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+==Part 1 is Framing== |
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+Patriotic Correctness runs rampant- dissent is charged with treason and lines of critical thought are silenced. Higher education has been coopted by the military industrial complex, reducing the roles of teachers to mere technicians. Thus the role of the ballot is to vote for the advocacy that best takes back the university from militarism. Educators should reject the call of abstraction and open up everything for contestation. |
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+Giroux 13, Henry, Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University, 2013, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university |
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+Increasingly, as universities are shaped by an audit culture, the call to be objective and impartial, whatever one's intentions, can easily echo what George Orwell called the official truth or the establishment point of view. Lacking a self-consciously democratic political focus, teachers are often reduced, or reduce themselves, to the role of a technician or functionary engaged in formalistic rituals, unconcerned with the disturbing and urgent problems that confront the larger society or the consequences of one's pedagogical practices and research undertakings. Hiding behind appeals to balance and objectivity, too many scholars refuse to recognize that being committed to something does not cancel out what C. Wright Mills once called hard thinking. Teaching needs to be rigorous, self-reflective, and committed not to the dead zone of instrumental rationality but to the practice of freedom, to a critical sensibility capable of advancing the parameters of knowledge, addressing crucial social issues, and connecting private troubles and public issues. In opposition to the instrumental model of teaching, with its conceit of political neutrality and its fetishization of measurement, I argue that academics should combine the mutually interdependent roles of critical educator and active citizen. This requires finding ways to connect the practice of classroom teaching with important social problems and the operation of power in the larger society while providing th e conditions for students to view themselves as critical agents capable of making those who exercise authority and power answerable for their actions. Higher education cannot be decoupled from what Jacques Derrida calls a democracy to come, that is, a democracy that must always "be open to the possibility of being contested, of contesting itself, of criticizing and indefinitely improving itself."33 Within this project of possibility and impossibility, critical pedagogy must be understood as a deliberately informed and purposeful political and moral practice, as opposed to one that is either doctrinaire, instrumentalized or both. Moreover, a critical pedagogy should also gain part of its momentum in higher education among students who will go back to the schools, churches, synagogues and workplaces to produce new ideas, concepts and critical ways of understanding the world in which young people and adults live. This is a notion of intellectual practice and responsibility that refuses the professional neutrality and privileged isolation of the academy. It also affirms a broader vision of learning that links knowledge to the power of self-definition and to the capacities of students to expand the scope of democratic freedoms, particularly those that address the crisis of education, politics, and the social as part and parcel of the crisis of democracy itself. In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue and thought to have real effects, they must advocate that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live. This is a commitment we heard articulated by the brave students who fought tuition hikes and the destruction of civil liberties and social provisions in Quebec and to a lesser degree in the Occupy Wall Street movement. If educators are to function as public intellectuals, they need to listen to young people who are producing a new language in order to talk about inequality and power relations, attempting to create alternative democratic public spaces, rethinking the very nature of politics, and asking serious questions about what democracy is and why it no longer exists in many neoliberal societies. These young people who are protesting the 1 recognize that they have been written out of the discourses of justice, equality and democracy and are not only resisting how neoliberalism has made them expendable, they are arguing for a collective future very different from the one that is on display in the current political and economic systems in which they feel trapped. These brave youth are insisting that the relationship between knowledge and power can be emancipatory, that their histories and experiences matter, and that what they say and do counts in their struggle to unlearn dominating privileges, productively reconstruct their relations with others, and transform, when necessary, the world around them. |
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+Militarism makes people disposable- justifying and creating everyday violence like shootings and drone strikes. Heg Good doesn't impact turn the aff-military criticism is good because it stops the glorification of the military and violence, which spillsover. |
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+Giroux 16, Henry, Gun Culture and the American Nightmare of Violence, 2016, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34349-gun-culture-and-the-american-nightmare-of-violence |
