Search

On October 16, 1963, author James Baldwin delivered his well-known "A Talk to Teachers" in which he argued that the United States was "desperately menaced . . . from within" (p. 325) by centuries of racialized cruelty. In his speech, Baldwin (1985) implored educators to "go for broke" (p. 325) in their attempts to address the racism operating not only in their classrooms but in the very fabric of U.S. society. Speaking at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin addressed New York City teachers who witnessed the active desegregation of schools across the country and the ongoing fight for racial justice in voting, housing, and employment. Yet 56 years later, Baldwin's call to action is regrettably just as relevant to the modern educator. Our schools remain racially and economically segregated (EdBuild, 2019; Orfield, Frankenberg, Ee, & Kuscera, 2014; Reardon & Owens, 2014) and racial injustices permeate our contemporary sociopolitical reality (Edwards, Lee, & Esposito, 2019; McKernan, Ratcliffe, Steuerle, & Zhang, 2013; Nellis, 2016; Shapiro, Meschede, & Osoro, 2013). Many educators in the current era, however, are breathing new life into Baldwin's charge that teachers commit themselves to fight for racial justice. In this essay, we highlight one important example of that fight, the Black Lives Matter at School National Week of Action. Entering its fourth year, we first contextualize this growing movement by discussing the historically problematic position held by teachers' unions on issues of race before situating the National Week of Action within the current wave of social justice unionism. We then share our work as organizers of the higher education outreach for the National Week of Action and call on higher education faculty members and unions to join the fight.

This article discusses the relationship between the contemporary teacher movement and the social, political, and labor movements of the past. Using interviews with Philadelphia teacher-organizers, this investigation highlights specific past movements that shaped, informed, and inspired their work in the city. More specifically, the significance of the Jewish labor movement and Black liberation movements are explored, underscoring the ways that many of today's movement teachers learn from and stand in solidarity with the movements that came before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the absence of adequate public funding, public universities have increasingly turned to debt financing to fund operations and, especially, capital development projects. While debt financing may solve universities' short-term cash-flow problems, its long-term political implications are unclear. To date, there is little awareness of the impact of universities' debt financing on organizational priorities, much less educational inequalities. The relative obscurity of debt financing has contributed to its enshrinement as a governance tool of universities. This article examines the role of debt financing in shaping institutional priorities. Not simply a matter of dollars and cents, we argue that debt financing constitutes a power relationship that shapes the institutions we work in, as well as the varieties and quality of the educational experiences that we offer and that students experience. We argue that debt is a critical tool in the ongoing ideological project to change the soul and mission of higher education from a collectively held public good to a private asset with solely economically measurable returns. Effectively challenging creditor-debtor relations will require nothing short of a mass movement, one centered in organizing work. An analysis of credit-debtor relations, done by the affected parties themselves, provides an opening for such work. This analysis seeks to reveal the power relations at the heart of creditor-debtor relations that organizing-and only organizing-will be able to challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]