“From Education For All to Scholasticide: The Rise and Fall of the Global Liberal Education Order” – Mario Novelli

“From Education For All to Scholasticide: The Rise and Fall of the Global Liberal Education Order”

Mario Novelli (University of Sussex)

The Department of Educational Policy Studies is delighted to host Dr. Mario Novelli, Professor in the Political Economy of Education at the University of Sussex, for a guest lecture entitled From Education for All to Scholasticide: The Rise and Fall of the Global Liberal Education Order.

This talk will trace the rise and fall of the Post-Cold War Liberal Order and its relationship to education. Dr. Novelli will explore the downward spiral of post-Cold War US hegemony from its triumphalist and upbeat uni-polar incarnation in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, where talk of (educational) freedom, democracy and peace was upbeat and widespread to its current 2024 iteration, where democracy has decoupled from capitalism, authoritarianism is widespread, war is prevalent, capitalism is fragmenting, and neoliberalism is failing to deliver broad enough benefits – even in its own Western heartlands. Drawing on Gramsci’s (1971) insights, at an earlier time, that ‘the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’, Dr. Novelli will reflect, through a critical political economy of education approach, what this all means for education in the twilight of US-led empire.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, 9:30am – 11am CT in 159 Education Bldg – Wisconsin Idea Room. You can also join us online at go.wisc.edu/niceonzoom.

Sponsored by: Department of Anthropology, Curriculum and Instruction (School of Education), Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (School of Education), Department of Geography, Department of History, Institute for Regional and International Studies National Resource Center (International Division), Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies Program (Institute for Regional and International Studies), Network for International and Comparative Education, Department of Sociology