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+Gun violence in the United States has produced a culture soaked in blood - a culture that threatens everyone and extends from accidental deaths, suicides and domestic violence to mass shootings. In late December, a woman in St. Cloud, Florida, fatally shot her own daughter after mistaking her for an intruder. Less than a month earlier, on December 2, in San Bernardino, California, was the mass shooting that left 14 people dead and more than 20 wounded. And just two months before that, on October 1, nine people were killed and seven wounded in a mass shooting at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon. Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics. Violence runs through US society like an electric current offering instant pleasure from all cultural sources, whether it be the nightly news or a television series that glorifies serial killers. At a policy level, violence drives the arms industry and a militaristic foreign policy, and is increasingly the punishing state's major tool to enforce its hyped-up brand of domestic terrorism, especially against Black youth. The United States is utterly wedded to a neoliberal culture in which cruelty is viewed as virtue, while mass incarceration is treated as the chief mechanism to "institutionalize obedience." At the same time, a shark-like mode of competition replaces any viable notion of solidarity, and a sabotaging notion of self-interest pushes society into the false lure of mass consumerism. The increasing number of mass shootings is symptomatic of a society engulfed in racism, fear, militarism, bigotry and massive inequities in wealth and power. Guns and the hypermasculine culture of violence are given more support than young people and life itself. Over 270 mass shootings have taken place in the United States in 2015 alone, proving once again that the economic, political and social conditions that underlie such violence are not being addressed. Sadly, these shootings are not isolated incidents. For example, one child under 12 years old has been killed every other day by a firearm, which amounts to 555 children killed by guns in three years. An even more frightening statistic and example of a shocking moral and political perversity was noted in data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which states that "2,525 children and teens died by gunfire in ~~the United States~~ in 2014; one child or teen death every 3 hours and 28 minutes, nearly 7 a day, 48 a week." Such figures indicate that too many youth in the United States occupy what might be called war zones in which guns and violence proliferate. In this scenario, guns and the hypermasculine culture of violence are given more support than young people and life itself. The predominance of a relatively unchecked gun culture and a morally perverse and politically obscene culture of violence is particularly evident in the power of the gun lobby and its political advocates to pass laws in eight states to allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons "into classrooms, dormitories and other buildings" on campuses. In spite of the rash of recent shootings on college campuses, Texas lawmakers, for instance, passed one such "campus carry bill," which will take effect in August 2016. To add insult to injury, they also passed an "open carry bill" that allows registered gun owners to carry their guns openly in public. Such laws not only reflect "the seemingly limitless legislative clout of gun interests," but also a rather irrational return to the violence-laden culture of the "Wild West." As in the past, individuals will be allowed to walk the streets, while openly carrying guns and packing heat as a measure of their love of guns and their reliance upon violence as the best way to address any perceived threat to their security. This return to the deadly practices of the " Wild West" is neither a matter of individual choice nor some far-fetched yet allegedly legitimate appeal to the Second Amendment. On the contrary, mass violence in the United States has to be placed within a broader historical, economic and political context in order to address the totality of the forces that produce it. Focusing merely on mass shootings or the passing of potentially dangerous gun legislation does not get to the root of the systemic forces that produce the United States' love affair with violence and the ideologies and criminogenic institutions that produce it. Imperial policies that promote aggression all across the globe are now matched by increasing levels of lawlessness and state repression, which mutually feed each other. On the home front, civil society is degenerating into a military organization, a space of lawlessness and warlike practices, organized primarily for the production of violence. For instance, as Steve Martinot observes at CounterPunch, the police now use their discourse of command and power to criminalize behavior; in addition, they use military weapons and surveillance tools as if they are preparing for war, and create a culture of fear in which militaristic principles replace legal principles. He writes: This suggests that there is an institutional insecurity that seeks to cover itself through social control ... the cops act out this insecurity by criminalizing individuals in advance. No legal principle need be involved. There is only the militarist principle.... When police shoot a fleeing subject and claim they are acting in self-defense (i.e. threatened), it is not their person but the command and control principle that is threatened. To defend that control through assault or murderous action against a disobedient person implies that the cop's own identity is