistic moorings and became a quasi-scientific term for a race known as 'white.'

Linda Gordon, "Who's White" (review of Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People)

#whiteness studies #caucasian #caucasian race #critical race studies

Altogether, the strike dramatically transformed student and faculty relations and collective identities, as well as the entire campus environment. During the occupation, faculty unanimously voted to approve the five student demands. Echoing David Henderson's comments on faculty support, Rich recounts that, during the negotiations of the demands, faculty expressed 'surprised respect for the students' articulateness, reasoning power, and skill in handling statistics... we had known their strength all along: an impatient cutting through of the phony [and] a growing capacity for political analysis which helped counter the low expectations [and] their knowledge of the naked facts of society.'

Conor Tomás Reed, "'Treasures that Prevail': Adrienne Rich, The SEEK Program, and Social Movements at the City College of New York, 1968-1972"

#city college #city college of new york #ccny #cuny #cuny city college #city university of new york #city college 1969 occupation #open admissions #critical university studies #critical education studies #critical higher education studies #critical diversity studies

Loans which either benefit the creditor only, or inflict social and environmental damage on individuals, families, and communities, should be renegotiated to compensate for harms.

Andrew Ross, "Nine Arguments for Debt Refusal"

#debt refusal #debt resistance #Strike Debt!#student debt #critical education studies #critical higher education studies #critical university studies

Most of us fall into debt because we are increasingly deprived of the means to acquire the basic necessities of life: education, health care, and housing. Because we are forced to go into debt simply in order to live, we think it is right and moral to resist it.

Strike Debt!, "Principles of Solidarity"

#Strike Debt!#debt refusal #debt resistance #critical education studies #critical higher education studies #critical university studies #student debt #housing debt #health care debt #debt

[T]o the NCAA, whose existence depends on a steady stream of unpaid, 'amateur' labor, the stakes are about as high as they get. Their ability to get intercollegiate athletes to work while avoiding all the responsibilities associated with formally employing them—a relationship on the rise throughout the global economy, from subcontracted janitors cleaning New York City office towers to Bangladeshi garment workers producing clothing for Walmart—is, for the first time, being directly challenged.

Samir Sonti, "Unionize College Football"

#labor #student labor #college labor #NCAA #Northwestern football union #critical higher education studies #critical university studies

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