Henry A. Giroux
For decades,
neoliberalism has systematically attacked the welfare state, undermined public
institutions and weakened the foundations of collective well-being. Shrouded in
the alluring language of liberty, it transforms market principles into a
dominant creed, insisting that every facet of life conform to the imperatives
of profit and economic efficiency.
USC
students walk out of class and march around their campus in support of
Palestinians and the divest movement on October 7, 2024, in Los Angeles,
California. Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News / SCNG via Getty Images
But in reality,
neoliberalism consolidates wealth in the hands of a financial elite, celebrates
ruthless individualism, promotes staggering levels of inequality, perpetuates
systemic injustices like racism and militarism, and commodifies everything,
leaving nothing sacred or untouchable. Neoliberalism operates as a relentless
engine of capitalist accumulation, driven by an insatiable pursuit of unchecked
growth and the ruthless concentration of wealth and power within the hands of a
ruling elite. At its core, it’s a pedagogy of repression: crushing justice,
solidarity and care while deriding critical education and destroying the very
tools that empower citizens to resist domination and reclaim the promise of
democracy.
As neoliberalism
collapses into authoritarianism, its machinery of repression intensifies.
Dissent is silenced, social life militarized and hate normalized. This fuels a
fascistic politics which is systematically dismantling democratic
accountability, with higher education among its primary targets. For years, the
far right has sought to undermine education, recognizing it as a powerful site
of resistance. This has only accelerated, as MAGA movement adherents seek to
eliminate the public education threat to their authoritarian goals.
Vice
President-elect J.D. Vance openly declared “the professors are the enemy.”
President-elect Donald Trump has stated that “pink-haired communists [are]
teaching our kids.” In response to the Black Lives Matter protests following
George Floyd’s killing, MAGA politicians like Sen. Tom Cotton openly called for
deploying military force against demonstrators.
The
authoritarian spirit driving this party is crystallized in the words of
right-wing activist Jack Posobiec, who, at the 2023 Conservative Political
Action Conference, said: “We are here to overthrow democracy completely. We
didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will. After we burn that
swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes.”
This is more than anti-democratic, authoritarian rhetoric. It also shapes
poisonous policies in which education is transformed into an animating space of
repression and violence, and becomes weaponized as a tool of censorship,
conformity and discrimination.
As
authoritarianism surges globally, democracy is being dismantled. What does this
rise in illiberal regimes mean for higher education? What is the role of
universities in defending democratic ideals when the very notion of democracy
is under siege? In Trump’s United States, silence is complicity, and inaction a
moral failing. Higher education must reassert itself as a crucial democratic
public sphere that fosters critical thought, resists tyranny and nurtures the
kind of informed citizens necessary to a just society.
Trump’s return
to the presidency marks the endpoint of a deeply corrupt system, one that
thrives on anti-intellectualism, scorn for science and contempt for reason. In
this political climate, corruption, racism and hatred have transformed into a
spectacle of fear, division and relentless disinformation, supplanting any
notion of shared responsibility or collective purpose. In such a degraded
environment, democracy becomes a hollowed-out version of itself, stripped of
its legitimacy, ideals and promises. When democracy loses its moral and
aspirational appeal, it opens the door for autocrats like Trump to dismantle
the very institutions vital to preserving democratic life.
The failure of
civic culture, education and literacy is starkly evident in the Trump
administration’s success at emptying language of meaning — a flight from
historical memory, ethics, justice and social responsibility. Communication has
devolved into exaggerated political rhetoric and shallow public relations,
replacing reason and evidence with spectacle and demagoguery. Thinking is
scorned as dangerous, and news often serves as an amplifier for power rather
than a check on it.
Corporate media
outlets, driven by profits and ratings, align themselves with Trump’s
dis-imagination machine, perpetuating a culture of celebrity worship and
reality-TV sensationalism. In this climate, the institutions essential to a
vibrant civil society are eroding, leaving us to ask: What kind of democracy
can survive when the foundations of the social fabric are collapsing? Among
these institutions, the mainstream media — a cornerstone of the fourth estate —
have been particularly compromised. As Heather McGhee notes, the right-wing
media has, over three decades, orchestrated “a radical takeover of our
information ecosystem.”
Universities’
Neoliberal Audit Culture
As public-sector
support fades, many institutions of higher education have been forced to mirror
the private sector, turning knowledge into a commodity and eliminating
departments and courses that don’t align with the market’s bottom line. Faculty
are increasingly treated like low-wage workers, with labor relations designed
to minimize costs and maximize servility. In this climate, power is
concentrated in the hands of a managerial class that views education through a
market-driven lens, reducing both governance and teaching to mere instruments
of economic need. Democratic and creative visions, along with ethical
imagination, give way to calls for efficiency, financial gain and conformity.