wholly immersed in its paradigm. There is nothing psychological about this. Self-worth or insecurity is not the issue. There is only the military ethic of power, imposed on civil society through an assumption of impunity. It is the ethos of democracy, of human self-respect, that is the threat. The rise of violence and the gun culture in the United States cannot be separated from a transformation in governance in the United States. Political sovereignty has been replaced by economic sovereignty as corporate power takes over the reins of governance. The more money influences politics, the more corrupt the political culture becomes. Under such circumstances, holding office is largely dependent on having huge amounts of capital at one's disposal, while laws and policies at all levels of government are mostly fashioned by lobbyists representing big business corporations and financial institutions. Moreover, such lobbying, as corrupt and unethical as it may be, is now carried out in the open by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other individuals, groups and institutions invested in the militarization of US society. This lobbying is then displayed as a badge of honor - a kind of open testimonial to the lobbyists' disrespect for democratic governance. But money in politics is not the only major institutional factor in which everyday and state violence are nourished by a growing militarism. As David Theo Goldberg has argued in his essay "Mission Accomplished: Militarizing Social Logic," the military has also assumed a central role in shaping all aspects of society. Militarization is about more than the use of repressive power; it also represents a powerful social logic that is constitutive of values, modes of rationality and ways of thinking. According to Goldberg, The military is not just a fighting machine.... It serves and socializes. It hands down to the society, as big brother might, its more or less perfected goods, from gunpowder to guns, computing to information management ... In short, while militarily produced instruments might be retooled to other, broader social purpose - the military shapes pretty much the entire range of social production from commodities to culture, social goods to social theory. The militarization and corporatization of social logic permeates US society. The general public in the United States is largely depoliticized through the influence of corporations over schools, higher education and other cultural apparatuses. The deadening of public values, civic consciousness and critical citizenship are also the result of the work of anti-public intellectuals representing right-wing ideological and financial interests, a powerful set of corporate-controlled media agencies that are largely center-right and a market-driven public pedagogy that reduces the obligations of citizenship to the endless consumption and discarding of commodities. Military ideals permeate every aspect of popular culture, policy and social relations. In addition, a pedagogy of historical, social and racial amnesia is constructed and circulated through celebrity and consumer culture. A war culture now shapes every aspect of society as warlike values, a hypermasculinity and an aggressive militarism seep into every major institution in the United States, including schools, the corporate media and local police forces. The criminal legal system has become the default structure for dealing with social problems. More and more people are considered disposable because they offend the sensibilities of the financial elite, who are rapidly consolidating class power. Under such circumstances, violence occupies an honored place. |
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+This outweighs |
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+Root Cause- once violence becomes normalized, then anything including the neg impacts can occur and no one cares, making solving them impossible |
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+Aggregation- Militarism impacts constantly occur which means they aggregate every single day. By the time the neg impacts occur- the aff will massively outweighs on magnitude. |
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+Ideal theory strips away particularities making ethics inaccessible and epistemically skewed |
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+Mills 05, Charles, 2005, Ideal Theory" as Ideology, |
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+The crucial common claim—whether couched in terms of ideology and fetishism, or androcentrism, or white normativity—is that all theorizing, both moral and nonmoral, takes place in an intellectual realm dominated by concepts, assumptions, norms, values, and framing perspectives that reflect the experience and group interests of the privileged group (whether the bourgeoisie, or men, or whites). So a simple empiricism will not work as a cognitive strategy; one has to be self-conscious about the concepts that "spontaneously" occur to one, since many of these concepts will not arise naturally but as the result of social structures and hegemonic ideational patterns. In particular, it will often be the case that dominant concepts will obscure certain crucial realities, blocking them from sight, or naturalizing them, while on the other hand, concepts necessary for accurately mapping these realities will be absent. Whether in terms of concepts of the self, or of humans in general, or in the cartography of the social, it will be necessary to scrutinize the dominant conceptual tools and the way the boundaries are drawn. This is, of course, the burden of standpoint theory—that certain realities tend to be more visible from the perspective