(2022). Trump's Populist Discourse and Affective Politics, or on How to Move 'the People' through Emotion. Globalisation, Societies and Education, v20 n2 p86-109. Recursively in history, emotions such as social anger, moral satiety, distrust of the elite and the Establishment, among others, have all contributed to politicians' encouragement and exploitation of a rather emotionally charged discourse (Block, E., and R. Negrine. 2017. "The Populist Communication Style: Toward a Critical Framework." "International Journal of Communication" 11: 178-197). In their self-imposed capacity as mouthpiece for 'the People', populist leaders have successfully given vent to the expression of some of these emotions. The fact that emotion permeates all levels of linguistic description (Alba-Juez, L., and G. Thompson. 2014. "The Many Faces and Phases of Evaluation." In "Evaluation in Context," edited by L. Alba-Juez, and G. Thompson, 3-23. Amsterdam, PA: John Benjamins, 10-11) makes its examination a fascinating enterprise. In this paper, we discuss the role played by emotion in the production of populist discourse; to… [Direct]
(2022). A Pandemic of Ignorance: Manufactured Ignorance and the COVID-19 Pandemic. Philosophical Studies in Education, v53 p41-55. While the study of ignorance is nothing new to philosophy, this article explores the origin and production of ignorance in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors link the question of a pandemic of ignorance to state education laws and policies that arguably manufacture ignorance. Their purpose is not to create a sense of paranoia or lead to conspiracy theories regarding the intentions of any one person or institution, but to argue that ignorance was manufactured by the Donald J. Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of intent. The authors begin with a detailed explication of Proctor's three categories of ignorance, then provide evidence of convergence and divergence among and between the CDC/WHO and White House. The article ends with the argument that the biological pandemic was–and is–an agnotological pandemic, too, and that recent state education law and policy initiatives indicate the virality of manufacturing ignorance in schools…. [PDF]
(2017). Academia Cuauhtli: (Re)Locating the Spiritual, if Crooked, Path to Social Justice. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), v30 n10 p906-911. This essay doubles as a critique of the brutal violence visited upon the immigrant community in Austin, Texas, in the wake of Donald Trump's presidency, and a deeply personal account related to the establishment of Academia Cuauhtli, a language and culture revitalization project in Austin, Texas. It narrates our origins as a community-anchored, partnership-based effort that has culminated in a Saturday academy for east Austin fourth graders attending four elementary schools. With implications for community empowerment, culturally relevant social justice pedagogy, and spirituality, it illustrates what is possible when individual biography or circumstance intersects with caring friendships, politically astute community members, social justice initiatives, and a candid expression of need by community-anchored teachers. This timely and crooked path to social justice has situated those whose lives we touch with the kind of sustenance we all need to face the most significant political and… [Direct]
(2020). Teaching Trump: A Frame Analysis of Educators' Responses to 'the Trump Effect' in American Schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, v28 n144 Oct. This paper offers a frame analysis of educators' responses to the anti-democratic statements and actions of candidate-turned-president Donald J. Trump. It asks how educators responded to Trump, then answers by identifying three types of frames (motivational, diagnostic, and prognostic) that educators employed to make sense of the Trump phenomenon. Using democratic education theory and frame analysis, this paper finds that educators were motivated by legality, complicity, and morality to address Trump's anti-democratic statements with students. Educators framed the Trump problem in terms of historical precedent, present danger to democracy, and concern for the future. They framed the solution with new curricula, fact checking, and critical media literacy. This paper argues that educators assert collective democratic agency to uphold democratic norms in uncertain political times…. [PDF]
(2018). Final Report of the Federal Commission on School Safety. Presented to the President of the United States. US Department of Education In response to the February 14, 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, President Donald Trump established the Federal Commission on School Safety to review safety practices and make meaningful and actionable recommendations of best practices to keep students safe. The Commission conducted field visits, listening sessions, and meetings with hundreds of Americans all across the country. The input of these individuals–state and local policymakers, administrators, principals and teachers, law enforcement and healthcare professionals, students and their families–was critical in identifying best practices and the recommendations contained in this Report. The recommendations are predicated on the policies already working in state and local communities. They outline steps families, communities, schools, houses of worship, law enforcement, medical professionals, government, and others can take to prevent school violence and improve recovery efforts… [PDF]