This neoliberal
model not only undermines faculty autonomy but also views students as mere
consumers, while saddling them with exorbitant tuition fees and a precarious
future shaped by economic instability and ecological crisis. In abandoning its
democratic mission, higher education fixates on narrow notions of job-readiness
and cost-efficiency, forsaking its broader social and moral responsibilities.
Stripped of any values beyond self-interest, institutions retreat from
fostering critical citizenship and collective well-being.
Pedagogy, in
turn, is drained of its critical content and transformative potential. This
shift embodies what Cris Shore and Susan Wright term an “audit culture” — a
corporate-driven ethos that depoliticizes knowledge, faculty and students by
prioritizing performance metrics, measurable outputs and rigid individual
accountability over genuine intellectual and social engagement.
In this process,
higher education relinquishes its role as a democratic public sphere, shifting
its mission from cultivating engaged citizens to molding passive consumers.
This transformation fosters a generation of self-serving individuals,
disconnected from the values of solidarity and justice, and indifferent to the
creeping rise of authoritarianism.
The suppression
of student dissent on campuses this year, particularly among those advocating
for Palestinian rights and freedom, highlights this alarming trend.
Universities increasingly prioritize conformity and corporate interests,
punishing critical thinking and democratic engagement in the process. These
developments lay the groundwork for a future shaped not by collective action
and social equity, but by privatization, apathy and the encroachment of fascist
politics.
Education, once
the bedrock of civic engagement, has become a casualty in the age of Trump,
where civic illiteracy is celebrated as both virtue and spectacle. In a culture
dominated by information overload, celebrity worship and a cutthroat survival
ethic, anti-intellectualism thrives as a political weapon, eroding language,
meaning and critical thought. Ignorance is no longer passive — it is
weaponized, fostering a false solidarity among those who reject democracy and
scorn reason. This is not innocent ignorance but a calculated refusal to think
critically, a deliberate rejection of language’s role in the pursuit of
justice. For the ruling elite and the modern Republican Party, critical
thinking is vilified as a threat to power, while willful ignorance is elevated
to a badge of honor.
If we are to
defeat the emerging authoritarianism in the U.S., critical education must
become a key organizing principle of politics. In part, this can be done by
exposing and unraveling lies, systems of oppression, and corrupt relations of
power while making clear that an alternative future is possible. The language
of critical pedagogy can powerfully condemn untruths and injustices.
History’s
Emancipating Potential
A central goal
of critical pedagogy is to cultivate historical awareness, equipping students
to use history as a vital lens for understanding the present. Through the
critical act of remembrance, the history of fascism can be illuminated not as a
relic of the past but as a persistent threat, its dormant traces capable of
reawakening even in the most robust democracies. In this sense, history must
retain its subversive function — drawing on archives, historical sources, and
suppressed narratives to challenge conventional wisdom and dominant ideologies.
The subversive
power of history lies in its ability to challenge dominant narratives and
expose uncomfortable truths — precisely why it has become a prime target for
right-wing forces determined to rewrite or erase it. From banning books and
whitewashing historic injustices like slavery to punishing educators who
address pressing social issues, the assault on history is a calculated effort
to suppress critical thinking and maintain control. Such assaults on historical
memory represent a broader attempt to silence history’s emancipatory potential,
rendering critical pedagogy an even more urgent and essential practice in
resisting authoritarian forces. These assaults represent both a cleansing of
history and what historian Timothy Snyder calls “anticipatory obedience,” which
he labels as behavior individuals adopt in the service of emerging
authoritarian regimes.
The fight
against a growing fascist politics around the world is more than a struggle
over power, it is also a struggle to reclaim historical memory. Any fight for a
radical democratic socialist future is doomed if we fail to draw transformative
lessons from the darkest chapters of our history, using them to forge
meaningful resolutions and pathways toward a post-capitalist society. This is
especially true at a time when the idea of who should be a citizen has become
less inclusive, fueled by toxic religious and white supremacist ideology.
Consciousness-Shifting
Pedagogy
One of the
challenges facing today’s educators, students and others is the need to address
the question of what education should accomplish in a historical moment when it
is slipping into authoritarianism. In a world in which there is an increasing
abandonment of egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to
educate young people and the broader polity to hold power accountable?
In part, this
suggests developing educational policies and practices that not only inspire
and motivate people but are also capable of challenging the growing number of
anti-democratic tendencies under the global tyranny of capitalism. Such a
vision of education can move the field beyond its obsession with accountability
schemes, market values, and unreflective immersion in the crude empiricism of a
data-obsessed, market-driven society. It can also confront the growing assault
on education, where right-wing forces seek to turn universities into tools of
ideological tyranny — arenas of pedagogical violence and white Christian
indoctrination.
Any meaningful
vision of critical pedagogy must have the power to provoke a radical shift in
consciousness — a shift that helps us see the world through a lens that
confronts the savage realities of genocidal violence, mass poverty, the
destruction of the planet and the threat of nuclear war, among other issues. A
true shift in consciousness is not possible without pedagogical interventions
that speak directly to people in ways that resonate with their lives, struggles
and experiences. Education must help individuals recognize themselves in the
issues at hand, understanding how their personal suffering is not an isolated
event, but part of a systemic crisis. In addition, activism, debate and
engagement should be central to a student’s education.
