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Tag: Education

‘Starving The Beast’: Documentary Reveals How Wall Street ‘Disrupted’ Public Education

Posted in Journalism, MintPress News, and SXSW

Is education a right and a public good, or is it a commodity from which corporations can profit?

“Starving The Beast,” a documentary which premiered March 13 at the SXSW Film festival, reveals the struggle between these two paradigms for higher education taking place across the country at publicly funded universities.

From the University of Texas at Austin to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, decades of budget cuts have resulted in skyrocketing tuition alongside a simultaneous decline in the quality of education. Now Wall Street is moving into the gaps created by a largely Republican-created budget crisis, from the increasing reliance on private student loans as public funding falls to schemes to allow the accreditation of more for-profit universities, a move championed by Sen. Marco Rubio during his 2016 electoral campaign.

SXSW Day 3: Muslims In The Media, Cannabis Innovation & More

Posted in Journalism, and SXSW

I’ve made it to day 3, despite barely any sleep.

“Ovarian Psycos,” the documentary I saw last night, was an incredible story of women of color standing up for their identity, their agency, and their right to take up space in the world. I also took a few minutes to talk with the creators of “Night of the Slasher” about their hopes for plans for turning their short film into a horrifying and funny full-length feature.

I was back this morning to attend “American Muslim Media: Taking Back Our Narrative,” a panel about how digital and social media can change the way people look at the religion and lives of the millions of Muslims living in the United States.

University of Texas Professor Compares Palestinian Activists To Terrorists After Tense Protest

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and MintPress News

A planned walkout at a University of Texas at Austin event earlier this month erupted into a violent confrontation with the college’s professor of Israel Studies and another audience member. Now Palestinian activists say they feel unsafe on campus after the professor accused them of having ties to terrorism.

The incident began at a Nov. 13 public lecture on the military culture of the Israeli Defense Forces. Twelve members of UT Austin’s Palestine Solidarity Committee planned to stage a short disruption to voice their objections to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and apartheid policies, then leave the event. Instead, as the students unfurled a banner and the group’s organizer, Mohammed Nabulsi, began to read a brief statement, the event dissolved into chaos and even physical violence.

Nabulsi told MintPress News that he no longer feels safe on campus. “I’m not going to let this prevent me from continuing with my political work, but for now I’m really exhausted. I don’t want some vigilante to take the word of a professor,” he explained, adding: “People are calling us a ‘sleeper cell’ [of terrorists] now,” referring to some of the threatening comments they’ve received.

Midwest Campus Activists Vow To Keep Struggling For Palestine Despite Threats

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

As tensions increase in the West Bank and Gaza, activists for Palestine on American college campuses are also facing threats of violence and oppression.

Students for Justice in Palestine, a group with chapters on college campuses throughout North America, opposes the oppression of Palestinians. Last month, as Muslims throughout the Midwest faced increasing violence, three chapters received disturbing threats after publicly expressing their support for the cause.

In early October, when a video went viral that showed Fadi Alon, a Palestinian teen, being hunted and killed by Israeli settlers, the SJP chapter at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities took to their Facebook page to express solidarity with the slain youth. (MintPress News founder and editor-in-chief Mnar Muhawesh serves as an advisor to SJP UMN chapter.)

Bernie Sanders & Jill Stein’s College Plans Treat Education As A Human Right

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

With presidential candidates hoping to court young voters, it’s not surprising that the student debt crisis and the rising cost of a college education have become key campaign issues. While Hillary Clinton has promised to make college more affordable, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Dr. Jill Stein want to make it accessible to everyone.

As of the end of June, the Federal Reserve estimated there were about $1.19 trillion dollars worth of seriously delinquent education loans, according to USA Today, with many analysts predicting that this debt crisis could cause another serious financial collapse. A recent study by the Brookings Institution suggested predatory behavior by for-profit colleges created a substantial portion of this debt, as Shadowproof’s Dan Wright reported earlier this month.

Heather Gautney, a professor of sociology at Fordham University, openly praised Clinton’s ideas in an analysis of Sanders and Clinton’s competing college plans published in August on Sanders’ official campaign website. “[T]he Clinton plan doesn’t go far enough,” Gautney argued, warning that it would still place too much burden on struggling families and students: “It fails to place the issue of college affordability in the proper context: as a societal, rather than an individual, problem.”

13M Children Forced Out Of School By Western Destabilization Efforts In Middle East

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Years of war and unrest devastated education in the Middle East and North Africa, leaving more than 13 million children without safe or reliable schools across the region, according to a new report from UNICEF.

The report, “Education Under Fire,” which was released on Sept. 3, details the bitter cost of war on the future of millions of children. The report focuses on nine countries where millions have been displaced by near constant conflict and bombing since 2011.

More than 8,850 schools in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen are unusable “because they have been damaged, destroyed, are sheltering displaced families or are occupied by parties to the conflicts,” the authors noted. Just in 2014, 214 schools were attacked in the region.