of the subordinated than the privileged (Harding 2003). The thesis can be put in a strong and implausible form, but weaker versions do have considerable plausibility, as illustrated by the simple fact that for the most part the crucial conceptual innovation necessary to map nonideal realities has not come from the dominant group. In its ignoring of oppression, ideal theory also ignores the consequences of oppression. If societies are not oppressive, or if in modeling them we can abstract away from oppression and assume moral cognizers of roughly equal skill, then the paradigmatic moral agent can be featureless. No theory is required about the particular group-based obstacles that may block the vision of a particular group. By contrast, nonideal theory recognizes that people will typically be cognitively affected by their social location, so that on both the macro and the more local level, the descriptive concepts arrived at may be misleading. |
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+Non-ideal theory necessitates consequentialism since instead of following rules that assume an already equal playing field; we take steps to correct the material injustice. |
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+==Part 2 Advocacy== |
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+Plan text- Resolved: Public colleges and universities in the United States ought not restrict constitutionally protected speech that criticizes the military's policies. |
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+Wilson 10, John K., Ph.D candidate with dissertation on the history of academic freedom in America and author of three books, early excerpt from Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies which was later published in 2010 |
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+In the wake of 9/11, academic freedom suffered under a wave of patriotic correctness in America. An institution of higher learning should not fear controversy or prefer bland clichés to intellectual content. All colleges should prohibit banning speakers, even if they dissent from a particular orthodoxy. The response to the terrible acts of terrorism on September 11, 2001, did not require an exception to the rules of academic freedom. To the contrary, the period after 9/11 was a moment when intellectual scrutiny of American foreign policy was more important than ever. Higher education did no worse, and perhaps better, than other American i n s t i t u t i on s , s u ch as Con g ress and the media, that accepted the Bush Administration plans, often without debate or inquiry. Sadly, though, the enemies of academic freedom too often succeeded in their aim of silencing dissent. Both the ideal and the practice of academic freedom have been under attack since 9/11, as America became a place where, in the words of Bush press secretary Ari Fleisher, you had to "watch what you say."31 |
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+==Part 3 Offense== |
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+Patriotic correctness silences anti-military dissent. Multiple examples and empirical surveys prove. |
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+Wilson 2, John K., Ph.D candidate with dissertation on the history of academic freedom in America and author of three books, early excerpt from Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies which was later published in 2010 |
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+Compared to earlier "wartime" situations, academic freedom is far more protected today than at any time in the past. But the danger posed to academic freedom cannot be ignored. Efforts to silence faculty and students, even when they are unsuccessful, can make others around the country more reluctant to speak openly. Only by denouncing all efforts at censorship and vigorously defending the right of freedom on college campuses, can we continue to protect academic freedom. The cliché of our times, constantly repeated but often true, is that 9/11 "changed everything." One thing that it changed was academic freedom. The controversy over the limits of free speech on college campuses across the nation began immediately. On the morning of September 11, 2001, University of New Mexico history professor Richard Berthold joked with his class, "Anyone who would blow up the Pentagon would have my vote." Berthold received death threats, keeping him off campus. On September 27, an unidentified person left a message on the provost's voice-mail saying if Berthold were not "ousted" within 24 hours, Berthold would be ousted by other sources. Berthold was threatened in front of his home by a biker who came at him screaming obscenities, and he received several angry e-mails and letters with messages such as "I'd like to blow you up." New Mexico state representative William Fuller declared,"Treason is giving aide or comfort to the enemy. Any terrorist who heard Berthold's comment was comforted." In the end, Berthold was pressured to retire from his job because of those 11 words he spoke on 9/11.Mohammad Rahat, an Iranian citizen and University of Miami medical technician who turned 22 years old on September 11, 2001, declared in a meeting that day, "Some birthday gift from Osama bin Laden." Although Rahat said that he meant it "in a sarcastic way," Rahat was suspended and then fired on September 25, 2001. Paula Musto, vice president of university relations, declared that Rahat's "comments were deeply disturbing to his co-workers and superiors at the medical school. They were inappropriate and unbecoming for someone working in a research laboratory. He was fired because he made those comments, certainly not because of his ethnic