Here’s a list of suggested reading about free education, the student movement, and much, much more! Some of the reading is freely available online, but other pieces are hidden behind a paywall – one of the many consequences of the privatisation of academia.
For a bunch of free ebooks and articles, try: bookzz.org, the Marxist Internet Archive and libcom.org/library.
Contents:
On the university and education:
- Academic freedom
- Access and the right to education
- Audit culture
- Decolonisation, anti-colonialism and anti-racism
- Democracy and co-operativism
- Financialisation and marketization
- Open access and the Internet
- Power and the university
- Student activism around the world
- Student strikes
- Teaching and pedagogy
- The university in general
- Capitalism and neoliberalism
- Economics
- Decolonisation, anti-colonialism and anti-racism
- Resistance and revolution
- Resources for activists
- UK Government Policy
- Useful websites
On the university and education:
Academic freedom
Access and the right to education
- Brenna Bhandar, ’A Right to the University’
- Sol Gamsu, ’The logic of the ladder – elite widening participation and the implicit “scholarship boy” discourse which never went away’
- Selina Todd, ‘Let’s turn Oxbridge into a comprehensive‘
- Tom Cutterham, ‘4 Ideas for the Comprehensive University‘
Audit culture
- Cris Shore and Susan Wright, ‘Audit Culture and Anthropology: Neo-Liberalism in British Higher Education’
- Marilyn Strathern, ‘The Tyranny of Transparency’
- Derek Sayer, Rank Hypocrisies: the Insult of the REF
Decolonisation, anti-colonialism and anti-racism
- National Union of Students, ’Race For Equality: A report on the experiences of Black students in further and higher education’
- The University of Color, ‘The Demands of the University of Color’
- John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire’s End
Democracy and co-operativism
- ’Realising the Co-operative University’
- Giroux, Youth In A Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability?
- Priyamvada Gopal, ‘The Assault on Higher Education and Democracy’
- Martha Nussbaum, Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities
- Joss Winn, ’Democratically controlled, co-operative higher education’
- Richard D. Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
- Ash Sarkar, Harry Stopes and James Eastwood, ‘Dismantle, Decolonise, Democratise – Fighting Neoliberalism in the University‘
Financialisation, marketization and consumerism
- Engelen, Fernandez and Hendrikse, ‘How Finance Penetrates its Others: A Cautionary Tale on the Financialization of a Dutch University’
- Mike Molesworth, Richard Scullion and Elizabeth Nixon, The Marketisation of Higher Education and the Student as Consumer
- Stefan Collini, ‘Tuition fees are a consumerist fallacy. Our students deserve better‘
Open access and the Internet
Power and the university
- Bela Arora, ‘A Gramscian Analysis of the Employability Agenda’
- Panagiotis Sotiris, ’University Movements as Laboratories of Counter-Hegemony’
- Andrew Vincent, ’Ideology and the University’
Student activism around the world
- Donya Alinejad, ‘Dear Maagdenhuis: can we please get our shit together?’
- George Blaustein, ‘Letter from Amsterdam’
- George Blaustein, ’On Horseshit’ (an account of the Amsterdam occupation’s eviction)
- The University of Color, ‘The Demands of the University of Color’
- Rida Vaquas, ‘For education, not for consumption, but for liberation’ – speech at the NCAFC demonstration in Birmingham, 28/3/15
- Street Politics 101 (film)
- Ian Steinman, ‘Rio’s Student Resistance‘
- René Rojas, ‘Challenging Chile’s Neoliberal Consensus‘
- Julia Preston, ‘University Officials Yield to Student Strike in Mexico‘
- Ashley Smith, ‘A Maple Fall in Québec?’
Student strikes
- ‘Spreading the Maple Spring: Lessons from Québec’s Student Strike‘
- Robert A. Rhoads and Liliana Mina, ‘The Student Strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico: A Political Analysis‘
- Josh Berlyne and Callum Cant, ‘5 Student Strikes That Show How Students Can Win‘
- Callum Cant, ‘A return to student militancy in the UK?‘
- Josh Berlyne, ‘We Need a Student Strike!’
Teaching and pedagogy
- Angela Brew, Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide
- Angela Brew, ‘Imperatives and challenges in integrating teaching and research‘
- Cowden and Singh (eds), Acts of Knowing: Critical Pedagogy In, Against and Beyond the University
- Megan Erickson, ‘Edutopia’
- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. See also, Dr. Jason J Campbell’s YouTube lecture series on the ideas in Freire’s book here.
- bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
- Peter McLaren, Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium
- Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer‘
The university in general
- Michael Bailey and Des Freedman (eds), The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto For Resistance
- Michael Bailey, ‘The strange death of the liberal university’
- The Edu-Factory Collective, Toward A Global Autonomous University: Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory
- Jacques Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils’
- Thomas Docherty, Universities at War
- Henry Giroux, ‘Beyond The Limits of Neoliberal Higher Education: Global Youth Resistance and the American/British Divide’
- Giroux, ‘Public Intellectuals Against The Neoliberal University’
- Comrade Motopu, ‘Right and Left against the state: education without classes’
- Alex Preston, ‘The war against humanities at Britain’s universities’
- E. P. Thompson (ed.), Warwick University Ltd.
- Marina Warner, ‘Learning My Lesson: Marina Warner on the Disfiguring of Higher Education’
- Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer‘
On society more generally:
Capitalism and neoliberalism
- Peter Dauvergne and Genevieve LeBaron, Protest, Inc.: The Corporatization of Activism
- John Holloway, ’The Freeing of Marx’
- Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
- Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism
- Imogen Tyler, Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain
- Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically
Economics
- Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User’s Guide
- Harry Cleaver, ’Study Guide to Capital Volume I’
- Philip Roscoe, I Spend, Therefore I am: The True Cost of Economics
Decolonisation, anti-colonialism and anti-racism
Check out Ashok Kumar and Adam Elliott-Cooper’s reading list for the white Left.
- Hamid Dabashi, ’Can non-Europeans think?’
- Elizabeth Martinez, ’Where Was the Color in Seattle? Looking for Reasons Why the Great Battle was So White’
- Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
- Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient
- Said, Culture and Imperialism
- C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
- The Combahee River Collective Statement
- Moishe Postone, ‘Anti-semitism and National Socialism‘
- Werner Bonefeld, ‘Antisemitism and the (modern) critique of capitalism‘
- Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery
- Arun Kundnani, The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain
Resistance, revolution and alternatives to capitalism
- John Holloway, Change The World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today
- Richard D. Wolff, ‘Socialism Means Abolishing the Distinction Between Bosses and Employees‘
- Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle
- Selma James, Sex, Race and Class
- Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer‘
Resources for activists
- Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (eds), The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities
- Seeds for Change, A Consensus Handbook: Co-operative Decision-making for Activists, Co-ops and Communities
- Shelly Asquith, ‘Seven ways to fight the maintenance grant cut‘
- NetPol, ‘Why cover up? The case for protest anonymity‘
- NetPol, ‘#PrivacyBloc – where do we go from here?‘
- The Occupation Cookbook: Or the Model of the Occupation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb
UK Government Policy
- Lord Browne, ‘Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance.’ (The Browne Report was the precursor to increasing tuition fees to £9000 and is considered by many to be the blueprint for the corporatisation of universities in the UK.)
- Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, ‘Higher Education: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice‘
Useful websites:
- josswinn.org
- timeshighereducation.co.uk
- theguardian.com/education
- anticuts.com
- Reading list for Harry Cleaver’s ‘Political Economy of Education’ course