This book offers philosophical readings of the contemporary university and is motivated by a series of pressing challenges in the global context of Higher Education. It argues that the university is a place for community, for refuge, for enlightenment and the careful questioning of knowledge, but it is also a place for visceral ambition and for intellectual cowardice, for blinkered individualism and professional competitiveness. In the context of a highly competitive post-crash global economy, contemporary students are placed under increasing pressure to distinguish themselves from their peers via a portfolio of learning excellence and extracurricular achievement. Growing numbers undertake part or full-time employment in order to cover registration fees and the basic costs of living. University staff take on very different forms of pressure that operate across the life-course of an academic career – from early-career anxieties to the worries of more privileged and permanent faculty who fear they do not meet ever-changing structures, assumptions and demands of the university itself. This book argues that these interlinked agendas demand consideration from philosophers of education in Ireland, Europe and further afield. It proposes that we must embody a very careful balancing act: one where we remember the romantic ideals and promises of the university while still acknowledging the very real and pressing challenges faced by our staff and students. The book will be of interest to academics, graduate students, and advanced-level undergraduates in Philosophy, Education, Mental Health, and Organizational Psychology in both North America and Europe.

American higher education is increasingly in trouble. Costs are too high, learning is too little, and underemployment abounds post-graduation. Universities are facing an uncertain and unsettling future with free speech suppression, out-of-control Federal student aid programs, soaring administrative costs, and intercollegiate athletics mired in corruption. Restoring the Promise explores these issues and exposes the federal government's role in contributing to them. With up-to-date discussions of the most recent developments on university campuses, this book is the most comprehensive assessment of universities in recent years, and one that decidedly rejects conventional wisdom. Restoring the Promise is an absolute must-read for those concerned with the future of higher education in America.

Protecting the Promise is the first book in the Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Series edited by Django Paris. It features a collection of short stories told in collaboration with five Native families that speak to the everyday aspects of Indigenous educational resurgence rooted in the intergenerational learning that occurs between mothers and their children. The author defines “resurgence” as the ongoing actions that recenter Indigenous realities and knowledges, while simultaneously denouncing and healing from the damaging effects of settler colonial systems. By illuminating the potential of such educational resurgence, the book counters deficit paradigms too often placed on Indigenous communities. It also demonstrates the need to include Indigenous Knowledges within the curriculum for both in-school and out-of-school settings. These engaging narratives reframe Indigenous parents as critical and compassionate educators, cultural brokers, and storytellers who are central partners in the education of their children. Book Features: A window into how and why Indigenous resurgence through (and sometimes in resistance to) education can happen.A narrative style of writing that builds accessible stories that are both relatable and connected to larger social issues.An interdisciplinary approach that has implications for pre- and in-service teachers and school administrators, as well as for the communities from which these stories originated.A teacher-friendly Afterword that offers lesson ideas for the classroom and companion questions to the short stories.

The Promise of Failure is part memoir of the writing life, part advice book, and part craft book; sometimes funny, sometimes wrenching, but always honest. McNally uses his own life as a blueprint for the writer’s daily struggles as well as the existential ones, tackling subjects such as when to quit and when to keep going, how to deal with depression, what risking something of yourself means, and ways to reenergize your writing through reinvention. What McNally illuminates is how rejection, in its best light, is another element of craft, a necessary stage to move the writer from one project to the next, and that it’s best to see rejection and failure on a life-long continuum so that you can see the interconnectedness between failure and success, rather than focusing on failure as a measure of self-worth. As brutally candid as McNally can sometimes be, The Promise of Failure is ultimately an inspiring book—never in a Pollyannaish self-help way. McNally approaches the reader as a sympathetic companion with cautionary tales to tell. Written by an author who has as many unpublished books under his belt as published ones, The Promise of Failure is as much for the newcomer as it is for the established writer.

Founded in Richmond in 1968, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) began with a mission to build a university to serve a city emerging from the era of urban crisis--desegregation, white flight, political conflict, and economic decline. The product of the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and the Richmond Professional Institute combined into one, state-mandated institution, the two were able to embrace their mission and work together productively. In Fulfilling the Promise, John Kneebone and Eugene Trani tell the intriguing story of VCU and the context in which the university was forged and eventually thrived. Although VCU's history is necessarily unique, Kneebone and Trani show how the issues shaping it are common to many urban institutions, from engaging with two-party politics in Virginia and African American political leadership in Richmond, to fraught neighborhood relations, the complexities of providing public health care at an academic health center, and an increasingly diverse student body. As a result, Fulfilling the Promise offers far more than a stale institutional saga. Rather, this definitive history of one urban state university illuminates the past and future of American public higher education in the post-1960s era.

Examines major myths informing American education and explores how educators can better serve students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don’t disadvantage students on the basis of race or income Each year, as the founding headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy (BAA), an urban high school that boasts a 94 percent college acceptance rate, Linda Nathan made a promise to the incoming freshmen: “All of you will graduate from high school and go on to college or a career.” After fourteen years at the helm, Nathan stepped down and took stock of her alumni: of those who went to college, a third dropped out. Feeling like she failed to fulfill her promise, Nathan reflected on ideas she and others have perpetuated about education: that college is for all, that hard work and determination are enough to get you through, that America is a land of equality. In When Grit Isn’t Enough, Nathan investigates five assumptions that inform our ideas about education today, revealing how these beliefs mask systemic inequity. Seeing a rift between these false promises and the lived experiences of her students, she argues that it is time for educators to face these uncomfortable issues head-on and explores how educators can better serve all students, increase college retention rates, and develop alternatives to college that don’t disadvantage students on the basis of race or income. Drawing on the voices of BAA alumni whose stories provide a window through which to view urban education today, When Grit Isn’t Enough helps imagine greater purposes for schooling.

Why has religion persisted across the course of human history? Secularists have predicted the end of faith for a long time, but religions continue to attract followers. Meanwhile, scholars of religion have expanded their field to such an extent that we lack a basic framework for making sense of the chaos of religious phenomena. To remedy this state of affairs, Martin Riesebrodt here undertakes a task that is at once simple and monumental: to define, understand, and explain religion as a universal concept. Instead of propounding abstract theories, Riesebrodt concentrates on the concrete realities of worship, examining religious holidays, conversion stories, prophetic visions, and life-cycle events. In analyzing these practices, his scope is appropriately broad, taking into consideration traditions in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, and Shinto. Ultimately, Riesebrodt argues, all religions promise to avert misfortune, help their followers manage crises, and bring both temporary blessings and eternal salvation. And, as The Promise of Salvation makes clear through abundant empirical evidence, religion will not disappear as long as these promises continue to help people cope with life.