background." Rahat had received only positive evaluation in 13 months working in the lab. 6 At the University of California at Los Angeles, library assistant Jonnie Hargis was suspended without pay for one week after sending an e-mail response criticizing American policies in Iraq and Israel. Hargis' union successfully pursued a grievance; Hargis was repaid for his lost income, the incident was stricken from his job record, and the university was forced to clarify its e-mail policies.7On September 13, 2001, two resident assistants in Minnesota complained to the dean of students that undergraduates felt fearful and uneasy because some professors questioned the competence of the Bush Administration. According to the resident assistants,"The recent attacks extend beyond political debate, and for professors to make negative judgments on our government before any action has taken place only fosters a cynical attitude in the classroom." The administration asked faculty to think hard about what they said. Greg Kneser, dean of students, declared:"There were students who were just scared, and an intellectual discussion of the political ramifications of this was not helpful for them. They were frightened, and they look to their faculty not just for intellectual debate" but as "people they trust."8 Even hypothetical discussions were suspicious. Portland Community College philosophy professor Stephen Carey challenged students in his critical thinking class to consider an extreme rhetorical proposition that would cause great emotion, like "Bush should be hung, strung up upside down, and left for the buzzards." One student's mother, misunderstanding the example, called the FBI and accused Carey of threatening to kill the President, and the Secret Service investigated him.9 When four leftist faculty at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (UNC) criticized U.S. foreign policy at a teach-in, Scott Rubush of FrontPage magazine, declared, "They're using state resources to the practical effect of aiding and abetting the Taliban."The magazine recommended that these faculty be fired. "Tell the good folks at UNC–Chapel Hill what you think of their decision to allow anti-American rallies on their state-supported campus," FrontPage urged. The administration received hundreds of angry e-mails, and was denounced on the floor of the North Carolina legislature. Several antiwar faculty members received death threats.10 In addition to phys i cal threats and attack s , A rab and Muslim students also faced enormous scru t i ny from the authori t i e s . An October 2001 survey by the Am e ri can Association of Collegiate Registrars and Ad m i s s i ons Officers found thatat least 220 colleges had been contacted by law enforcement in the weeks after 9/11. Police or FBI agents made 99 requests for private "n on - d i re c t o ry "i n f o rm a t i on ,s u ch as course sch e d u l e s , that under law cannot be released without student con s e n t , a s u b p o e n a , or a pending danger (on ly 12 of the requests had a subpoena, a l t h o u g h the Immigra t i on and Na t u ra l i za t i on Se rvice doesn't re q u i reconsent for inform a t i on on foreign students). Most requests were for individual students, although 16 requests for student re c o rds were "based on ethnicity. " Law enforcement re c e i ve d the inform a t i on from 159 sch o o l s , and on ly eight denied any re q u e s t s . I n response to the violence and persecution against Muslim and Arab students, some colleges did try to restrict offensive speech in ways that resulted in threats to academic fre e d om . At Orange Coast Com mu n i ty College (OCC) on September 20, 2001, government professor Ken Hearlson was suspended for 11 weeks after Muslim students accused him of being biased against them and calling them "terrorists." Hearlson denied the accusation. A tape recording of the class found that the most extreme statements were misheard, although Hearlson did apparently point a finger at Middle Eastern students while he blamed Arab countries for fomenting terrorism.11 In a case at Johns Hopkins University, Charles H. Fairbanks Jr., director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), was demoted (but later reinstated) after a September 14 panel discussion on terrorism in which he criticized Iraq, Pakistan, and Palestinians.12 I n response to the violence and persecution against Muslim and Arab students, some colleges did try to restrict offensive speech in ways that resulted in threats to academic fre e d om . At Orange Coast Com mu n i ty College (OCC) on September 20, 2001, government professor Ken Hearlson was suspended for 11 weeks after Muslim students accused him of being biased against them and calling them "terrorists." Hearlson denied the accusation. A tape recording of the class found that the most extreme statements were misheard, although Hearlson did apparently point a finger at Middle Eastern students while he blamed Arab countries for fomenting terrorism.11 In a case at Johns Hopkins University, Charles H. Fairbanks Jr., director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), was demoted (but later reinstated) after a September 14 panel discussion on terrorism in which he criticized Iraq, Pakistan, and Palestinians.12 Anti-military views expressed in an e-mail could put a professor's job at risk. At Chicago's St. Xavier University, history professor Peter Kirstein sent this response to an Air Force cadet asking him to help promote an Air Force event: "You are a disgrace to this country and I am furious you would even think I would support you and your aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage." Although Kirstein apologized for his e-mail, many called