A Critical Pedagogy of Hope in Times of Despair

Abstract

We live in times of empire building and imperial aggression; times when the rhetoric of war is used to silence the opponents of the military invasion and occupation of Iraq; times when hate-filled radio hosts, Fox New stelevision pund its, and fundament a list preacher sjoin forces to slander public intellectuals and antiwa ractivists such as Ward Churchill, Cindy Sheehan, and Pennsylvania House of Representative John Murtha, who muster the courage to raise moral and ethical objections against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; times when the Administration continues to violate international human rights treaties by operating secret CIA prisons (known as “black sites” often hidden in Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe) where “enemy combatants” were tortured; and times when the National Security Agency is pointing its sophisticated arsenal of high-tech espionage devices on American citizens inside the nation’s borders.

This is a slightly revised version of R. Farahmandpur, “A Critical Pedagogy of Hope in Times of Despair: Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism,” Social Change 36, 3 (2006): 77–91.