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Charles J. Russo
Special Education Law in the United States and Beyond

Laws that mandate education for special needs students have not always existed. In the United States, courts only began referring to students with special needs in the early 1900s. At the time, such students were typically excluded from public school.

Things began to change after the Brown v. Board of Education supreme country ruling in 1954. Twenty years later in the 1970s, Congress enacted various legislation mandating educational services and support for children with special needs.

My guest today is Charlie Russo. In our conversation, Charlie details the power of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and situates it in an international context.

Charlie Russo is the Joseph Panzer Chair in Education in the School of Education and Health Sciences and Research Professor of Law in the School of Law at the University of Dayton.

Citation: Russo, Charlie, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 155, podcast audio, May 6, 2019. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/charlesrusso/

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Mariam Durrani
Contesting Islamophobia in education and society

Today we talk about the history and recent rise of Islamophobia worldwide. My guest is Mariam Durrani, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College.

Finding, and measuring Islamophobia hate speech on social media. John Gomez/Shutterstock

In our conversation, we discussed both the state policy infrastructure enabling Islamophobia while also the everyday discourses and actions that normalize the Othering of a particular group. Dr. Durrani also discusses her own life story of growing up in a military family and witnessing the rise of Islamophobia in the aftermath of  September 11th.

Mariam Durrani recently published the book chapter “Communicating and Contesting Islamophobia.”

Citation: Durrani, Mariam, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 152, podcast audio, April 29, 2019. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/mariamdurrani/

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Janet Decker
Special Education Legal and Policy Issues

Today we continue our Education and Law mini-series with a show on the legal and policy issues surrounding special education. My guest is Janet Decker, an Associate Professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department at Indiana University. Dr. Decker became interested in special education policy when she taught students with autism.

In our conversation, Dr. Decker talks about the legal term FAPE, which stands for Free and Appropriate Public Education. FAPE is legally guaranteed to children under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It is one of the most important legal issues in special education, but also one of the most problematic. What is the definition of ‘Free’ and ‘Appropriate’ ‘Public’ ‘Education’?

Janet Decker’s latest co-written book with Martha McCarthy and Suzanne Eckes is Legal Rights of School Leaders, Teachers, and Students, published by Pearson.

This episode was put together in collaboration with the Education Law Association.

Citation: Decker, Janet, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 151, podcast audio, April 21, 2019. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/decker/

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Gita Steiner-Khamsi
Altered States of Education

Today we air the first ever FreshEd Live event, which was recorded last night in San Francisco. Gita Steiner-Khamsi joined me to discuss the ways in which the global education industry has altered the State and notions of free public education.

We touched on a range of topics, from Bridge International to theInternational Baccalaureate and from network governance to system theory. Gita theorized why the State has taken on the logic of business and how a quantum leap in privatization has radically altered education.

Gita Steiner-Khamsi is permanent faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University. In addition, she has been seconded by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva as a faculty member and by NORRAG as the director.

This FreshEd Live event was sponsored by NORRAG.

Citation: Steiner-Khamsi, Gita, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 150, podcast audio, April 15, 2019. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/gitalive/

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Julie Mead
School privatization and discrimination

Today we kick off a mini-series on education and law. Intermittently, overly the next 8 months or so, we’ll be airing a collection of conversations with scholars affiliated with the Education Law Association. These shows will touch on timely legal and policy issues affecting education.

For our first show in the education and law mini-series, I speak with Julie Mead about her new co-written report with Suzanne Eckes for the National Education Policy Center entitled: How school privatization opens the door for discrimination.

In our conversation, we touch on a range of issues related to voucher programs and charter schools. Julie reminds listeners that the dictionary definition of discrimination is not the same as the legal definition.

Julie Mead is the Associate Dean for Education and Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  She is a member of the Education Law Association.

Citation: Mead, Julie, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 149, podcast audio, April 8, 2019.