for his dismissal. On November 15, 2002, St. Xavier president Richard Yanikoski announced that Kirstein would be immediately suspended, receive a reprimand, and undergo a post-tenure review during a Spring 2003 sabbatical.13 Another tenured professor was suspended for responding rudely to an unsolicited e-mail and saying that killing is wrong. While conservatives contended that a few cases of censorship proved that left-wing thought police rule over college campuses, my extensive survey of academic freedom and civil liberties at American universities found the opposite: left-wing critics of the Bush Administration suffered by far the most numerous and most serious violations of their civil liberties. Censorship of conservatives was rare, and almost always overturned in the few cases where it occurred. Patriotic correctness—not political correctness—reigned supreme after 9/11. |
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+This censorship prevents higher education from being the uniquely key institution that can create a cultural shift away from militarism by teaching students to resist. |
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+Jaschik and Giroux 07, Henry Giroux and Scott Jaschik, 'The University in Chains', (Interview), 2007, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/07/giroux |
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+Q: How do you think the state of academic freedom has changed since 9/11? A: Criticisms of the university as a stronghold of dissent have a long and inglorious history in the United States, extending from attacks in the 19th century by religious fundamentalists to anti-communist witch-hunts conducted in the 1920s, 1930s, and again in the 1950s, during the infamous era of McCarthyism. Harkening back to the infamous McCarthy era, a newly reinvigorated war is currently being waged by Christian nationalists, reactionary neoconservatives, and corporate fundamentalists against the autonomy and integrity of all those independent institutions that foster social responsibility, critical thought, and critical citizenship. While the attack is being waged on numerous fronts, the universities are where the major skirmishes are taking place. What is unique about this attack on academic freedom are the range and scope of the forces waging an assault on higher education. It is much worse today, because corporations, the national security state, the Pentagon, powerful Christian evangelical groups, non-government agencies, and enormously wealthy right-wing individuals and institutions have created powerful alliances — the perfect storm so to speak — that are truly threatening the freedoms and semi-autonomy of American universities. Higher education in the United States is currently being targeted by a diverse number of right-wing forces that have assumed political power and are waging an aggressive and focused campaign against the principles of academic freedom, sacrificing critical pedagogical practice in the name of patriotic correctness and dismantling the ideal of the university as a bastion of independent thought, and uncorrupted inquiry. Ironically, it is through the vocabulary of individual rights, academic freedom, balance, and tolerance that these forces are attempting to slander, even vilify, an allegedly liberal and left-oriented professoriate, to cut already meager federal funding for higher education, to eliminate tenure, and to place control of what is taught and said in classrooms under legislative oversight. There is more at work in the current attack than the rampant anti-intellectualism and paranoid style of American politics outlined in Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, written over 40 years ago. There is also the collective power of radical right-wing organizations, which in their powerful influence on all levels of government in spite of a democratically controlled Congress and most liberal social institutions feel compelled to dismantle the open, questioning cultures of the academy. Underlying recent attacks on the university is an attempt not merely to counter dissent but to destroy it and in doing so to eliminate all of those remaining public spaces, spheres, and institutions that nourish and sustain a culture of questioning so vital to a democratic civil society. Dissent is often equated with treason; the university is portrayed as the weak link in the war on terror by powerful educational agencies; professors who advocate a culture of questioning and critical engagement run the risk of having their names posted on Internet web sites while being labeled as un-American; and various right-wing individuals and politicians increasingly attempt to pass legislation that renders critical analysis a liability and reinforces, with no irony intended, a rabid anti-intellectualism under the call for balance and intellectual diversity. Genuine politics begins to disappear as people methodically lose those freedoms and rights that enable them to speak, act, dissent, and exercise both their individual right to resistance and a shared sense of collective responsibility. While higher education is only one site, it is one of the most crucial institutional and political spaces where democratic subjects can be shaped, democratic relations can be experienced, and anti-democratic forms of power can be identified and critically engaged. It is also one of the few spaces left where young people can think critically about the knowledge they gain, learn values that refuse to reduce the obligations of citizenship to either consumerism or the dictates of the national security state, and develop the language and skills necessary to defend those institutions and social relations that are vital to a substantive democracy. As the philosopher Hannah Arendt insisted, a meaningful conception of politics appears only when concrete spaces exist for people to come together to talk, think critically, and act on their capacities for empathy, judgment, and social responsibility. What the current attack on higher education threatens is a notion of the academy that is faithful to its role as a crucial democratic public sphere, one that offers a space both to resist the "dark times" in which we now live and to embrace the possibility of a future forged in the civic struggles requisite for a viable democracy. |
