The University As A Site Of Resistance

By raising a conceptual debate on ‘New Social Movements’, Pathania examines contemporary student resistance and analyses protest methods, strategies, networks, and the role of various caste, sub-caste groups, and civil society organizations in the struggle for social justice to envision a new cultural politics. The volume also discusses student activism in the aftermath of the suicide of PhD scholar Rohith Vemula at University of Hyderabad and the Azadi (Freedom) campaign at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The University as a Site of Resistance scrutinizes the debate on nationalism and processes of democratization of institutional spaces.

A historical narrative and critical analysis of higher education centred on the experiences of Black students and faculty at McGill University.

Historically, students have been a riotous bunch. Long before wild spring breaks, medieval students waged battles with bows and arrows at the earliest universities, while Russian students made assassination attempts against the tsars. The legacy of campus unrest continues at the cusp of the 21st century with a new wave of student rebellion at home and abroad. Student Resistance is an international history of student activism. Chronicling 500 years of strife between activists and the academy, Mark Edelman Boren unearths the defiant roots of the ivory tower. Whether through nonviolent protest or bloody insurrection, students have catalyzed educational reform, transformed national politics, and, in more than a few instances, spurred coup d'e; tats. These acts of rebellion are inherent features in the advancement of knowledge, Boren argues, and there is much to learn from students fighting for reform. Drawing on major incidents of student activism, including Civil Rights protests in the US, the 1968 student riots in Paris, and Tiananmen Square, Boren shows that student resistance is a continually occurring and vital social phenomenon, world-wide. For those concerned with the increasingly public and complex role that universities play in society, Student Resistance is essential reading.

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

Key Points: • Presents a theoretical framework for understanding topical, popular resistance movements such as Occupy Wall Street.

Who Decides Who Becomes a Teacher? extends the discussions and critiques of neoliberalism in education by examining the potential for Schools of Teacher Education to contest policies that are typical in K-12 schooling. Drawing on a case study of faculty collaboration, this edited volume reimagines teacher preparation programs as crucial sites of resistance to, and refusal of, unsound education practices and legislation. This volume also reveals by example how education faculty can engage in collaborative scholarly work to investigate the anticipated and unanticipated effects of policy initiatives on teaching and learning.

This book uses a series of case studies to examine the roles played by universities during situations of conflict, peacebuilding and resistance. While a body of work dealing with the role of education in conflict does exist, this is almost entirely concerned with compulsory education and schooling. This book, in contrast, highlights and promotes the importance of higher education, and universities in particular, to situations of conflict, peacebuilding and resistance. Using case studies from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, this volume considers institutional responses, academic responses and student responses, illustrating these in chapters written by those who have had direct experience of these issues. Looking at a university’s tripartite functions (of research, teaching and service) in relation to the different phases or stages of conflict (pre conflict, violence, post conflict and peacebuilding), it draws together some of the key contributions a university might make to situations of instability, resistance and recovery. The book is organised in five sections that deal with conceptual issues, institutional responses, academic-led or discipline-specific responses, teaching or curriculum-led responses and student involvement. Aimed at those working in universities or concerned with conflict recovery and peacebuilding it highlights ways in which universities can be a valuable, if currently neglected, resource. This book will be of much interest to students of peace studies, conflict resolution, education studies and IR in general.

Inspired by the searing story of Margaret Garner, the escaped slave who in 1856 slit her daughter's throat rather than have her forced back into slavery, the essays in this collection focus on historical and contemporary examples of slavery and women's resistance to oppression from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Each chapter uses Garner's example--the real-life narrative behind Toni Morrison's Beloved andthe opera Margaret Garner--as a thematic foundation for an interdisciplinary conversation about gendered resistance in locations including Brazil, Yemen, India, and the United States. Contributors are Nailah Randall Bellinger, Olivia Cousins, Mary E. Frederickson, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Carolyn Mazloomi, Cathy McDaniels-Wilson, Catherine Roma, Huda Seif, S. Pearl Sharp, Raquel Luciana de Souza, Jolene Smith, Veta Tucker, Delores M. Walters, Diana Williams, and Kristine Yohe.

Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions provides a multidisciplinary exploration of the contemporary university's entanglement with the history of slavery and settler colonialism in the United States. Inspired by more than a hundred student-led protests during the Movement for Black Lives, contributors examine how campus rebellions—and university responses to them—expose the racialized inequities at the core of higher education. Plantation politics are embedded in the everyday workings of universities—in not only the physical structures and spaces of academic institutions, but in its recruitment and attainment strategies, hiring practices, curriculum, and notions of sociality, safety, and community. The book is comprised of three sections that highlight how white supremacy shapes campus communities and classrooms; how current diversity and inclusion initiatives perpetuate inequality; and how students, staff, and faculty practice resistance in the face of institutional and legislative repression. Each chapter interrogates a connection between the academy and the plantation, exploring how Black people and their labor are viewed as simultaneously essential and disruptive to university cultures and economies. The volume is an indispensable read for students, faculty, student affairs professionals, and administrators invested in learning more about how power operates within education and imagining emancipatory futures.

Out There addresses the theme of cultural marginalization - the process whereby various groups are excluded from access to and participation in the dominant culture. It engages fundamental issues raised by attempts to define such concepts as mainstream, minority, and "other," and opens up new ways of thinking about culture and representation. All of the texts deal with questions of representation in the broadest sense, encompassing not just the visual but also the social and psychological aspects of cultural identity. Included are important theoretical writings by Homi Bhabha, Helene Cixous, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Monique Wittig. Their work is juxtaposed with essays on more overtly personal themes, often autobiographical, by Gloria Anzaldua, Bell Hooks, and Richard Rodriguez, among others. This rich anthology brings together voices from many different marginalized groups - groups that are often isolated from each other as well as from the dominant culture. It joins issues of gender, race, sexual preference, and class in one forum but without imposing a false unity on the diverse cultures represented. Each piece in the book subtly changes the way every other piece is read. While several essays focus on specific issues in art, such as John Yau's piece on Wilfredo Lam in the Museum of Modern Art, or James Clifford's on collecting art, others draw from debates in literature, film, and critical theory to provide a much broader context than is usually found in work aimed at an art audience. Topics range from the functions of language to the role of public art in the city, from gay pornography to the meanings of black hair styles. Out There also includes essays by Rosalyn Deutsche, Richard Dyer, Kobena Mercer, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Gerald Vizenor and Simon Watney, as well as by the editors. Copublished with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Distributed by The MIT Press.