Critical Education Vol. 16 No. 3 (2025)
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New Issue: Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor
Workplace #36 includes the first installment of a series on Teachers’ Work in Contentious Political Times edited by Dana Morrison (West Chester University), Brianne Kramer (Southern Utah University), Lauren Ware Stark (Université de Sherbrooke), Erin Dyke (Oklahoma State University), and Denisha Jones (Defending the Early Years).
Jelena Starcevic (Cornell University) contributes a new article in the Workplace series featuring research from the Global Labour Research Centre Symposium at York University.
Featured articles include studies of: shared governance in academic libraries by Sarah Fitzgerald, Therese Kaufman, and Jaime Taylor (University of Massachusetts Amherst); how activist resistance on campus produces a shared sense of community by Kefaya Diab (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), Andrew Bowman (Independent Scholar), Bruce Kovanen (North Dakota State University), Liz Miller (The Ohio State University), and Jonathan Isaac (University of Washington); the relationship between social-well being and multi-locational work in a Finnish university by Maija Nyman, Satu Uusiautti, and Timo Aarrevaara (University of Lapland).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v36i1
Published: 2025-08-05
Towards an Ideal Model of Education for Critical Citizenship (now open access)
The article “Towards an Ideal Model of Education for Critical Citizenship. An Analysis of the Spanish Curricular Change in Social Sciences” published in January 2025 in the European Journal of Education is now available under Open Access license.
The article examines the integration of citizenship education in Spain’s new social sciences curriculum, focusing on primary and secondary education. It highlights the importance of fostering critical citizenship, which involves questioning societal norms, challenging injustices, and engaging in transformative social action. The study uses the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) framework to analyze the curriculum, revealing a stronger emphasis on cognitive skills and content knowledge compared to attitudes and engagement.
Key findings include:
- Cognitive and Content Focus: The curriculum prioritizes cognitive domains (e.g., reasoning and application) and content domains (e.g., civic principles and roles) over attitudes and engagement.
- Inconsistencies in Curriculum Elements: While competencies emphasize citizenship commitment, evaluation criteria and basic knowledge lack coherence, limiting practical classroom implementation.
- Limited Focus on Engagement: Engagement-related dimensions, such as activism and social participation, are minimally addressed, distancing the curriculum from fostering active democratic citizenship.
- Imbalance in Basic Knowledge: Basic knowledge focuses solely on content, neglecting cognitive, attitudinal, and engagement aspects.
The study concludes that while the curriculum incorporates cognitive and content domains effectively, it falls short in promoting critical social action and engagement. Future efforts should focus on aligning curriculum elements and fostering interdisciplinary approaches to empower students as active participants in democracy. Researchers are encouraged to examine the practical implementation of these curricular changes to advance education for social justice.
Navarro Medina, E , Ross, E. W., Pérez-Rodríguez, N., & De Alba Fernandez, N. (2025). Towards an ideal model of education for critical citizenship. An analysis of the Spanish curricular change in social sciences. European Journal of Education, 60(1), e70010. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.70010
Interview with Brazilian history education researchers
It has been a great honor and a learning experience for me to have connected with history education researchers in Brazil in recent years.
Prof. Dr. Luis F. Cerri (State University of Ponta Grossa, Brazil) contributed a chapter for the book Social Studies Education in Latin America: Critical Perspectives from the Global South , which I edited with Sebastián Plá .
Cerri’s chapter presents outcomes of an international project researching young peoples’ view of teaching and learning history, historical awareness and culture, political position and culture. The chapter presents comparative data on political position and views regarding history from young people across Latin America, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Colombia.
Subsequent to the book project, I had the opportunity to speak at the National Meeting of Researchers on the Teaching of History in Brazil and then last summer participated in a video interview with Dr. Cerri as well as Prof. Dr. Maria Lima (Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul) and Prof. Dr. Juliana Andrade (Federal Rural University of Pernambuco).
