Within the span of a few weeks, the social and academic lives of over 91% of the world’s youth have been completely upended, as 1.5 billion students’ schools have closed, leading to an unprecedented shift in youth online engagement. In the U.S. alone, over 55 million children now spend much of their days online in a variety of… Continue reading “The Risks of Online Radicalization in the COVID-19 Era”
For the modern far right in America, higher education is a major battleground. Whether as targets for hate or as potential recruiting grounds, college campuses have consistently been on the front lines of the far-right culture war that has been raging over the last four years. Organizations like Turning Point USA, the Patriot Front and… Continue reading “Zoom-Bombing and the Far-Right’s Latest Assault on College Communities”
Education is being used as a dividing instrument as various political coalitions seek to distort curriculums to fit their agendas. Last 5th September, on the eve of the beginning of the school year in Spain, the executive director of the Federation of Guilds of Editors of Spain, Antonio María Ávila, reported publicly the amount of pressures schoolbooks… Continue reading “In Spain, A Perversion Of Textbooks To Fit Political Objectives”
Placating radical right rhetoric will not stop the EDL, Pegida and the rest of the angry acronym brigade. If you want a definition of not being able to see the wood for the trees, look no further than those who are spending their time arguing over whether ‘no Brexit’ or ‘no deal’ would be the… Continue reading “Pandering To The Far Right Is No Way To Counter Them”
If we assume that autumn 1941 saw the beginning of the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe, then this year we mark 78 years since the onset of the Holocaust, 86 years since the start of the Nazi regime (1933) and 74 years since the liberation of Auschwitz (27 January 1945). The scale of… Continue reading “Asking Too Much of Holocaust Education”
In Latvia, the Russian linguistic minority is faced with a choice — either accept the rules of the nationalist game or emigrate. On April 2, 2018, Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis signed amendments to the education law that would effectively put an end to all Russian-language schooling in the country by 2021. The law is aimed specifically against Russian schools, rather than… Continue reading “Is the Latvian Government About to Settle the “Russian Issue”?”
British values are often comically referred to as the need for orderly queues, a respect for the Queen and cucumber sandwiches with pots of tea, or for one of my participants in my forthcoming PhD thesis, “I’d think of someone getting drunk like on their summer holidays in Ibiza or something”. However, for Government officials,… Continue reading “Mapping the Malleability of British Values”
“Schools should be safe spaces in which children and young people can understand and discuss sensitive topics, including terrorism and the extremist ideas that are part of terrorist ideology, and learn how to challenge these ideas. The Prevent Duty is not intended to limit discussion of these issues.” (Prevent Duty Guidance for England and… Continue reading “UK Prevent: Building Resilience to Radicalisation through Critical Thinking”