University presidents should be loud and forceful in defending the university as a social good, essential to the democratic culture and economy of a nation. They should be criticizing the prioritizing of funds for military and prison expenditures over funds for higher education. And this argument should be made as a defense of education, as a crucial public good, and it should be taken seriously. But they aren't making these arguments.
Henry GirouxThe degree to which fear now becomes an organizing principle of society is enormous compared to what it was like in the past.
Henry GirouxThere appears to be no space outside the panoptican of commercial barbarism and casino capitalism.
Henry GirouxI think people now live in an age in which the only thing - they don't think about getting ahead. They think about surviving.
Henry GirouxEconomics now drives politics. This gives us a system in which the relationship between power and politics is no longer fused. Power is global. We have an elite that now floats in global flows. It could care less about the nation-state, and it could care less about traditional forms of politics. Hence, it makes no political concessions whatsoever. It attacks unions, it attacks public schools, it attacks public goods. It doesn't believe in the social contract.
Henry Giroux