The Rouge Forum 2012 will be held at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The University’s picturesque campus is located 50 minutes northwest of Cincinnati. The conference will be held June 22-24, 2012.
In addition to plenty of time for large group discussions, the Featured Speakers are:
SUSAN OHANIAN
Susan Ohanian will be a Keynote Speaker at the Rouge Forum 2012. Susan’s advocacy work keeps at its core her 20 years as a teacher. Her more than 300 essays on education issues have appeared in periodicals ranging from Phi Delta Kappan cover stories to The Atlantic, Nation, USA Today, Washington Monthly, Extra! (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), and numerous education journals. One of her 26 book on education policy and practice introduced the word Standardisto.
Although currently censored at the NCTE online discussion site, Susan’s website received NCTE’s George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honest and Clarity in Public Language. She has delivered the annual MacClement Lecture for Excellence in Education, Queens University, Ontario, Canada, the Helen Oakes lecture at Temple University, and the Biber Lecture, Bank Street College, New York.
Susan notes that although she’s been a featured speaker at both the International Symposium for the Educational Welfare in Seoul, Korea, and British Columbia Teachers’ Federation events, her talk to the Progressive Caucus of the AFT was closed down by angry hoots from the audience.
Susan started a website to protest the passage of NCLB. She had hoped to shut it down by now, but things keep getting worse, so she persists.
MICHAEL PRYSNER
Mike Prysner is the co-founder of March Forward!, an organization of active-duty members of the US military and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict that encourages current active duty service personnel to resist deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a US army veteran that served in Iraq. His rank was corporal and duties in Iraq included ground surveillance, home raids and the interrogation of prisoners. These experiences led him to take a radical anti-war stand. In March of 2008 he testified in the Winter Soldier organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Later that year Michael ran a write-in campaign for the US House of Representatives for Florida’s 22nd congressional district (Boca Raton). He is a member of A.N.S.W.E.R. and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. In the recent Occupy movements, he has been active and arrested participating in direct actions.
PAUL STREET
Paul Street is a journalist, author, historian, and political commentator who has authored six books, including The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Paradigm, 2010). Street has a doctorate in U.S. History at Binghamton University and has taught at numerous colleges and universities in and around Chicago. He was the Director of Research and Vice President for Research and Planning at The Chicago Urban League from 2000 to 2005. Street has published a numerous articles, essays, reviews, and editorials in numerous outlets, including ZNet, Z Magazine, CounterPunch, Black Agenda Report, The Chicago Tribune, Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of Social History, Mid-America, Critical Sociology, Chicago History,Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Studies in History and Politics, History of Education Quarterly, Monthly Review, Iowa City Press-Citizen, In These Times, Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai, India), Tinabantu: Journal of African National Affairs (Cape Town, South Africa), Synthesis/Regeneration, International Socialist Review, Dissent, Capital City Times (Madison, WI), Black Commentator, Tom’s Dispatch, History News Network, MRZine, Dissident Voice, and Monthly Review.