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+Education has already been corrupted- I control uniqueness on this issue- its time to act now. Chile empirically proves- the aff spillsover to real reform. |
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+Williams 15, Jo, Remaking education from below: the Chilean student movement as public pedagogy, 2015, Australian Journal of Adult Learning |
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+More than ever the crisis of schooling represents, at large, the crisis of democracy itself and any attempt to understand the attack on public schooling and higher education cannot be separated from the wider assault on all forms of public life not driven by the logic of the market (Giroux, 2003:7) "Fin al lucro en educación, nuestros sueños no les pertenecen" (end profit making in education, nobody owns our dreams 1 ) (slogan of the Chilean student movement, inspired by the French student uprisings of May-June 1968) Over the past four decades, as the economic and ideological depravity of neoliberal policy and its market-driven logic (D. W. Hursh and Henderson, 2011) has been brought to bear on every aspect of education, the very concept of 'public' has been negated. Characteristics such as user-pays, competition, assaults on teachers, and mass standardised-testing and rankings, are among the features of a schooling, which is now very much seen as a private rather than public good (Giroux, 2003). The question of public education as a democratic force for the radical transformation of a violently unjust society seems rarely if ever asked, and a dangerous co-option and weakening of the language and practice of progressive pedagogy has occurred to the extent that notions of inclusion and success are increasingly limited to narrowly conceived individualist and competitive measures of market advantage. As Giroux notes "the forces of neo-liberalism dissolve public issues into utterly privatised and individualistic concerns (2004:62), and despite ongoing official rhetoric "the only form of citizenship increasingly being offered to young people is consumerism" (2003:7). Neoliberal education sees students and young people as passive consumers, the emphasis of schooling on learning how to be governed rather than how to govern (Giroux, 2003:7). In such a context the space for a public pedagogy, based on challenging the hegemony of neoliberal ideology and aligned with collective resistance, appears limited at best. And yet, every day people, teachers, students and communities do engage in political struggle, enacting pedagogies that seek to unveil rather than continue to mask the political structures and organisation that ensures power remains in the hands of the few, and at the service of the few, at the expense of the rest of us. Giroux characterises public pedagogies as defined by hope, struggle and a politicisation of the education process. He argues for …a politics of resistance that extends beyond the classroom as part of a broader struggle to challenge those forces of neo-liberalism that currently wage war against all collective structures capable of defending vital social institutions as a public good (Giroux, 2003:14). Central to Giroux's argument is the need for critical educators to look to, value, and engage in and with social movements as they emerge and develop as sites of resistance. To …take sides, speak out, and engage in the hard work of debunking corporate culture's assault on teaching and learning, orient their teaching for social change, connect learning to public life ~~and~~ link knowledge to the operations of power (Giroux, 2004:77). He argues that "~~p~~rogressive education in an age of rampant neoliberalism requires an expanded notion of the public, pedagogy, solidarity, and democratic struggle" (Giroux, 2003:13), and that moreover, educators need to work against a "politics of certainty" and instead develop and engage in pedagogical practice that problematises the world and fosters a sense of collective resistance and hope (2003:14). A neoliberal vision of the 'good citizen' and 'good student' presumes passivity, acceptance of the status quo and an individualistic disposition. Critical pedagogues must seek out and embrace opportunities to support and celebrate collective political action, not only because it develops a sense of social and political agency but also because it constitutes a powerful basis for authentic learning and active and critical citizenship in an unjust world (Freire, 1970). The Chilean student movement stands as one such example of challenging and inspiring counter-practice and a reclaiming of pedagogy as political and public. For ten years students have filled Chile's streets, occupied their schools and universities, and organised conferences, public Remaking education from below: the Chilean student movement as public pedagogy 499 meetings, political stunts, creative actions and protests. Students and young people have been at the centre of the largest and most sustained political action seen in Chile since the democratic movement of the 80s, which