At the same time, you see in those studies, you see the emergence of various movements among black youth that are really challenging the ideology of neoliberalism since the 1980s.

I mean, we're not talking about simply racism, we're taking about white supremacy.

Given that by age 23, almost a third of Americans are arrested for a crime, it becomes clear that in the new militarized state young people, especially poor minorities, are viewed as predators, a threat to corporate governance, and are treated as disposable populations.

We have never seen the isolation of the rich to the degree that we see it now. They're global. They travel all over the world. They're not in any way - it seems to me - committed to any one place. So it's easy for them to say, "We don't see this. We don't see poverty. We don't think it's that bad. We think wealth is really being distributed in ways that are fair."

Everyone is now considered a potential terrorist, providing a rational for both the government and private corporations to spy on anybody, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. Surveillance is supplemented by a growing domestic army of baton-wielding police forces who are now being supplied with the latest military equipment.

There is the emergence of a militarized society that now organizes itself for the production of violence. A society in which the range of acceptable opinion inevitably shrinks.

We need to figure how to defend higher education as a public good. If we can't do that, we're in trouble.