This book examines whether Weber's approach has a greater humanizing value than has been conceded by his opponents and will attempt to demonstrate the humanistic mission of the University and its usefulness for youth and democracy.

What happens to student activism once mass protests have disappeared from view, and youth no longer embody the political frustrations and hopes of a nation? After the Revolution chronicles the lives of student activists as they confront the possibilities and disappointments of democracy in the shadow of the recent revolution in Serbia. Greenberg's narrative highlights the stories of young student activists as they seek to define their role and articulate a new form of legitimate political activity, post-socialism. When student activists in Serbia helped topple dictator Slobodan Milosevic on October 5, 2000, they unexpectedly found that the post-revolutionary period brought even greater problems. How do you actually live and practice democracy in the wake of war and the shadow of a recent revolution? How do young Serbians attempt to translate the energy and excitement generated by wide scale mobilization into the slow work of building democratic institutions? Greenberg navigates through the ranks of student organizations as they transition their activism from the streets back into the halls of the university. In exploring the everyday practices of student activists—their triumphs and frustrations—After the Revolution argues that disappointment is not a failure of democracy but a fundamental feature of how people live and practice it. This fascinating book develops a critical vocabulary for the social life of disappointment with the aim of helping citizens, scholars, and policymakers worldwide escape the trap of framing new democracies as doomed to failure.

With a government plagued by systemic ills and deep ideological divides, democracy, as we know it, is in jeopardy. Yet, ironically, voter apathy remains prevalent and evidence suggests standard civic education has done little to instill a sense of civic duty in the American public. While some are waiting for change to come from within, trying to influence already polarized voters, or counting down the days until the "next election," leading child and adolescent development experts Daniel Hart and James Youniss are looking to another solution: America's youth. In Renewing Democracy in Young America, Hart and Youniss examine the widening generation gap, the concentration of wealth in pockets of the US, and the polarized political climate, and they arrive at a compelling solution to some of the most hotly contested issues of our time. The future of democracy depends on the American people seeing citizenship as a long-term psychological identity, and thus it is critical that youth have the opportunity to act as citizens during the time of their identity formation. Proposing that 16- and 17-year-olds be able to vote in municipal elections and suggesting that schools create science-based, community-oriented environmental engagement programs, the authors expound that by engaging youth through direct citizen-participatory experiences, we can successfully create active and committed citizens. Political scientists, media commentators, and citizens alike agree that democratic processes are broken across the nation, but we cannot stop at simply showing that our political system is dysfunctional. Refreshingly lucid and unabashedly hopeful, Renewing Democracy in Young America is an impeccably timed call to action.

Introduction -- American dreams : access, mobility, fairness -- Free minds : educating democratic citizens -- Hard facts : knowledge creation and checking power -- Purposeful pluralism : dialogue across difference on campus -- Conclusion.

In Corrupting Youth, Peter Euben explores the affinities between Socratic philosophy and Athenian democratic culture as a way to think about issues of politics and education, both ancient and modern. The book moves skillfully between antiquity and the present, from ancient to contemporary political theory, and from Athenian to American democracy. It draws together important recent work by political theorists with the views of classical scholars in ways that shine new light on significant theoretical debates such as those over discourse ethics, rational choice, and political realism, and on political issues such as school vouchers and education reform. Euben not only argues for the generative capacity of classical texts and Athenian political thought, he demonstrates it by thinking with them to provide a framework for reflecting more deeply about socially divisive issues such as the war over the canon and the "politicization" of the university. Drawing on Aristophanes' Clouds, Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannos, and Plato's Apology of Socrates, Gorgias, and Protagoras, Euben develops a view of democratic political education. Arguing that Athenian democratic practices constituted a tradition of accountability and self-critique that Socrates expanded into a way of doing philosophy, Euben suggests a necessary reciprocity between political philosophy and radical democracy. By asking whether we can or should take "Socrates" out of the academy and put him back in front of a wider audience, Euben argues for anchoring contemporary higher education in appreciative yet skeptical encounter with the dramatic figure in Plato's dialogues.

Originally published in 1970. Youth, University, and Democracy examines whether Weber's approach has a greater humanizing value than has been conceded by his opponents and will attempt to demonstrate the humanistic mission of the University and its usefulness for youth and democracy.

At the beginning for the new millennium, higher education is under siege. No longer viewed as a public good, higher education increasingly is besieged by corporate, right-wing and conservative ideologies that want to decouple higher education from its legacy of educating students to be critical and autonomous citizens, imbued with democratic and public values. The greatest danger faced by higher education comes from the focus of global neo-liberalism and the return of educational apartheid. Through the power of racial backlash, the war on youth, deregulation, commercialism, and privatization, neo-liberalism wages a vicious assault on all of those public spheres and goods not controlled by the logic of market relations and profit margins. Take Back Higher Education argues that if higher education is going to meet the challenges of a democratic future, it will have to confront neo-liberalism, racism, and the shredding of the social contract.

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

In Democracy Remixed, award-winning scholar Cathy J. Cohen offers an authoritative and empirically powerful analysis of the state of black youth in America today. Utilizing the results from the Black Youth Project, a groundbreaking nationwide survey, Cohen focuses on what young Black Americans actually experience and think--and underscores the political repercussions. Featuring stories from cities across the country, she reveals that black youth want, in large part, what most Americans want--a good job, a fulfilling life, safety, respect, and equality. But while this generation has much in common with the rest of America, they also believe that equality does not yet exist, at least not in their lives. Many believe that they are treated as second-class citizens. Moreover, for many the future seems bleak when they look at their neighborhoods, their schools, and even their own lives and choices. Through their words, these young people provide a complex and balanced picture of the intersection of opportunity and discrimination in their lives. Democracy Remixed provides the insight we need to transform the future of young Black Americans and American democracy.

"Robert Asen explores the ways that school board members in the U.S. engage each other to make decisions for their local communities. He addresses issues of ideology, scarcity, expertise, and trust while examining the perils and promise of local policymaking"--Provided by publisher.