Category Archives: Democracy

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.

Critical Education 16(1), Feb 2025: With special section on Neoliberal Capitalism and Public Education

New issue of Critical Education published today. Critical Education, 16(1), includes a special section on “Neoliberal Capitalism and Public Education” edited by Lana Parker (U of WIndsor).

Contesting Concepts, Imagining New Possibilities: David Graeber, Democracy, and Social Studies Curriculum
Peter M Nelson

Applying Critical Race Theory to Enhance the Racial Inclusivity of Teachers in Canada: A Review of the Literature and Facilitative Programming
Lucas Skelton

Critical Making Workshops: Sparking Meta-Discussions for Critical Thinking in Vocational Education
Regina Sipos, Alexander Kutschera, Janina Klose

Neoliberal Capitalism and Public Education (Lana Parker, Section Editor)

A Window into Public Education: Documenting Neoliberal Capitalism’s Harms, Advocating for Alternatives
Lana Parker

Critical Geography and Teaching Against Neoliberal Racial Capitalism in New York City Elementary Schools
Debbie Sonu, Karen Zaino, Robert J. Helfenbein

The Allure of Professionalism: Teacher Candidate Subjectivity and Resistance in Neoliberal Times
Adam Kaszuba

University Bureaucracies as the Death of Play: The 1968 Strax Affair and the Arts of Discombobulation
Harrison Dressler, Noah Pleshet; Daniel Tubb

“I Need This Person’s Support to Have a Career”: The Material and Emotional Impacts of Neoliberalism on Trans Collegians’ Classroom Experiences at a Public University
Justin Gutzwa, Robert Marx

Towards an Ideal Model of Education for Critical Citizenship

Thanks to Noelia Pérez‐Rodríguez for the opportunity to work with her and colleagues Elisa Navarro‐Medina and Nicolás De‐Alba‐Fernández – all in the Department of Didactics of Experimental and Social Sciences at University of Seville – on an article analyzing social science curriculum in Spain and working towards an ideal model of critical citizenship.

Abstract:

In this study, we analysed the presence of citizenship education in the new Spanish social sciences curriculum, focusing on both the primary and secondary education stages. The relevance of the study stems from the need to adapt to a new reality, in which it is crucial to develop in children and young people the skills to understand, interpret and make critical decisions. Considering the model outlined as ideal, and being aware of the difficulty involved in achieving it, we took as a reference a possible model to analyse the Spanish curriculum, the ICCS study framework. The research presented is based on a review of policy documents and analyses the curricula of compulsory education stages through a content analysis technique. The results show that in the Spanish curriculum, under the logic of the ICCS framework, cognitive skills and citizen content are more prevalent than those based on attitudes and engagement. This issue prompts us to reflect on the future changes that should be made to approach the model we consider relevant.

Citation:

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

We are currently working on making the article open access. If you’re interested in and don’t have access to the article please contact me, I’m happy to share.

In conversation: Professor E Wayne Ross and Professor Alpesh Maisuria

I was delighted to conduct a seminar and reading group exploring critical social education in September 2024 at with the Education and and Childhood Research Group at University of the West of England. ECRG is lead by Professor Alpesh Maisuria and here is a short “in conversation” between Professor Maisuria and me.

Rouge Forum Archive

The Rouge Forum Archive is now available at RougeForum.com The RF Archive includes flyers, broadsides, conference programs, issues of our zine The Rouge Forum News, the Adam Renner Education for Social Justice Lectures, and more. And also check out RougeForum.org for additional information about RF activities.

The Rouge Forum is a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society.

We are concerned about questions like these:

How can we teach against racism, national chauvinism, and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society?
How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals and still teach—or learn?
Whose interests shall schools serve in a society that is ever more unequal?

We are both research and action oriented. We want to learn about equality, democracy, and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring into practice our present understanding of what these are.

We seek to build a caring inclusive community that understands an injury to one is an injury to all. At the same time, our caring community is going to need to deal decisively with an opposition that is sometimes ruthless.

Read about the origins and history of The Rouge Forum here.

Why do you call it The Rouge Forum?

The River Rouge runs throughout the Detroit area—where the Rouge Forum was founded in 1998. Once a beautiful river bounteous with fish and plant life, it supported wetlands throughout southeast Michigan. Before industrialization, it was one of three rivers running through what is now the metropolitan area. Today the Rouge meanders through some of the most industrially polluted areas in the United States, past some of the poorest and most segregated areas of North American, only to lead some tributaries to one of the richest cities in the U.S.: Birmingham. The Rouge cares nothing for boundaries. The other two Detroit rivers were paved, early in the life of the city, and now serve as enclosed running sewers. Of the three, the Rouge is the survivor.

