University in Chains Confronting the Military-industrial-academic Complex [Hardcover]

President Eisenhower originally included 'academic' in the draft of his landmark, oft-quoted speech on the military-industrial-complex. Giroux tells why Eisenhower saw the academy as part of the famous complex - and how his warning was vitally prescient for 21st-century America. Giroux details the sweeping post-9/11 assault being waged on the academy by militarization, corporatization, and right-wing fundamentalists who increasingly view critical thought itself as a threat to the dominant political order. Giroux argues that the university has become a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning and has compromised its role as a democratic public sphere. And yet, in spite of its present embattled status and the inroads made by corporate power, the defense industries, and the right wing extremists, Giroux defends the university as one of the few public spaces left capable of raising important questions and educating students to be critical and engaged agents. He concludes by making a strong case for reclaiming it as a democratic public sphere.I know of no more acute a commentator on higher education in the United States today. Profound and unsparing, Girouxs book concludes with an imaginative strategy to transform the university into a truly democratic institution.
Howard Zinn

In this book Giroux continues to develop his analysis of higher education in the U.S., adding to the voluminous body of work he has published over the past 30 years. He writes from the standpoint of a public intellectual and from within the school of thought founded by Paulo Freire. & Recommended.
CHOICE

Should be read as a clarion call to summon back an administration caught in a near-death experience and to waken a slumbering faculty to the dangers in our hallowed halls & The University in Chains is required reading for everyone in higher education. Buy several copies for your del“7