Eric J. Weiner is Associate Professor of Theoretical Foundations of Critical Education and Cultural Studies in the department of Educational Foundations at Montclair State University in New Jersey. His work explores the intersectionality of power, language, aesthetics, ideology, creativity, and schooling. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, three books of poetry, and three academic books. His last book, Deschooling the Imagination, is a theoretical analysis of the social/political imagination and the disciplinary role of schooling. He is also an artist, avid biker, tattoo collector, tequila connoisseur, and amateur landscaper. He lives in New York City and East Hampton, NY. Email: ericjonweiner [at] gmail.com
by Eric J. Weiner The chill in the early morning air hinted of autumn, yet the intensity of the rising sun promised summer heat. Black Tupelo and Red Maple leaves teased memories of fall with premature wisps of yellow and orange. The sky was a depthless cobalt blue, its crystallinity making everything and everyone shimmer.…
by Eric J. Weiner There are few people who spend as much time writing, thinking, and talking about the value of the work they do than intellectuals. Even as some noted intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Thomas Sowell bristle at the term intellectual to describe who they are and what they do, they among many…
by Eric J. Weiner White people go around, it seems to me, with a very carefully suppressed terror of Black people—a tremendous uneasiness. They don’t know what the Black face hides. They’re sure it’s hiding something. What it’s hiding is American history. What it’s hiding is what white people know they have done, and what…
by Eric J. Weiner Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold… “The Second Coming” William Butler Yeats The overwhelming majority of pre-service and in-service teachers I have worked with over the past two decades believe that they should, first and foremost, love,…
by Eric J. Weiner Border culture is a project of ‘redefinition’ that conceives of the border not only as the limits of two countries, but also as a cardinal intersection of many realities. In this sense, the border is not an abyss that will have to save us from threatening otherness, but a place where…
by Eric J. Weiner Through the academic grapevine, it came; a story of an eminent sociologist who argued that he wouldn’t want to work with graduate students who he couldn’t fuck. The infamous statement was allegedly said in a faculty meeting in the 1990s at a progressive urban university where they were considering an official…
by Eric J. Weiner In 1940, at the height of Hitler’s invasion of Western Europe, Walter Benjamin, from Vichy France wrote, “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘emergency situation’ in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight.”[1] In…
by Eric J. Weiner There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now. —James Baldwin Before the pomp and circumstance of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s inauguration officially framed the white supremacist insurrection at the Capitol on January…
by Eric J. Weiner Dear Dr. Cardona: The violent, insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 was due, in part, to the success of the Nation’s system of public education, not its failure. Since Ronald Reagan announced in 1981 that “government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem,”…
by Eric J. Weiner The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves. — Steven Spielberg All mentors teach, but not all teachers become mentors. Mentors nurture, guide, teach, support, protect, challenge, help, listen, defend, critique, and unselfishly share their knowledge, time, and…
by Eric J. Weiner Ours, like the moments after the Civil War and Reconstruction and after the civil rights movement, requires a different kind of thinking, a different kind of resiliency, or else we succumb to madness or resignation. —Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Those convictions and motives, upon which the Nazi regime drew, no longer…
by Eric J. Weiner In a recent article in The Atlantic, Shadi Hamid, contributing writer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, states reproachfully that “Donald Trump’s election (in 2016) led to a whole cottage industry of thinking that fascism is near, right here at home.” For many scholars and writers in this proverbial “cottage…
by Eric J. Weiner Today in the United States is Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a time to bear witness and remember the savagery of Christopher Columbus and other European explorers when they first encountered indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. It’s also a day to recognize and celebrate the courage, knowledges, and cultures of indigenous peoples throughout…
by Eric J. Weiner If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck. Over the course of two days in early September, the Trump administration quietly formalized its commitment to the ideology of white supremacy within the context of schooling and public education. In two…
by Eric J. Weiner Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made…
by Eric J. Weiner Dear Chloe: You were born an old soul and I was sure you had been here before.[i] You arrived sporting a black, faux-hawk and I immediately imagined you as a punk rock girl banging heads and breaking hearts wherever you went.[ii] From the moment you were placed on your mother’s breast,…
by Eric J. Weiner Now I saw his lifeless state. And that there was no longer any difference between what once had been my father and the table he was lying on, or the floor on which the table stood, or the wall socket beneath the window, or the cable running to the lamp beside…
by Eric J. Weiner D: Well my name is Dick Doolittle and I’m a reporter from Grime magazine and we would like you to comment on the tragic riots— B: Not a riot, it’s a rebellion D: Well the tragic rebellion? B: Man, tragic for who? D: Well there’s havoc in the streets, the police…
by Eric J. Weiner In the wake of the pandemic, many people sense an opportunity to reimagine and rewrite public education so that it aligns with their particular political agendas. Progressives sense an opportunity to reassert the critical capacities of a democratic education. From the religious right, there is an attempt to blur the lines…
by Eric J. Weiner Dedication As an “intellectual in emigration,” Theodor Adorno wrote Mimima Moralia, his book of philosophical, sociological, cultural, and psychological reflections “from the standpoint of subjective experience, [which] means that the pieces do not entirely measure up to the philosophy, of which they are nevertheless a part.” I have always been fascinated by this book. As…