News and New Projects

Neoliberalism Book Wins Award - November 2008

I am very pleased to announce that a book I co-authored won the 2008 Critics Choice Book Award from the American Educational Studies Award. The Award was announced at the AESA annual meeting taking place over the November 1 - 2, 2008 weekend in Savannah, Georgia.  The book receiving the award in Neoliberalism and Education Reform, edited by Wayne Ross and Rich Gibson.  My chapter is entitled "The Unchained Dialectic: Theory and Research in an Era of Educational Reform."  I have a brief discussion of the chapter in the "Books and Chapters" section of this website.You can read it by clicking here Books and Chapters.  The book is available through Hampton Press at http://www.hamptonpress.com.

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New Journal Article on Administration

Check for a new article I wrote for Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor. The article is entitled "Theses on Predatory Administration" and was inspired by the Robert Felner scandal at the University of Louisville.  Workplace is an interesting online journal. It has a definite left-wing slant, but my critique of predatory administration seems to fit with a critique of organizational hierarchy compatible with the general orientation of the journal and the faculty who contribute to it. Its website is http://www.cust.educ.ubc.ca/workplace/issue15/index.html.  You can read a synopsis of the article in the "Journal Articles" section of this website.

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New Article on Educational Leadership October 2008.

An article I co-authored with Lisa Murley and John Keedy appeared in the October 2008 issue of Leadership and Policy in Schools. The article is entitled, "Examining School Improvement Through the Lens of Principal and Teacher Flow of Influence in High-Achieving, High-Poverty Schools." A brief discussion of the article appears in the "Journal Articles" section of the website. You can read the abstract and bibliographic citation by clicking on Journal Articles.

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Review of After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race and the Dialectics of Liberty by Chris Matthew Sciabarra.   August 2008.

I am very pleased to announce that scholarly reviews of my book After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race and the Dialectics of Liberty are beginning to appear. One of the reviews that I anticipated the most is by Professor Chris Matthew Sciabarra of New York University. Professor Sciabarra's review is extremely important because I used elements of the theoretical framework of dialectical libertarianism that he developed.

Prof. Sciabarra's review is posted on his web site which he titles, "Notablog."  The web address where his review can be found is http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/notablog/archives/001510.html. I very much appreciate the positive comments that he makes about my book. It is also true that the book would not be what it is without his work on dialectical libertarianism. His work helped me tremendously.

It is also important to note that Sciabarra's Notablog was recently voted one of the best faculty websites in the country by a group of social and political science faculty. It is certainly well worth perusing. It is a model for other web sites that include scholarly and theoretical content!

After Multiculturalism is available through amazon.com at:  http://www.amazon.com/After-Multiculturalism-Politics-Dialectics-Liberty/dp/0739118838/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218473926&sr=1-1

It can also be purchased through Lexington Books at http://www.lexingtonbooks.com.

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Formation of the College of the United States. Posted August 19, 2008.

I am very disturbed that the so-called liberal arts and social sciences in colleges and universities in the United States have become little more than part of the propaganda machine for statism and collectivism in our society. I am very pleased to learn that the Reason-Individualism-Freedom Institute is in the early stages of planning a new type of higher education institution. 

The new school is aptly named "The College of the United States."  Its mission is to develop a new generation of leaders "who will fulfill the vision of America’s
Founding Fathers. It will provide a sound, highly integrated four year liberal arts and sciences curriculum emphasizing reality-oriented and life-enhancing learning, examining many philosophies and ideas including those of rational self-interest, Classical Liberalism and free market economics."

Thus, the ideas of individual liberty, limited government, respect for rationality, and free market economics, which are the basic elements of the founding of America, will guide the curriculum, instruction, and governance of the College.

The effort to establish the College of the United States is led by Marsha Enright. The web site for the College is www.collegeunitedstates.org.

At this juncture the College is soliciting donations, support, and interest from those who would like to see more openness and balance in our higher education system.  It is exciting to see the development of a college where the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will actually get serious discussion. I wish Marsha and her colleagues great success and commit myself to assisting them in this very important effort. I appreciate all of her wonderful work on behalf of reason and freedom.

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Paper at Canadian Society for the Study of Education - May 31 -June 3.  May 2008.

I will be presenting a paper entitled "The Unchained Dialectic: Theory and Research on Higher Education in an Era of Reform" at meetings of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education in Vancouver, B.C., May 31 - June 3.  My paper is part of a symposium on Neoliberalism and Education Reform, edited by Wayne Ross and Rich Gibson.  This book came out in late 2007 and was published by Hampton Press. My paper will review some of the elements of the chapter I wrote for the book but will also add some new material I am working on.

The paper subjects the state of theory and research on higher education in North America to a pretty thorough critique. I begin by categorizing theoretical and methodological approaches using Habermas' forms of scientific interest - the positive-technical, the interpretive-hermeneutic, and the critical. I think argue that the critical or dialectical interest in inquiry is, at bottom, a form of immanent critique which contrasts what social formations say about themselves to what they are or what they are becoming. I analyze the ideas of Marx, Gramsci, Lukacs, and Marcuse on immanent critique and relate them to the status of research on colleges and universities. My basic conclusion is that there is precious little that can be authentically called critical inquiry about higher education; almost all of the existing research is either positivist or interpretive.

The paper then proceeds to develop the concept of an unchained dialectic, which I trace through the work of Kant, Hegel, Marx and Dunayevskaya. The basic notion of an unchained dialectic is that there is no terminus to the historical process. New forms of oppression and liberation are always possible. Moreover, theories and methods that posit an end to the historical process always require an observer who stands outstide history and society to articulate them. This is always contradictory. For example, Marcuse posited the one-dimensional society which had resolves all social contradictions, but he applauded the student, black, and women rebels of the 1960s. There was no basis in his theory of one-dimensionality for opposition.

The paper contrasts Marcuse's one-dimensionality thesis with Hegel's notion of the dialectic as Absolute Method, in which new beginnings are always possible. The paper concludes with a discussion of Chris Matthew Sciabarra's concept of the dialectics of liberty which seeks interaction between dialectical inquiry and libertarian thought. Sciabarra has developed a new form of inquiry by unchaining the dialectic from the thought of Marx and Hegel. His work explores the dialectical structure of the work of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. Sciabarra's work is a new form of radicalism that expands the boundaries of both libertarian thought and dialectical inquiry, consistently challenging the authority of the state and presumed limits to knowledge.

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