The Ford Rouge Plant was built before and during World Way I. By 1920, it was the world’s largest industrial complex. Everything that went into a Ford car was manufactured at the Rouge. It was one of the work’s largest iron foundries and one of the top steel producers. Early on, Henry Ford sought to control every aspect of a worker’s life, mind and body, in the plant and out. Using a goon squad recruited from Michigan prisons led by the infamous Harry Bennet, Ford instituted a code of silence. He systematically divided workers along lines of national origin, sex, race, and language groupings–and set up segregated housing for the work force. Ford owned Dearborn and its politicians. He designed a sociology department, a group of social workers who demanded entry into workers’ homes to discover “appropriate” family relations and to ensure the people ate Ford-approved food, like soybeans, voted right, and went to church.

While Ford did introduce the “Five Dollar Day,” in fact only a small segment of the employees ever got it, and those who did saw their wages cut quickly when economic downturns, and the depression, eroded Ford profits.

The Rouge is the site that defined “Fordism.” Ford ran the line mercilessly. Fordism which centered on conveyor production, single- purpose machines, mass consumption, and mass marketing, seeks to heighten productivity via technique. The processes are designed to strip workers of potentially valuable faculties, like their expertise, to speed production, expand markets, and ultimately to drive down wages. These processes seek to make workers into replaceable machines themselves, but machines also capable of consumption. Contrary to trendy analysis focused on globalization and the technique of production, Ford was carrying on just-in-time practices at the Rouge in the early 1930’s. Ford was and is an international carmaker, in the mid 1970’s one of Europe’s largest sellers. In 1970, Ford recognized the need to shift to smaller cars, and built them, outside the U.S., importing the parts for assembly—early globalism.

Ford was a fascist. He contributed intellectually and materially to fascism. His anti-Semitic works inspired Hitler. Ford accepted the German equivalent of the Medal of Honor from Hitler, and his factories continued to operate in Germany, untouched by allied bombs, throughout WWII.

At its height, more than 100,000 workers held jobs at the Rouge. Nineteen trains ran on 85 miles of track, mostly in huge caverns under the plant. It was the nation’s largest computer center, the third largest producer of glass. It was also the worst polluter. The Environmental Protection agency, in 1970, charged the Rouge with nearly 150 violations.

Today there are 9,000 workers, most of them working in the now Japanese-owned iron foundry. Ford ruthlessly battled worker organizing at the Rouge. His Dearborn cops and goon squad killed hunger marchers during the depression, leading to massive street demonstrations. In the Battle of Overpass Ford unleashed his armed goons on UAW leaders, a maneuver which led to the battle for collective bargaining at Ford, and was the founding monument to what was once the largest UAW local in the world, Local 600, led by radical organizers for years.

On 1 February 1999, the boilers at the aging Rouge plant blew up, killing six workers. The plant, according to workers, had repeatedly failed safety inspections. UAW local president made a statement saying how sorry he was for the families of the deceased–and for William Clay Ford, “who is having one of the worst days of his life.” Papers and the electronic press presented the workers’ deaths as a tough day for the young Ford who inherited the presidency of the company after a stint as the top Ford manager in Europe. The steam went out of Local 600 long ago. The leaders now refer to themselves as “UAW-FORD,” proof that they have inherited the fascist views of the company founder.

When environmentalist volunteers tried to clean the rouge in June 1999, they were ordered out of the water. It was too polluted to clean. So, why the Rouge Forum? The Rouge is both nature and work. The Rouge has never quit; it moves with the resilience of the necessity for labor to rise out of nature itself. The river and the plant followed the path of industrial life throughout the world. The technological advances created at the Rouge, in some ways, led to better lives. In other ways, technology was used to forge the privilege of the few, at the expense of most–and the ecosystems, which brought it to life, The Rouge is a good place to consider a conversation, education, and social action. That is why.

Video Interview: “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for history education in a neoliberal world”

In November 2022, I had the honour giving the keynote address at the National Meeting of Researchers in History Teaching (XIII Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores do Ensino de História – XIII-ENPEH) organized by the Brazilian Association of History Teaching (Associação de Ensino de História – ABEH).

