Explores activist movements in higher education from around the world, and their connections to broader anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles.
Higher education has long been contested terrain. From student movements to staff unions, the fight for accessible, critical and quality public education has turned university campuses globally into sites of struggle.
Whether calling for the decommodification or the decolonisation of education, many of these struggles have attempted to draw on (and in turn, resonate with) longer histories of popular resistance, broader social movements and radical visions of a fairer world. In this critical collection, Aziz Choudry, Salim Vally and a host of international contributors bring grounded, analytical accounts of diverse struggles relating to higher education into conversation with each other.
Featuring contributions written by students and staff members on the frontline of struggles from 12 different countries, including Canada, Chile, France, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Occupied Palestine, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, the UK and the USA, the book asks what can be learned from these movements' strategies, demands and visions.
About the Editors
Aziz Choudry was Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Social Movement Learning and Knowledge Production in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT), University of Johannesburg. He is editor of The University and Social Justice, Activists and the Surveillance State and Just Work? Migrant Workers' Struggles Today (Pluto, 2020, 2019, 2016).
Salim Vally is Professor and Director of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation (CERT) at the University of Johannesburg and the National Research Foundation’s South African Research Initiative’s Chair in Community, Adult and Workers Education (CAWE). He is co-editor with Enver Motala of Education, Economy and Society, and with Aziz Choudry of Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements: History's Schools.
What People Are Saying
"Student movements all over the world, covered in The University and Social Justice, show the potential student protest has to challenge the current order." Counterfire
"Essential reading for anyone interested in the state of Higher Education across the globe." LSE Review of Books
Table of Contents
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
1. Lessons in struggle, studies in resistance - Aziz Choudry (McGill Univ., Canada) and Salim Vally (Univ. of Johannesburg, South Africa)
2. The Trajectory of the 2010 Student Movement in the UK: From Student Activism to Strikes - Jamie Woodcock (Univ. of Oxford, UK)
3. Insurgent Subjects: Student Politics, Education, and Dissent in India - Prem Kumar Vijayan (Delhi Univ., India)
4. Neoliberalism, National Security and Academic Knowledge Production in Turkey - Gülden Özcan (Univ. of Lethbridge, Canada)
5. 'Nous' Who? Racialized Social Relations and Quebec Student Movement Politics - rosalind hampton (Univ. of Toronto, Canada)
6. Learning from Chile's Student Movement: Youth Organising and Neoliberal Reaction - Javier Campos-Martinez (Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) and Dayana Olavarria (Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
7. Resisting the US Corporate University: Palestine, Zionism and Campus Politics - Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi (San Francisco State Univ., USA) and Saliem Shehadeh (Univ. of California)
8. The Palestinian Student Movement and the Dialectic of Palestinian Liberation and Class Struggles - Lena Meari (Birzeit Univ., Palestine) and Rula Abu-Duhou (Birzeit Univ., Palestine)
9. The New Student Movements in Mexico in the 21st Century: #YoSoy132, Ayotzinapa and #TodosSomosPolitecnico - Alma Maldonado-Maldonado (Center for Advanced Research, Mexico) and Vania Bañuelos Astorga (CREFAL, Mexico)
10. How Did They Fight?: French Student Movements in the Late 2000s and Their Contentious Repertoire - Julie Le Mazier (Pantheon-Sorbonne Univ., France)
11. The Mustfall Mo(ve)ments and 'Publica[c]tion': Reflections on Collective Knowledge Production in South Africa - Asher Gamedze (cultural worker, South Africa) and Leigh-Ann Naidoo (Univ. of Cape Town, South Africa)
12. Revolutionary Vanguard No More?: The Student Movement and the Struggle for Education and Social Justice in Nigeria - Rhoda Nanre Nafziger (Pennsylvania State Univ., USA) and Krystal Strong (Pennsylvania State Univ., USA)
13. Postcolonial versus Transformative Education in the University of Philippines - Sarah Raymundo (Univ. of the Philippines-Diliman, Philippines) and Karlo Mikhail I. Mongaya (Univ. of the Philippines-Diliman, Philippines)
Notes on contributors
Index