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Jorge Martin
US Imperialism and Education: The Case of Venezuela

Today we look at US imperialism in Venezuela. For the past 20 years, since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998 in what is known as the Bolivarian revolution, the US has attempted to overthrow a democratically elected government. The US wanted to install a leader who supported its political and business interests. In January, the US put its full support behind Juan Guaido, a little known politician who became the self-described interim-president. But who is Juan Guaido and why was his rise nearly as fast as his fall?

My guest today is Jorge Martin,  the secretary of the Hands off Venezuela campaign and a leading member of the International Marxist Tendency. He has followed the Bolivarian revolution for nearly twenty years, visiting the country often where he has been involved in the revolutionary movement, particularly the workers’ control and occupied factories experiences. In our conversation today, Jorge focuses on the many connections Juan Guaido has to various US institutions, from think tanks to philanthropic organizations, and to universities. Jorge makes clear that Juan Guaido was groomed through his education to take a leading role in the right-wing fight against the Bolivarian revolution. Guaido, in other words, is the latest figurehead in a class struggle supported by elite education in Venezuela and the USA.

Citation: Martin, Jorge, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 148, podcast audio, April 1, 2019.https://www.freshedpodcast.com/martin/

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'>Jenny J. Lee
International Students in Trump's America

Last week, the Trump administration invited university, higher education association, and private company officials to the White House to discuss international students and post-college work.

At the time of this recording, we aren’t sure what exactly was said or decided. But in an effort to provide some background on international student experiences in American Higher Education, Jenny Lee is with me today to discuss the underlying U.S. political climate for international students and scholars.

In our talk, Jenny discusses the rise in discrimination and hate crimes since Trump’s election and the presence of neo-racism on campuses.

Jenny J. Lee is a Professor at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. She is currently a NAFSA Senior Fellow, Associate Editor of the Review of Higher Education, and Co-editor of the book series, Studies in Global Higher Education. Her latest piece can be found in the NAFSA newsletter, Trends and Insights.

Citation: Lee, Jenny J., interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 147, podcast audio, March 11, 2019. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/lee/

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Laura Engel & David Rutkowski
The costs of PISA

Many countries around the world participate in the Programme for International Student Assessment, the cross-national test administered by the OECD. Today we look at the economic costs for a country to participate in PISA. My guests are Laura Engel and David Rutkowski. They followed the money through publicly available budget documents in the United States to uncover exactly how much the test costs both the federal and state governments.

Through this complicated web, they found a host of contractors and sub-contractors hired to implement PISA and call for a full cost-benefit analysis in order to determine if PISA is worth it.

Laura Engel is an Associate Professor of International Education and International Affairs at the George Washington University and David Rutkowski is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in Educational Policy and Educational Inquiry at Indiana University School of Education. Their latest co-written article published in the journal Discourse is called “Pay to play: What does PISA participation cost in the US?”

Citation: Engle, Laura & Rutkowski, David, interview with WillBrehm, FreshEd, 146, podcast audio, January 16, 2019.https://www.freshedpodcast.com/lauraengel-davidrutkowski/

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Arjen Wals
Climate Change, Education, and Sustainability

What’s the connection between education and climate change? My guest today, Arjen Wals, takes a critical take on sustainability yet offers a hopeful outlook.

In our conversation, Arjen details a few examples of school-level practices that could be seen as working towards a sustainable future while also critiques educational competition and the hidden curriculum of commodification.

He ultimately calls for more dissonance in education systems as a way to learn new forms of sustainability to combat climate change.

Arjen Wals  is the UNESCO Chair of Social Learning and Sustainable Development and Professor of Transformative Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability at Wageningen University in The Netherlands.

I spoke with Prof. Wals at the 2018 Global Education Meeting, which was a high-level forum held in Brussels in early December that reviewed the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

Citation: Wals, Arjen, interview with Will Brehm, FreshEd, 144, podcast audio, January 14, 2019. https://www.freshedpodcast.com/arjenwals/

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