Subsequently, the talk — “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for historical education in a neoliberal world” — was published as a chapter in the book Os presentes do Ensino de História: (re)construções em novas bases / The gifts of History Teaching: (re)constructions on new bases, edited by Luis Cerri (State University of Ponta Grossa) and Juliana Alves Andrade (Federal University of Pernambuco).

Below is a a link to a video interview that was conducted last month with my Brazilian colleagues including professors Cerri and Andrade and the president of ABEH, Prof. Maria Lima (Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul). The interview covers quite a bit of territory including the politics of history and social studies education and their role in construction of a more democratic society, critical teaching and the dangers it entails, plus organizing and action for educational and social change.

JFN-UBC Statement of Solidarity with the UBC Encampment for Gaza

JFN-UBC Statement of Solidarity with the UBC Encampment for Gaza

We write as the UBC chapter of the Jewish Faculty Network to strongly support the rights of the UBC students in the encampment to peacefully protest in solidarity with Palestine. As Jews, we are appalled by the death, destruction and displacement that Israel has brought upon the people of Gaza, including the killing of more than 30,000 people, nearly half of whom were children, and the destruction of the healthcare system. As academics, we are shocked by the obliteration of all universities in Gaza.

We reject the misleading notion that these protests, or other protests against Israel, are inherently antisemitic. Neither are displays of Palestinian cultural and political identity, including keffiyehs and Palestinian flags. The conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a dangerous and bad-faith tactic that has been used to repress critics of Israel, including many Jewish people like ourselves.

A number of Jewish faculty (including some wearing obvious symbols of Jewishness) visited the UBC encampment and found the mood welcoming and friendly. Many other Jewish students and community members are actively involved. The encampment has made it very clear in their community guidelines and external communications that antisemitism and all forms of discrimination are strictly prohibited.

Calls for police force to be used against students, in order to protect against an unsubstantiated threat to Jewish students should be treated with the very greatest skepticism and concern. Having seen the unnecessarily violent response to peaceful encampments across North America, we are extremely concerned for the safety of students at UBC.

We hope that those who feel uncomfortable about current protests will consider learning more about the conditions the students are protesting, and about the broader histories of non-violent protest, in Palestine and Israel, as well as within the Palestinian and Jewish diasporas. We especially encourage the reading and open discussion of literature and journalism by Palestinian writers.

As people who have dedicated our lives to supporting students in their pursuit of higher education and in their development as human beings, our students are constantly teaching and challenging us. We certainly do not have to agree with everything our students say or all of their demands. However, it is our responsibility as educators, and the responsibility of

universities like UBC, to ensure all learners can exercise their right to free expression, and make their own, difficult decisions about how to fulfill the responsibilities we all have to current and future generations, without the threat of violence, arrest, or suspension.

Our students are inheriting a world in crisis, but they remind us every day that another world is possible. We stand with the UBC students who are trying to bring that world into existence in many different ways, including through protest. We implore the university to rethink its approach to police presence on campus and commit to upholding students’ rights.

UBC Faculty Response to scholasticide in Palestine

Message from Faculty for Palestine at UBC:

Israel has critically damaged or destroyed every one of Gaza’s 11 universities, over 370 schools, and countless libraries and irreplaceable archives. The destruction has been widely recognized as constituting scholasticide, a term coined by Palestinian scholar Karma Nabulsi to name the systematic destruction of Palestinian pedagogical institutions and murder of Palestinian scholars. Our colleagues in the Palestinian professoriate and their students are not only suffering from the immediacy of genocidal violence today, but also from the extent of the destruction are being denied a future for higher education in Gaza.

All the while, UBC continues to maintain institutional ties with Israeli institutions such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, which are deeply implicated in military research, development and training of the Israeli state and its armed occupation forces. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has, since 2004, called for a boycott of Israeli institutions for these reasons, and for their discrimination against Palestinian students and violations of international law. Moreover, it is critical to consider the ways in which UBC’s study abroad programs in Israel are in direct and clear violation of UBC’s own non-discrimination policies because not all students are able to participate in them.

UBC’s silence and inaction is unacceptable. We urge the administration as a responsible educational institution to acknowledge the scholasticide in Gaza, and take steps to review and end ties with Israeli institutions that support genocide and occupation. Steps must be taken to build fruitful ties with institutions in Palestine that have been severely debilitated in the last few months and many decades of occupation preceding them.

