Eric J. Weiner is 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 education. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, three books of poetry, and four single-authored books. His last book, Teachable Moments: Educated Hope in Times of Crisis (Dio Press, 2021) is a collection of essays that examine what it means to critically learn from everyday experiences. The central idea that links all of the disparate essays is how hope for a better future is made manifest in our capacity to think critically about the past and present. 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 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…
by Eric J. Weiner Shoes could save your life. —Edith Grossman, survivor of the Auschwitz death camp These boots are made for walking/And that’s just what they’ll do/One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you —Nancy Sinatra As I had never seen my shoes before, I set myself to study their…
by Eric J. Weiner What is commonsense to most people who received a K-12 public education in the United States is that every formal system of state schooling throughout the modern world is designed to educate its students to develop, what Charles Lemert calls “sociologically competencies” within whatever ideological system is dominating at the time…
by Eric J. Weiner Slave Play is a comedy of sorts. It should be played as such. —Jeremy Harris Jeremy Harris is a dark and stormy cocktail of Dave Chappelle, Augusto Boal, Boots Riley, and James Baldwin. The dark comedic energy that drives Slave Play, Harris’s provocative Broadway show about racism, sex, kinky fetishism, white…
by Eric J. Weiner The allure of fresh and true ideas, of free speculation, of artistic vigor, of cultural styles, of intelligence suffused by feeling, and feeling given fiber and outline by intelligence, has not come, and can hardly come, we see now, while our reigning philosophy is an instrumental one. —Randolph Bourne Schoolteachers across…
by Eric J. Weiner There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. ― Soren Kierkegaard A lot has changed since 1967, the year Noam Chomsky published “The Responsibility of Intellectuals.” His essay threw damning shade at the intelligentsia—particularly those in…
by Eric J. Weiner The word “schlep” comes from the Yiddish “schlepn,” which means to drag or haul. You don’t have to be Jewish to be a schlepper, although it couldn’t hurt. Amidst the deepening economic and political inequities informing everyday life, schlepping is one of the great social equalizers. To see a person in…
by Eric J. Weiner The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic. —Philip Roth, The Plot Against America The only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and…
by Eric J. Weiner An intransigent form of identity politics in combination with neoliberal ideology has left the modern university, if not in ruins, then lacking imagination and cultural capital. It has become a place of sequestered spaces—symbolic and real—where too many students and faculty fear discussing issues deemed to be controversial, inappropriate, or “political.”…
by Eric J. Weiner Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. —Audre Lorde As I write this introduction, I struggle against becoming overwhelmed by too many things: The mass shootings that occur on a regular basis; the daily gun-related murder and maiming that occur throughout…
by Eric J. Weiner From Saint Pélagie Prison in 1883, Paul Lafargue wrote The Right to Be Lazy, an anti-capitalist polemic that challenged the hegemony of the “right to work” discourse. The focus of his outrage was the liberal elite as well as the proletarians. His central argument is summed up in this quote: Capitalist…