Theorizing a new radicalism: Henry Giroux on how to change the world – Canadian Dimension

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/theorizing-a-new-radicalism-henry-giroux-on-how-to-change-the-world

HARRISON SAMPHIR

from the Sept 28 2016 article in Canadian Dimension

Few scholars have made a more significant impact upon contemporary educational theory than Henry Giroux. In 2002, the American-Canadian academic was named by the British publisher Routledge as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period.

Giroux is a professor of English and Cultural Studies and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He also serves as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University and sits on the Board of Directors at progressive news site Truthout where he is a regular columnist.

A vigorous opponent of war, neoliberalism and the ongoing retreat of the state from areas of social welfare, Giroux’s work mixes political, economic and social critique with an overarching concern about social responsibility and critical thinking. He has written extensively on public and post-secondary education in the United States, and the deepening of market forces within university campuses which, he argues, threatens the foundations of democracy around the world. In the vein of Laclau and Mouffe, Giroux is an advocate of radical democracy, described by Alan Keenan as the “vision of a mode of politics in which the democratic ideals of equality, freedom and popular control are allowed their most complete sway and fullest application.”