The interview has just been published in Revista Docentes:
Ross, E. W., Cerri, L. F., Lima, M. A., & Andrade, J. (2025). Entrevista com o professor E. Wayne Ross. Revista Docentes, 10(35), 99-111. https://periodicos.seduc.ce.gov.br/revistadocentes/article/view/1474
Summary
E. Wayne Ross, together with Sebastián Plá, organized a collection on the teaching of Social Studies in Latin America, resulting from the understanding that the Global South is rapidly changing its role in the various spheres of contemporary life, and among them, the debate on the teaching and learning of subjects such as History. In 2022, he opened the proceedings of the National Meeting of Researchers on the Teaching of History held at UFRPE, reflecting on the impacts of neoliberal policies on the teaching of History and other human and social sciences. In this interview, conducted by videoconference on July 14, 2024, three leaders of the ABEH Associação Brasileira de Ensino de História spoke with the professor about their experiences of civic and professional resistance to the advances of militarism, the business perspective and reactionism in education, themes that are older there than here, which resulted in a fruitful debate.
New issue launch Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor #35 (2024-2025)
New issue launch Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor #35 (2024-2025)
Articles in Workplace #35 address a variety of labour issues on campus and beyond, including the first in a series of articles by graduate student participants in the Global Labour Research Centre Symposium at York University.
Find the Workplace #35 here: https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/index
Thoughts to contemplate on May Day
Consider the thoughts below as part of your May Day activities:Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt Euch! – Marx & Engels
“Think! It ain’t illegal yet!”
—George Clinton [“Lunchmeatophobia”]
“There was a movement at one time, not so many years ago either, which was international in its scope, which had for its object the setting aside the first of May for a general, international holiday, looking ultimately to the inauguration of a short-hour workday, but this grand idea has been side-tracked in later years by a lot of political buncombe and claptrap, thus persuading the working classes into the notion that they can gain their freedom by electing a lot of fellows to office.”
― Lucy Parsons (1906)
“I want to die a slave to principles. Not to men.”
— Emiliano Zapata
— Emiliano Zapata
“… the most urgent expression of freedom is the destruction of idols, especially when they claim to represent freedom.”
— Guy Debord et al [“Position of the Lettrist International,” 1952]
“Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible.”
—Karl Marx
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
“The state is nothing but an instrument of oppression of one class by another—no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.”
—Marx & Engels
“When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good.”
– Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
—Henry David Thoreau
“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”
—Raoul Vaneigem
“One form of wage labor may correct the abuses of another, but no form of wage labor can correct the abuse of wage labor itself.”
—Karl Marx
—Karl Marx
“In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.
— Guy Debord [Society of the Spectacle, Thesis 1, 1967]
“[In The Power Elite (1956) C. Wright Mills quoted] Sophie Tucker (without either approval or disapproval in the context) ‘I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and believe me, rich is best.’ For a radical, the corollary of the this attitude is that it is not wealth that is wrong with America but poverty, and that what is reprehensible about the rich is not that they enjoy the good things of life but that they use their power to maintain a system which needlessly denies the same advantages to others.
—Paul M. Sweezy, “Power Elite and the Ruling Class,” Monthly Review, September, 1956
“Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy and let it be a war of extermination without pity.”
—Lucy Parsons quoted in Women Building Chicago, 2001, p. 671
“… and there will be rivers of blood!”
– Anonymous Rouge Forum Member
– Anonymous Rouge Forum Member
BCCLA: UBC Profs’ perverse interpretation of the University Act lays bare a hidden agenda
UBC Profs’ perverse interpretation of the University Act lays bare a hidden agenda
Posted on April 16, 2025
by Liza Hughes
Universities are a crucial social space of free expression, exchange of ideas, and academic debate.
Universities are not meant to be sanitized from political thought or discourse. The recent lawsuit brought by UBC professors and one former graduate student in the name of free expression is a perverse interpretation of the prohibition of political activity under the University Act that cannot be justified from a civil liberties lens.
The University Act requires that universities be “non-sectarian and non-political in principle.” In our view, this is to create a buffer between government and university. It functions to ensure that universities do not become tools of indoctrination for state-sponsored religions or ideologies.
BCCLA fully supports the need to keep universities free from state interference, which is why we condemn this case. We disagree with the interpretation of the University Act advanced by the petitioners and raise alarm at a lawsuit that considers diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) values, land acknowledgements, and faculty statements of solidarity to be inconsistent with civil liberties.
The UBC petitioners allege that acknowledging unceded territories, promoting DEI values, or faculty members denouncing state violence are political actions prohibited by the legislation and that they limit academic freedom.
