Higher Education's Legitimation Crisis and Subsequent Threats to Democracy
Language: English and French
The presentations on this panel will focus on the following trends in the United States: attacks on college presidents, media attacks on the value of higher education, and the consequent decline in college going behavior. The declines in college going behavior in the US have been most significant with white, working-class men. This panel will focus on threats to democracy, including the increasing population of white men in the US who are unemployed or underemployed and lack a postsecondary education. Access to the space of education is key to the future of the democratic project. Presentations on this panel will highlight attacks on institutions of higher education, elementary and secondary education, and public libraries in the United States which are viewed as attacks on access to knowledge that represent increasing challenges to democracy.
Contested definitions of truth, including the belief in the validity of science witnessed in the ongoing denial of climate change and the extreme display of COVID-19 pandemic denial and the accompanying vaccine refusal exhibit a true test to democracy with the attempted coup on the US capital just one display of the conflict of power in contemporary democracy in the United States.