Cultural Studies Matters

Abstract

InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies Cultural Studies Matters As we write this introduction for the “Cultural Studies Matters” (Volume 2, Issue 1) special issue of InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, developments at our home campus at UCLA and events at the World Education Forum (WEF) in Caracas, Venezuela animate with particular poignancy cultural studies’ relevance and importance to academic scholarship. At present, UCLA’s academic community is struggling to maintain a culture of integrity and freedom of expression as a group of aspiring Karl-Rovians formalize the “Bruin Alumni Association,” (BAA) a non-profit organization whose project is to “expose UCLA’s most radical professors” (referred to as “The Dirty Thirty”) who they claim “are actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom” (http://www.uclaprofs.com). The BAA’s red-baiting activities include, among other things, offering to pay students for secretly taping and documenting class lectures and discussions. By virtue of these activities, the BAA undermines the university’s legacy of offering a space for critical debate and dialogue predicated on a culture of trust, openness and reflexivity. Moreover, their activities are indicative of a growing trend across the nation and the world to silence voices of critical inquiry, dissent and reflection. Initiated by reactionary neo-McCarthy segments in the academy, these trends are nourished by a culture of fear and terror which have marked the twenty-first century, a culture largely abstracted from the broader social relations that form it. Universal poverty, increased religious and capitalist fundamentalism, sexism and racism have generated a sense of otherness within global society that deepens antagonisms between and among various social groups. As U.S. society in general grows intolerant and fearful of those deemed different, millions of others around the globe experience the terror of fear on a much more drastic scale. Acts on behalf of the BAA in no way parallel brute militant acts of repression found in nations such as Colombia, S.A., where paramilitary death squads assassinate teacher union leaders every week for allegedly “proselytizing” to students, but they do caution us to a future which may ostensibly witness increased coercion and control of thought in the subjective formation of each global citizen. Partly due to these reasons, tens of thousands of people convened in Caracas, Venezuela for the IV WEF whose theme was “Otro Mundo es Posible” (Another World is Possible). Brought together by their belief to “promover y defender el derecho universal a la educacion” (promote and defend the universal right to education) an international consortium of practitioners, activists and scholars have committed their work in the twenty-first century to reaffirming each citizen’s inalienable right to public education, grounded in plurality of thought