Un/Occupy AERA Part 2

Some of you may already know this, but there is a great website called econ4.

It is run by economists who advocate

“Economics for people, the planet, and the future,”

and is supported by more than 300 economists all over the world.

Below is their film response to the Occupy movements which powerfully projects the message to

“Occupy Economics.”

In the film, James Boyce of University of Massachusetts-Amherst, a key person of this project says,

“One of the key issues is the extent to which the government get captured by relatively wealthy and powerful interests who turn the government away from serving the public towards serving their particular set of interests.”

I cannot agree more. After all, does not what’s happening in education exemplify this phenomenon?

See below for the film script.

“We are economists who oppose ideological cleansing in the economic profession. Equally we oppose political cleansing in the vital debate over the causes and consequences of our current economic crisis.

We support the efforts of the OWS movement across the country and across the globe to liberate the economy from the short-term greed of the rich and powerful 1 %.

We oppose cynical and perverse attempts to misuse our police officers and public servants to expel advocates of the public good from our public spaces.

We extend our support to the vision of building an economy that works for the people, for the planet, and for the future, and we declare our solidarity with the Occupiers who are exercising our democratic right to demand economic and social justice.

Economists stand with OWS.”

It also says, “If you’re an economist and would like to add your name to this statement, please send us an email by clicking here (info@econ4.org)."

The silence of AERA is louder than ever. How much more disgrace is it going to tolerate? As a parent, as an educator, as a student of education, I am angry.


But today, thanks to econ4, I’m extremely hopeful. Can we not do it for the field of education? Yes, AERA is gigantic and it will be difficult to build a consensus on its stance toward the Occupy movements.


But what if we get signatories from various education scholars and interview them to show solidarity with the movement?


Or, what if we start the un/occupation from field-specific education research associations smaller than AERA and move toward the Big One?

It should not hurt to dream big.


What if we extend this initiative to a wide variety of scholarly disciplines other than economics and education to make a united front of scholars against the 1%?

What if?

Un/Occupy AERA !!

I have been thinking a lot lately of what I can do as a parent, an educator, and especially as an emerging scholar in response to the Occupy movements. Inspired greatly by Maxine Greene, whom I currently serve as a teaching assistant at Teachers College, here is an idea and an imaginative space I’m proposing...

Un/Occupy AERA

(American Educational Research Association)

In less than two months, a spark created by “Occupy Wall Street” on September 17, 2011 has spread like a wild fire from Zuccotti Park to numerous cities and countries. More and more people are taking to the streets to let their frustrations be heard by the plutocrats and their media and their “too big to fail” banks and the governments under their rule.

In this time of democratic uprisings and societal turmoil, we are reminded of Maxine Greene’s philosophy of ‘social imagination’ and her persistent call for wide-awake involvements “to go beyond the situations one confronts and refuse reality as given in the name of a reality to be produced” (Greene, 1973, p. 7).

How much longer is AERA going to remain silent on the federal occupation of educational research? More specifically, how much longer is AERA going to tolerate the federal government’s political intrusion on academic freedom by policing what counts as ‘knowledge’ mainly through funding allocation? How much longer is it going to tolerate NCLB’s test-driven education that truncates learning and trivializes teachers? How much more is AERA going to accept budget cuts to education especially in arts? How much more of the privatizing and dismantling of public education is AERA going to allow?

If not now, then when?