However, their interpretation of “political” is ultimately self-defeating. Acknowledging that you are on unceded land is no more political than refusing to do so. Muzzling faculty will not advance academic freedom. Claiming that DEI values are “political”, while other value-laden concepts like academic freedom are not, is nonsensical.
Academic freedom includes the rights of university groups to speak out about important social issues including Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights, issues of power and oppression, and genocide. Civil liberties include the rights of diverse voices to be heard and protected through promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion values.
It is paradoxical to claim that an acknowledgement of Indigenous rights undermines the colonial state and is therefore political.
Remaining “neutral” necessarily supports the status quo, which in itself is a political act.
Advancing a legal argument that universities should be prevented from acknowledging land theft or colonial occupation enforces and enables genocide denialism.
Genocide can only occur when it is supported and enabled by powerful institutions, both in Canada and abroad. Canadian institutions have supported, enabled, and enacted genocide of Indigenous Peoples since the formation of the country, and these genocidal acts and their legacy continue to this day. Denial of these facts is support for genocide and ought to be condemned by any rights-respecting person or institution.
The petitioners use the guise of civil liberties as a thin veil to cover genocide denialism.
It undermines the very ethos of civil liberties to assert that these liberties are incompatible with free expression on important political issues.
As civil libertarians, we believe that free expression, including expression of faculty members, drives critical, constructive discourse. We disagree that it is necessary or beneficial to silence faculty members in order to protect dissenting voices.
If academic freedom is at stake here, it is a matter to be dealt with by the University itself. This case invites the very political interference that the University Act is meant to prevent.
A principled civil libertarian would conclude that complete deference to the state, enforced by the courts and legislation against a university, is an inexcusable overreach of political power.
There is no social space free from political context. Outside university walls, Land Defenders are stripped of civil liberties; small gains towards uprooting oppression through promoting DEI values are being thwarted by powerful institutions; and voices expressing solidarity with Gaza are being systematically repressed.
This lawsuit is a calculated step backwards. It is not about freedom, academic or otherwise. It is telling that the petitioners challenge these three acts in tandem. Although they are conceptually and legally distinct, they all represent a shift away from colonial dominance. It aligns with a broader global trend moving away from equity values and actively concentrating power and resources within a small, privileged group.
People in Canada have come to understand that our diversity is our strength. That there is room for all of us.
The acknowledgement of existing power dynamics is one small step towards creating a more equitable environment where true freedom, including academic freedom, can flourish.
The notion that DEI commitments are unacceptably political for the university environment weaponizes the fact that marginalized people are politicized just by existing, participating, and taking up space.
This claim is a desperate attempt to hold onto power. It is not a new or edgy idea; it is the tired and dying battle cry of an old guard that is not willing to accept true competition in ideas or opportunities. It is an attempt to maintain status quo and the privilege it offers some, not an effort towards political neutrality.
BCCLA is deeply disturbed to see a past member of our Board of Directors, Andrew Irvine, taking a position that is so deeply antithetical to civil liberties and values of liberty, equality, and justice. We emphatically denounce the notion that land acknowledgements conflict with civil liberties, or that equality initiatives that acknowledge and attempt to remedy structural power dynamics are unacceptably political.
Civil liberties are not a commodity to be horded by the privileged few. Freedom cannot exist alongside oppression. At a time when equality rights and freedom of expression for equity-denied groups are increasingly under attack, BCCLA continues to champion an expansive interpretation of civil liberties that includes the rights of all.
Anti-Palestinian Racism Has No Place on Campus
Anti-Palestinian Racism Has No Place on Campus
APR-on-Campus is a self-reporting platform initiated by post-secondary students to document Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR) at Canadian educational institutions. Our objective is to expose the rise of APR, which fuels systemic marginalization, restricts academic freedom, and perpetuates injustice.
APR justifies and upholds systems of oppression by silencing voices, excluding perspectives, erasing narratives, and defamation – targeting Palestinians, those perceived as Palestinian, and non-Palestinians who support Palestinian rights. It manifests in both overt and subtle ways, including physical violence, harassment, smearing, dehumanization, exclusion, micro-aggressions, biased policies, and emotional violence. APR threatens both individuals and the integrity of academic spaces. We’re holding our universities accountable — we will not tolerate racism on campus.
“Anti-Palestinian racism is a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti-Palestinian racism takes various forms including: denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.”