Please find below, a statement crafted by the Palestinian-Canadian Artists and Academics Network (PCAAN), Faculty for Palestine Canada, and Jewish Faculty Network (National), and join the call for these demands at UBC by signing in support.

Joint Statement on Canadian Universities and Palestine

In light of the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel in relation to grave breaches of the Genocide Convention, we are writing to you on behalf of Faculty for Palestine Canada, the Jewish Faculty Network and the Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network to request that your university take urgent action to protect and support educators and the education system in the Gaza Strip.

Over the past four months, we have witnessed Israel’s wholesale destruction of the post-secondary education system in Gaza, which is made up of over 625,000 students and about 23,000 teachers and professors, all of whom have been impacted by the war. As of 24 January 2024, Israel has killed 4,327 students and injured 8,109. Further, Israel has killed 231 teachers and administrators and injured 756. The number of students and educational staff killed in such a short period is unprecedented in the region’s history. Those students and teachers who have not been killed are among the more than 1.7 million people who have been forcibly displaced and who are living in overcrowded and unsanitary shelters or sleeping in the open. Like the rest of the population in Gaza, they are at risk of dying of hunger and disease, with no access to food, potable water, electricity, heating or medicine. While our current focus is on higher education, analyzing the broader picture of the Gaza education system reveals a devastating reality of long-term destruction, amounting to what experts term “scholasticide.” Israel has destroyed higher education infrastructure in Gaza on an unprecedented scale, the impact of which cannot be understood without also considering the massive destruction of elementary and secondary school education and staff. Taken together, this illustrates how a whole generation of students, teachers, and infrastructure is being destroyed.

Israeli forces have killed 94 members of Gaza’s higher education community, including numerous internationally respected scholars, deans, university presidents, and medical professors, who comprised part of the region’s intellectual leadership. These include Professor Sufian Tayeh, president of the NL Islamic University of Gaza, who – having won a prestigious fellowship – undertook research as a visitor at the University of Waterloo in 2021. Other scholars who have been killed by Israel are Professor Muhammad Eid Shabir, a microbiologist and Tayeh’s predecessor at the university for 15 years, Dr Said Al-Zubda, president of the University College of Applied Sciences, and Professor Refaat Alareer, who was co-founder of the ‘We Are Not Numbers’ project and one of Palestine’s most prominent intellectuals in Gaza.

Israel has systematically targeted all of Gaza’s universities. On 17 January, Israel blew up Al-Israa University, the last university left standing in Gaza after it was used as an Israeli military base for 70 days. Footage shared by the BBC shows the university being completely destroyed. This act of wanton destruction follows the repeated targeting by Israel of Gaza’s universities since the start of its military operation: the Islamic University was bombed on 11 October; the University College of Applied Sciences was bombed on 19 October; on 4 November, Israeli forces bombed Al Azhar University, the second largest university in Gaza, and this was followed by the destruction of the North Gaza branch of Al Quds University on 15 November. The medical school in the Islamic University was bombed on 10 December. The Palestine Technical College was also bombed and has been severely damaged. Al-Aqsa University was bombed on February 6th, 2024, destroying two buildings, and civilians sheltering in the university buildings were fired at.

In addition to the destruction of universities, as of mid-December 2023, 378 school buildings had been damaged, which amounts to more than 70% of Gaza’s education infrastructure. Israeli soldiers have filmed some of their acts of destruction, including one video that shows the moment the Israeli army blew up a UN school in Beit Hanoun in December. As a result of the destruction of Gaza’s schools, hundreds of thousands of children who have already been deprived of education for several months will not have a school to return to once Israel’s attacks subside. Moreover, Israeli forces have attacked multiple schools serving as temporary shelters, killing Palestinians who sought refuge in them. For example, in November 2023, Israeli forces attacked the UNRWA- run Al-Fakhoura and Al-Buraq schools, killing at least 50 people and wounding many others, while in December 2023, eyewitnesses attested to the execution of 7 people, including children, in attacks on Shadia Abu Ghazala School.

In addition to Israel’s scholasticide in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army that is illegally occupying the West Bank has been actively dismantling the higher education infrastructure in the territory. Hundreds of checkpoints have crippled freedom of movement for students and faculty members. University campuses, such as Birzeit University have been closed since October 7th. In addition, even before the most recent wave of destruction, the Israeli army has frequently violated the sanctity of university campuses to arrest student leaders, most recently on September 27th at Birzeit University.