(2017). Making Meaning of Student Activism: Student Activist and Administrator Perspectives. Mid-Western Educational Researcher, v29 n2 p117-135. College campuses have experienced a recent resurgence of student activism, particularly in response to some of President Donald Trump's executive orders as well as controversial speakers like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulous. Student activism presents both challenges and opportunities for higher education leaders seeking to engage productively in these often complex and highly charged issues. We conducted a phenomenological study of ten student activists and eight administrators at three universities to examine the meaning and goals they identify in their experience of campus activism. Findings indicated students identify their activist involvement as highly meaningful, especially with regard to what they feel they learn in college. Similarly, findings indicated administrators found their experience with student activists to be highly consequential in terms of both career satisfaction and dissatisfaction. We also found communication differences between student activists and… [PDF]
(2017). "Should We Carry Our Passports with Us?": Resisting Violence against Latin@s in Light of Political Rhetoric. Multicultural Perspectives, v19 n3 p166-171. In this article, Jennifer Bondy argues that educators should teach students about the emotions that drive racialized violence. In order to do this, she focuses on political rhetoric that locates Latin@s as illegal aliens, criminals, and questionably American. She begins with her professional experiences as a social studies teacher who has worked with Latin@ youth, and with her personal experiences with Latin family members. She then shifts toward a useful conceptual framework (Young, 2011) for understanding the conditions through which systematic violence against Latin@s is achieved. After highlighting media coverage of anti-Latin@ violence that has been inspired by Donald Trump's presidential campaign, Bondy demonstrates how broader anti-Latin@ political sentiments can be embodied in daily school interactions. Next, she provides examples for how teachers can support students to explore the emotions that drive violence and to create educational experiences that develop concern for… [Direct]
(2017). Post-Election Apprehension, Activism, and Educational Justice. Voices in Urban Education, n45. Following the election of Donald Trump, the author, his wife, and colleagues from the Annenberg Institute for Social Reform (AISR) experienced different forms of apprehension: "anxious" apprehension, which can also be a moment of activist birth that sets the stage for a new level of consciousness to be awakened; "critical" apprehension, to learn more deeply about how to fight for racial justice in the world around us; and "angry" apprehension, which can simultaneously feel uneasy and clarifying, but that also motivates us to act. The author describes the motivation for this special post-election issue of "Voices in Urban Education" and shares the questions asked of key leaders representing a variety of stakeholders in public education. The author hopes that readers are motivated to act in the aftermath of this election and that the voices in this issue can serve as sources of inspiration and action…. [PDF]
(2018). Back in the Shadows? The DACA Saga Continues. New England Journal of Higher Education, Mar. From 2012 to 2017, nearly 15,000 New England residents participated in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA students are ineligible for federal financial aid programs, but state and institutional aid can flow to undocumented students. As of March 2017, 20 states, including Connecticut and Rhode Island, offered in-state tuition rates to undocumented students. However President Donald Trump announced in September that he would repeal DACA on March 5, charging that President Barack Obama had created it unconstitutionally through executive action. In February 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's request to speed up its appeal of two federal judges' nationwide injunctions to keep pieces of DACA. As the "Chronicle of Higher Education" noted, "That's good news for the so-called Dreamers trying to avoid deportation. But it doesn't provide what the students and colleges advocating on their behalf want the most:… [Direct]
(2018). How Blue Was My Valley? Invited Paper for the AERA Special Interest Group on Rural Education. Journal of Research in Rural Education, v33 n4. Did rural America bring Donald Trump to the presidency? As a phenomenon related to the rise of Trump, the authors try, in this paper, to explain the conservatism that surrounds them personally, as rural residents and rural education scholars. Their neighbors are (mostly) conservative; in part it defines them; it is part of their culture. They have suffered loss across generations, so they are interested to hold on to familiar ways of living. The schools play a contradictory role in this, as rural scholars (worldwide) know well. The authors present four explanations of Trump-related conservatism, all of which, they believe, are apt to some degree. They may not add up convincingly, but they might be a start. First, they explain voting for Trump as a "weapon of the weak" (see, e.g., Scott, 1985). Second, they deal with the Republican allegiances of many rural voters as a variant of "false consciousness." Third, they examine the "rural resonance with… [PDF]
