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Argues that official rhetoric of “eminence” and humanistic inquiry operates as a political spectacle, masking actions that undermine social justice commitments. Uses narrative voices of affected students, faculty, and alumni to explain impacts on educational inquiry and teacher education’s future.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-shuttering-of-educational-studies-neoliberalism-the-political-spectacle-and-social-injustice-at-a-world-class-university/602504/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-shuttering-of-educational-studies-neoliberalism-the-political-spectacle-and-social-injustice-at-a-world-class-university/602504.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"pixelkiddo","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-31","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":34},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does the article mean by “shuttering” the Division of Educational Studies (DES)?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It uses “shuttering” intentionally to frame the closure as an intentional, deliberate act to block educational justice, not as a neutral event that “just happened.”","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Why is the Emory DES closure presented as an example beyond one university?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The article argues the Emory case is symptomatic of wider neoliberal impacts on higher education across departments and programs, including comparable closures and budget cuts elsewhere.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the article explain neoliberalism’s role in higher education?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It links neoliberal policy priorities—valuing markets and private interests over public and social democratic commitments—to how political spectacle allows public-facing rhetoric to diverge from backstage actions that reduce educational foundations programs.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},602504,1792208839,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":34,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},962090883892,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/e00115db34f3e0f11b?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1790152879550218658","The Shuttering of Educational Studies:  \nNeoliberalism, the Political Spectacle,  \nand Social Injustice at a “World Class” University  \nBy Alyssa Hadley Dunn & Morgan Zacheya-Jewel Faison  \nAlyssa Hadley Dunn is an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education of the College of Education at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan. Morgan Zacheya-Jewel Faison is a doctoral student in the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.  \nThe University is a critical institution or it is nothing.  \n—Stuart Hall  \nHigher education represents one of the most important spheresin which the battle for democracy is currently being waged.  \n—Henry Giroux  \nLate on a Friday afternoon in September 2012, faculty, students, and alumni of the Division of Educational Studies (DES) at Emory University learned, by email, that their Division was one of several slated for closure. The Dean of the College ofArts and Sciences, of which DES was a member, issued a statement about Emory’s “new directions” and their pursuit of “eminence.” A pursuit that did not include DES (Dean’s letter, September 14, 2012, p. 1) . According to faculty, this announcement came “totally out of the blue.”After all, the Division had  \n􀀹  \nexisted for over ninety years; it had produced hundreds of teachers and scholars, particularly women of color, who had successful careers in schools and universities around the country; and it was a vibrant community of junior and senior scholars with international recognition for their research and scholarly activity.  \nYet, despite the disbelief and shock felt in the DES community, the closure of a program that focused on educational foundations and social justice was not new. Across the country, departmentsand programs in educational studies and foundations faced similar budget cuts or closures. In one month alone, before this manuscript was submitted, the following program cuts were announced: the elementary education Masters program at the University of Illinois-Chicago, the Masters program in social justice and activism at Loyola University-Chicago, and over 20 programs related to education at the University of Akron, as part of a proposed 55-program cut. Like DES, these programs exist at the nexus of university power politics and neoliberalism. This is despite the fact that Emory and other universities claim tobe bastions of humanistic inquiry, of justice, and of community engagement.  \nIn this article, we examine the closure of DES as an example of the ways that the neoliberalization of higher education contributes to the extinction of educational foundations programs. What happened at Emory is symptomatic of the impact that neoliberalism has had (andwill have) on educational studies. With such departments goes a commitment to understanding the social, cultural, historical, philosophical, and political underpinningsofPK-12 education and, indeed, of higher education itself. We argue that neoliberalism in higher education is advanced by the political spectacle, orthe ways in which onstage rhetoric differs from backstage actions (Edelman, 1970), and we do this through a detailed explanation of the DES closure. We also see this article as a way to share the voices of those affected by the shuttering of DES. We have chosen to tell their stories in narrative form, rather than through a traditional qualitative analysis, as we believe their commentary truly speaks for itself. Finally, we offer a brief discussion ofwhythe Emory case matters and what implications this has for the future of educational foundations and teacher education.  \nThis story is both professionally disconcerting and personally troubling to us. As a recent alumna (Alyssa) and a current doctoral student (Morgan), we are deeply troubled by both what occurred and how it occurred. Professionally, we sought to examine what it means to be in a field that is threatened with extinction, just as weare coming of age in the academy. In ","cbCail1S4xAdUJBL","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCail1S4xAdUJBL","pdf",121636,22,"English","# Introduction\n# Context of the DES Closure\n# Shuttering as Terminology\n# Theoretical Frameworks: Neoliberalism and Political Spectacle","[{\"question\":\"What does the article mean by “shuttering” the Division of Educational Studies (DES)?\",\"answer\":\"It uses “shuttering” intentionally to frame the closure as an intentional, deliberate act to block educational justice, not as a neutral event that “just happened.”\"},{\"question\":\"Why is the Emory DES closure presented as an example beyond one university?\",\"answer\":\"The article argues the Emory case is symptomatic of wider neoliberal impacts on higher education across departments and programs, including comparable closures and budget cuts elsewhere.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article explain neoliberalism’s role in higher education?\",\"answer\":\"It links neoliberal policy priorities—valuing markets and private interests over public and social democratic commitments—to how political spectacle allows public-facing rhetoric to diverge from backstage actions that reduce educational foundations programs.\"}]","The Shuttering of Educational Studies: Neoliberalism, the Political Spectacle, and Social Injustice at a “World Class” University | PDF",1792094788,55]