This invaluable resource supplies foundational knowledge and expert strategies on navigating the workplace dynamics of power, persuasion, and politics across higher education. Despite burnout, compassion fatigue, and questions of privilege and oppression being at the forefront of academia, little if any attention is given to the political aspects…

Recently in Germany the question of gender-inclusive language has become another front in the culture wars. Headlines portray these linguistic innovations as disruptive and unnecessary while politicians across Germany have moved to ban or restrict certain types of inclusive language. In this research article, I analyze the representations of…

The implementation of equity-oriented reforms is never simply a technical matter: it involves directly engaging with the norms and politics responsible for reproducing inequitable opportunities and outcomes, and with efforts to promote educational justice. To date, there has been little research on how leaders in science education navigate the…

Conflicts over the politics of speech have been a persistent challenge in U.S. higher education. Public narratives portray universities as antagonistic toward conservative speakers, yet empirical evidence remains limited. To address this gap, we analyze the political orientations of 1,875 commencement speakers at 52 universities between 1989 and…

This paper is the text of a keynote address given at the Education Studies Association of Ireland Conference on March 31st 2023. Drawing on diverse examples of reactionary politics in Ireland and the UK such as protests against queer-inclusive education, the maintenance of sectarian and Catholic majoritarian schooling, and the use of ideas of…

At the centre of this paper is the distinction between a politicised school, and school as a political space. We take note of Papastephanou's (2005) warning not to make education the passive receiver of political thought. Based on Masschelein and Simons (2013), we criticise the tendency to conceptualise democratic education, particularly agonistic…

This paper draws on affect theory and new materialism to argue that it is crucial to pay attention to how and why some people, especially from oppressed and marginalised communities, are so strongly opposed to colonial statues and monuments. Through a critical reading of colonial statues and monuments that highlights their affectivity and…

What happens to public opinion when prominent partisan officials intervene in education policy debates? We analyzed the results of 18 survey experiments conducted between 2009 and 2021 with nationally representative samples of U.S. adults. Each experiment explored the effect of an endorsement of a specific education policy by a high-profile…

The 2018 China Initiative systematically targeted international Chinese scholars as possible spies for China. Previous research has demonstrated ways that the China Initiative engaged in racial profiling, resulting in scholars of Chinese descent feeling unwelcomed in U.S. higher education institutions and insecure in their engagement as…

Much educational utopianism revolves around the "real versus blueprint utopia" dichotomy and the prescriptive normativity that utopian education involves. In this paper, I suggest that the "real and blueprint" distinction should not be dichotomized and that a richer set of normativities, apart from prescription, should operate…

Commitments to inclusive education have been articulated in policy across the UK, in the context of increasingly inclusive rhetoric in education policy globally over recent years. This paper uses a critical policy analysis approach to understand the framing of inclusion within national legislation, policy documents and associated key resources…

Despite recent scholarship in political theory that shifts the focus of injustice from agents to social structures, educational justice scholarship in philosophy of education remains primarily individualistic as regards the causes of injustice. However, it seems that agents' actions are more constrained than individualistic accounts suggest and…

In recent years, the concept of global citizenship has been widely incorporated into educational programmes worldwide, ranging from primary schools to higher education. Nevertheless, scholars in the field of political geography have tended to view this concept as less relevant to young people's political engagement. Based on this foundation, this…

This paper considers how a formative approach to pedagogy might intervene in the conditions of higher education teaching practices, discourses, and organisational priorities today. While the higher education sector is resolutely turned towards the accumulation of skills or 'content' to produce a credentialed job-ready graduate, we do these…

Focusing on the shadow education system of private supplementary tutoring, this paper contains comparisons over time and place in the distinctive circumstances of the Soviet Union and the 15 independent countries that emerged following its collapse in 1991. The paper uses the lenses of politics and economics to understand changing tides in the…