In other words,
there can be no authentic politics without a pedagogy of identification — an
education that connects people to the broader forces shaping their lives, an
education that helps them imagine and fight for a world where they are active
agents of change.
The poet Jorie
Graham emphasizes the importance of engaging people through experiences that
resonate deeply with their everyday lives. She states that “it takes a visceral
connection to experience itself to permit us to even undergo an experience.”
Without this approach, pedagogy risks reinforcing a broader culture engrossed
in screens and oversimplifications. In such a context, teaching can quickly
transform into inaccessible jargon that alienates rather than educates.
Resisting
Educational “Neutrality”
In the current
historical moment, education cannot surrender to the call of academics who now
claim in the age of Trump that there is no room for politics in the classroom,
or the increasing claim by administrators that universities have a
responsibility to remain neutral. This position is not only deeply flawed but
also complicit in its silence over the current far right politicization of
education.
The call for
neutrality in many North American universities is a retreat from social and
moral responsibility, masking the reality that these institutions are deeply
embedded in power relations. As Heidi Matthews, Fatima Ahdash and Priya Gupta
aptly argue, neutrality “serves to flatten politics and silence scholarly
debate,” obscuring the inherently political nature of university life. From
decisions about enrollment and research funding to event policies and poster
placements, every administrative choice reflects a political stance. Far from
apolitical, neutrality is a tool that silences dissent and shields power from
accountability.
It is worth
repeating that the most powerful forms of education today extend far beyond
public and higher education. With the rise of new technologies, power
structures and social media, culture itself has become a tool of propaganda.
Right-wing media, conservative foundations, and a culture dominated by violence
and reality TV created the fertile ground for the rise of Trump and his
continued legitimacy. Propaganda machines like Fox News have fostered an
anti-intellectual climate, normalizing Trump’s bigotry, lies, racism and
history of abuse. This is not just a political failure — it is an educational
crisis.
In the age of
new media, platforms like Elon Musk’s X and tech giants like Facebook, Netflix
and Google have become powerful teaching machines, actively serving the far
right and promoting the values of gangster capitalism. These companies are
reshaping education, turning it into a training ground for workers who align
with their entrepreneurial vision or, even more dangerously, perpetuating a
theocratic, ultra-nationalist agenda that views people of color and
marginalized groups as threats. This vision of education must be rejected in
the strongest terms, for it erodes both democracy and the very purpose of
education itself.
Education as
Mass Mobilization
Education, in
its truest sense, must be about more than training students to be workers or
indoctrinating them into a white Christian nationalist view of who does and
doesn’t count as American. Education should foster intellectual rigor and
critical thinking, empowering students to interrogate their experiences and
aspirations while equipping them with the agency to act with informed judgment.
It must be a bold and supportive space where student voices are valued and
engaged with pressing social and political issues, cultivating a commitment to
justice, equality and freedom. In too many classrooms in the U.S., there are
efforts to make students voiceless, which amounts to making them powerless.
This must be challenged and avoided at all times.
Critical
pedagogy must expose the false equivalence of capitalism and democracy,
emphasizing that resisting fascism requires challenging capitalism. To be
transformative, it should embrace anti-capitalist principles, champion radical
democracy and envision political alternatives beyond conventional ideologies.
In the face of
growing attacks on higher education, educators must reclaim their role in
shaping futures, advancing a vision of education as integral to the struggle
for democracy. This vision rejects the neoliberal framing of education as a
private investment and instead embraces a critical pedagogy as a practice of
freedom that disrupts complacency, fosters critical engagement, and empowers
students to confront the forces shaping their lives.
In an age of
resurgent fascism, education must do more than defend reason and critical
judgment — it must also mobilize widespread, organized collective resistance. A
number of youth movements, from Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement to
Fridays for Future and March for Our Lives, are mobilizing in this direction.
The challenge here is to bring these movements together into one multiracial,
working-class organization.
The struggle for
a radical democracy must be anchored in the complexities of our time — not as a
fleeting sentiment but as an active, transformative project. Democracy is not
simply voting, nor is it the sum of capitalist values and market relations. It is
an ideal and promise — a vision of a future that does not imitate the present;
it is the lifeblood of resistance, struggle, and the ongoing merging of
justice, ethics and freedom.
In a society
where democracy is under siege, educators must recognize that alternative
futures are not only possible but that acting on this belief is essential to
achieving social change.
The global rise
of fascism casts a long shadow, marked by state violence, silenced dissent and
the assault on critical thought. Yet history is not a closed book — it is a
call to action, a space for possibility. Now, more than ever, we must dare to
think boldly, act courageously, and forge the democratic futures that justice
demands and humanity deserves.
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