Demand the Immediate Release of Palestinian Student Activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention
On March 8, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent graduate student at Columbia University, at his place of residence, an apartment building owned by the university.
The DHS agents said that the U.S. Department of State had revoked Khalil’s green card.
At approximately 8:30 p.m. ET, Khalil and his wife, a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant, had just unlocked the door to their building when two plainclothes DHS agents forced their way in behind them. The agents initially refused to identify themselves, instead asking Khalil to confirm his identity before detaining him without explanation. The agents proceeded to threaten his wife, telling her that if she remained by his side, they would arrest her too.
Later, the DHS agents stated that the U.S. Department of State had revoked Khalil’s student visa, despite the fact that he has no student visa and is a lawful permanent resident. An agent showed Khalil what he claimed was a warrant on his phone. Khalil’s wife went into their apartment to retrieve his green card while the agents remained with Khalil downstairs. When she returned, advising them of Khalil’s legal status and presenting them with Khalil’s green card, one agent was visibly confused and said on the phone, “He has a green card.” However, after a moment, the DHS agents stated that the State Department had “revoked that too.” When Khalil’s attorney attempted to intervene over the phone, the DHS agent hung up the phone.
Khalil is currently being detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at 26 Federal Plaza pending an appearance before an immigration judge.
This significant deviation from normal immigration proceedings comes in the wake of increased and abnormal scrutiny concerning the actions of students alleged to hold pro-Palestine views. Axios recently reported that the State Department, Department of Justice, and DHS were launching a “Catch and Revoke” effort to identify alleged pro-Palestinian activists based on artificial intelligence screening of social media.
Khalil has been specifically and discriminatorily targeted by Columbia University for his Palestinian identity and outspoken activism on multiple occasions over the last 17 months. He served as a lead negotiator during the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last spring. He has frequently appeared in media interviews and press conferences. The university suspended him while he was on a student visa and reversed it within the same day.
Columbia University has published guidance on how best to collaborate with federal enforcement, including advising faculty and staff “not to interfere” with ICE agents even if those agents are unable to present a warrant. Over the last few days, there have been several reports of ICE agents approaching pedestrians and students in the neighborhood surrounding Columbia University’s Morningside campus, creating unsafe environments for students (particularly students of color), regardless of their immigration status.
Columbia’s continued acquiescence to federal agencies and outside partisan institutions has made this situation possible. A Palestinian student and member of the community has been abducted and detained without the physical demonstration of a warrant or officially filed charges. Like many other Arab and Muslim students, Khalil has been the target of various zionist harassment campaigns, fueled by doxxing websites like Canary Mission. This racist targeting serves to instill fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others.
An activist familiar with Khalil’s solidarity work said, “Mahmoud is foundational to our community. The state has escalated its repression of students for opposing the U.S.-backed genocide in Palestine, in which all American universities are complicit. However, the students will continue to rally for Palestine and against state violence.”
Detaining students for their activism violates the first amendment and is a threat to all people of conscience. ICE must immediately release Mahmoud Khalil from detention.
Sign the petition below to demand the immediate release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention.
Open Letter: UBC Protects War Criminals and Terrorizes Community
Via UBC Staff for Palestine:
On February 14th, while “israeli” occupation forces were swimming in the Aquatic Centre, UBC staff member and alum Nathan Herrington was abducted by armed RCMP state agents, handcuffed, searched, and locked in the back of a van for 30+ minutes.
Nathan was doing his job.
He was wearing a keffiyeh.
And he was “detained for mischief.”
It could have been you. It could have been anyone. Without action, it will be.
These incidents are only getting more common in university communities.
The UBC administration has refused join faculty, staff, and students who have called for an end to UBC’s complicity in “israeli” war crimes. Instead, faculty are removed from teaching assignments, staff members are kidnapped, student spaces are abused for militarized surveillance, armed officers demand that students violate their journalism ethics, and anti-discrimination educational resources are removed from the internet. Where will it end? Any UBC administration that permits or encourages these behaviours is a danger to our community.
Please sign and share the open letter “UBC Protects War Criminals and Terrorizes Community” in solidarity with Nathan and the UBC community.
And, if you have not yet signed the petition for UBC to Divest from Corporations Fueling Genocide and Occupation, we urge you to do so!
In Solidarity,
UBC Staff for Palestine