This article examines how the concept of freedom has been appropriated by the far right to impose a number of authoritarian policies designed to dismantle the critical functions of public and higher education. It explores, in particular, the ways in which Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has used an appeal to freedom to punish critics,…

Universities play an indispensable role within modern democracies. But this role is often overlooked or too narrowly conceived, even by universities themselves. In "What Universities Owe Democracy," Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, argues that--at a moment when liberal democracy is endangered and more…

This article discusses the recent expansion and democratization of Brazil's higher education system from the beginning of the twenty-first century to the present, concluding with its contemporary clash with the far-right government, which has placed universities and scientific knowledge under attack -- an experience had around the globe. In the…

Despite boasting its self-characterization as the "land of the free," US American "freedom" is, at times, tainted with historical amnesia, hypocrisy, and inhumanity. This article examines today's socio-political climate by drawing from de Tocqueville's (2003) prediction that American democracy is a tyranny of the majority.…

Our scope is to show how democracy has been trivialized as a concept and, more worryingly, as a mystified practice of consented servitude, which supposedly would bring to its very end. In fact, for the emblematic occidental societies, democracy has, at the best, been reduced to a consumerist way of life, under the capitalist liberal order, and the…

The United States (US) has since its inception considered the education of its citizens as critical for preserving democracy. The recent attractiveness of autocratic leaders, not only in the US but across the world, raises questions about the dominant educational model now in place. We argue that the authoritarian and business-oriented structure…

For the author, teaching history has become a double challenge: to help students understand both "History" (the narrative crafted by the historian, based on documentation, supported by previous scholarship, and bound together through logical argument) and "history" (the real events that occupied real lives that are largely…

Diversity is generally discussed in terms such as "being diverse", "being unlike", "difference" and "variety". Academics, as expressive writers, try to make their understanding of a concept such as diversity as explicit as possible, as part of their discourse of giving and asking for reasons. As such, diversity may be viewed both positively and…