eventually forced out the Pinochet dictatorship. Despite global trends in the opposite direction, the Chilean students have fundamentally influenced a nationwide education reform program constituting significant changes to the existing system which has been described as an extreme example of market-driven policy (Valenzuela, Bellei, and Ríos, 2014:220). Most importantly, they have forced and led a nationwide dialogue on the question of education and social justice in Chile and an interrogation of the current, grossly inequitable and elitist model (Falabella, 2008). This article begins by reviewing the experiences of the Chilean student movement to date and offering a brief explanation of the historical development of the education system it seeks to dismantle. It then considers the movement as an example of public pedagogies, concluding with a discussion of how it might inform notions of radical educational practice and a return of the student and pedagogue as authentic and critical subjects. |
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+Even if the militarism framing is wrong- discussion and education on the issue creates responsible citizens in other areas by enabling them to think about the world in a different way |
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+Evans and Giroux 16, Brad Evans and Henry Giroux, The Violence of Forgetting, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/opinion/the-violence-of-forgetting.htmlB.E.: Considering Hannah Arendt's warning that the forces of domination and exploitation require "thoughtlessness" on behalf of the oppressors, how is the capacity to think freely and in an informed way key to providing a counter to violent practices? H.G.: Young people can learn to challenge violence, like those in the antiwar movement of the early '70s or today in the Black Lives Matter movement. Education does more than create critically minded, socially responsible citizens. It enables young people and others to challenge authority by connecting individual troubles to wider systemic concerns. This notion of education is especially important given that racialized violence, violence against women and the ongoing assaults on public goods cannot be solved on an individual basis. Violence maims not only the body but also the mind and spirit. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, it lies "on the side of belief and persuasion." If we are to counter violence by offering young people ways to think differently about their world and the choices before them, they must be empowered to recognize themselves in any analysis of violence, and in doing so to acknowledge that it speaks to their lives meaningfully. There is no genuine democracy without an informed public. While there are no guarantees that a critical education will prompt individuals to contest various forms of oppression and violence, it is clear that in the absence of a formative democratic culture, critical thinking will increasingly be trumped by anti-intellectualism, and walls and war will become the only means to resolve global challenges. Creating such a culture of education, however, will not be easy in a society that links the purpose of education with being competitive in a global economy.There is a growing culture of conformity and quietism on university campuses, made evident in the current call for safe spaces and trigger warnings. This is not just conservative reactionism, but is often carried out by liberals who believe they are acting with the best intentions. Violence comes in many forms and can be particularly disturbing when confronted in an educational setting if handled dismissively or in ways that blame victims. Yet troubling knowledge cannot be condemned on the basis of making students uncomfortable, especially if the desire for safety serves merely to limit access to difficult knowledge and the resources needed to analyze it. Critical education should be viewed as the art of the possible rather than a space organized around timidity, caution and fear. Creating safe spaces runs counter to the notion that learning should be unsettling, that students should challenge common sense assumptions and be willing to confront disturbing realities despite discomfort. The political scientist Wendy Brown rightly argues that the "domain of free public speech is not one of emotional safety or reassurance," and is " not what the public sphere and political speech promise." A university education should, Brown writes, " call you to think, question, doubt" and " incite you to question everything you assume, think you know or care about." This is particularly acute when dealing with pedagogies of violence and oppression. While there is a need to be ethically sensitive to the subject matter, our civic responsibility requires, at times, confronting truly intolerable conditions. The desire for emotionally safe spaces can be invoked to protect one's sense of privilege — especially in the privileged sites of university education. This is further compounded by the frequent attempts by students to deny some speakers a platform because their views are controversial. While the intentions may be understandable, this is a dangerous road to go down. Confronting the intolerable should be challenging and upsetting. Who could read the testimonies of Primo Levi and not feel intellectually and emotionally exhausted? Or Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, not to mention those of Malcolm X? It is the conditions that produce violence that should upset us ethically and prompt us to act responsibly, rather than to capitulate to a privatized emotional response that substitutes a therapeutic language for a political and worldly one. |