Israel’s killing of students and academic staff and its deliberate destruction of educational infrastructure constitute breaches of international humanitarian law, which requires Israel to take all feasible measures to spare civilians and civilian objects. It is self-evident that Israel has failed to comply with these requirements. As the UN Secretary-General noted in late October, ‘we are witnessing…clear violations of international humanitarian law…in Gaza’. Further, as South Africa argued before the ICJ, Israel’s attacks on education and students should be viewed as further evidence that Israel is deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions calculated to bring about their destruction, in contravention of the Genocide Convention. As you know, the ICJ has ruled that South Africa’s case that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza is a plausible one.

In light of all of the above, we request that our university do the following:

Condemn Israel’s destruction of the education system in the Gaza Strip and call for an immediate ceasefire.
Express support for Gaza’s universities, staff and students. Universities Canada condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and expressed support for Canada’s “extensive linkages with Ukraine,” including “institutional partnerships, student exchanges, faculty exchanges and research collaborations.” Additionally, Universities Canada featured all of the individual university statements of solidarity with Ukraine on its website. Failure to do so now, in relation to Gaza, raises serious questions about the consistency of moral standards at Canadian universities.
Review all partnerships, including research cooperation, student exchange and study abroad programs, and funding relations, with Israeli educational and other institutions. End any relation that might be connected to ‘plausibly genocidal acts’ within the terms of the ICJ ruling. This includes, but is not limited to, universities that support the actions of Israeli armed forces and acts of genocidal incitement carried out by members of Israeli institutions, as well as universities that act as training grounds for soldiers.
Publicly condemn discriminatory and recriminatory actions taken by Israeli universities against Palestinians and Israelis who have criticized the war in Gaza. For an example of such conduct, see here.
Commit to setting up placements, fellowships, and scholarships for new students from Palestine, as well as hardship funds for students affected by the war on Enhance provision of placements for existing Palestinian academics and students, including through the Scholars at Risk Program Canada, which has enabled different university departments (for example, see here and here) to support Ukrainian researchers and students affected by the war in Ukraine.
Actively support Palestine’s universities through inter-institutional cooperation, including virtual exchanges, library sharing, and infrastructural support. Support Palestinian students, postdoctoral researchers and scholars fleeing the Israeli war on In response to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, the Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) announced 150 scholarships for Ukrainian students coming to Canada as a result of the invasion; MITACS renewed its MOU with Ukraine and created 600 new internships for Ukrainian students and postdoctoral researchers fleeing the Russian invasion. The EduCan website offered specific information for Ukrainian students coming to Canada, and several universities announced new partnerships with Ukrainian universities (for example, see here and here). These scholarships, partnerships, and exchanges were backed by Canadian Government immigration and student visa initiatives. We expect Canadian Universities, Colleges, and the Government to support their Gazan and Palestinian counterparts in the same way.

Palestinian-Canadian Artists and Academics Network (PCAAN)

Faculty for Palestine Canada

Jewish Faculty Network (National)

Socio-economic and political education in schools and universities

Economy, society and politics: Socio-economic and political education in schools and universities, edited by Christian Fridrich, Udo Hagedorn, Reinhold Hedtke, Philipp Mittnik, Georg Tafner is a new English language edition of a book originally published in 2021, Wirtschaft, gesellschaf und politick: Sozioökonomische und politische bildung in schule und hochschule.

The interconnections of economy, society and politics so obviously determine socio-economic and political structures and problem situations, current ways of thinking and acting as well as the collective perception of solution options that their still low attention in university teaching and school education is surprising. Phenomena such as pandemics, climate change, migration or authoritarianism make the close, complex and contradictory connections between economy, society and politics tangible. Against this background, socioeconomic research, teaching and education are urgently needed.

The volume aims to contribute to this by presenting research contributions on problem complexes such as economy and democracy, perspectivity and multiperspectivity, situation, interest and politics, subject and subjectification, and discipline and curriculum.

The book originated from papers presented at a conference sponsored by the Association for Socio-Economic Education and Research [GSÖBW – Gesellschaft für Sozioökonomische Bildung und Wissenschaft] held at University College of Teacher Education Vienna [Pädagogische Hochschule Wien], Austria, in February 2020.

I was honoured to give one of the keynote talks at the GSÖBW in Vienna and my talk appears as one of the chapters in the new English edition (as well as the German edition).