(2018). Everyday Nationalism and Elite Research Universities in the USA and England. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education Research, v76 n2 p247-261 Aug. The reinvigoration of popular nationalism in the USA and UK has largely been framed as counter to the cosmopolitan globalization associated with their elite universities over the past decade. Opposing these two sets of values may be too simplistic, however, given the cultural and political ties long institutionalized between elite universities and the nation. This article endeavors to highlight these entanglements–which were present before the election of Donald Trump or the fateful vote for Brexit–by drawing on interviews conducted with personnel at four elite research universities in these two countries from 2013 to 2014. In particular, this article focuses on the way these individuals invoked symbolic boundaries drawn along national lines as common sense, natural, and enduring, seeing their universities as embodying national characteristics, and as obliged to serve national interests. In providing ontological order to the world, the presence of this "banal" or… [Direct]
(2018). #TrumpenM√©xico. Transnational Connective Action in Twitter and the Dispute on the Border Wall. Comunicar: Media Education Research Journal, v26 n55 p39-48. This article aims to identify how digital public opinion was articulated on Twitter during the visit of the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to Mexico City in 2016 by invitation from the Mexican government, which was preceded by the threat to construct a border wall that Mexico would pay for. Using a mixed methodology made up of computational methods such as data mining and social network analysis combined with content analysis, the authors identify conversational patterns and the structures of the networks formed, beginning with this event involving the foreign policy of both countries that share a long border. The authors study the digital media practices and emotional frameworks these social network users employed to involve themselves in the controversial visit, marked by complex political, cultural and historical relations. The analysis of 352,203 tweets in two languages (English and Spanish), those most used in the conversations, opened the door to an… [PDF]
(2022). A Critical Study of Chinese International Students' Experiences of Race and Racism in the Age of COVID-19. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara. Chinese international students' lived experiences have garnered substantial attention in US higher education research due to the ever-increasing numbers of such students as well as the tense relationships between the US and China, yet this research rarely considers issues of race and racism. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed underlying structural inequalities, reinvigorated old stereotypes, and unleashed new manifestations of Sinophobia. As a consequence of Donald Trump's racist rhetoric during his presidency, hate crimes against Asian ethnic groups in San Francisco increased by 500% in 2021 and Chinese scientists who were accused of being a threat to US national security were criminalized. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with US-China rivalry and anti-Chinese sentiment, Chinese international students currently face multiple challenges. There is therefore a pressing need to make sense of Chinese students' experiences around US higher education–and in doing so,… [Direct]
(2018). Navigating a New Paradigm for International Student Recruitment. Report 10. World Education Services In the nearly two years since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, multiple studies have documented declines in international student enrollments at U.S. institutions. Entities that track developments in higher education have reported increased enrollments in other countries, especially those where costs are lower, quality and access are on the rise, and social and political environments are more welcoming. To better understand how these shifts affect enrollments, applications, and international recruiting at U.S. institutions, the World Education Services research team surveyed more than 270 higher education professionals in early 2018. The goal was to gain evidence-based insights into changes in enrollment patterns and to develop a set of practical recommendations. Key findings include: (1) Enrollments and applications are down on the majority of campuses; (2) Most respondents felt that the political environment is a cause of their international recruitment challenges; and… [PDF]
(2018). Applying Policy Theories to Charter School Legislation in New York: Rational Actor Model, Stage Heuristics, and Multiple Streams. Educational Policy Analysis and Strategic Research, v13 n2 p6-24 Jun. With renewed calls for charter schools by Donald Trump's new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, a review of dominant policy theories and their usefulness in analysing policy decision making once again becomes relevant. This paper evaluates the policy case, of the adoption of Charter School Legislation in New York in the late 1990s, making use of Allison and Zelikow's (1999) example of evaluation of a policy case through multiple lenses. Through the meso-, micro- and macro-level perspectives of the Rational Actor Model, Stage Heuristics, and Kingdon's Multiple Streams policy theories, we may be able to discern whether they accomplish their intended goal: To provide a perspective of the policy making process. Once the theories are described, they are each applied to Charter School Legislation of New York in 1998. Working through each lens, this paper describes the policy process, potential actors, and influencers with support of historical data, and draws conclusions about the… [PDF]