CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS on Education, Imperialism, and Resistance at Shih Hsin University, Taipei, Taiwan on August 10-11,2009

Deadline for abstracts: November 30, 2008

Notification of acceptance: January 31, 2009

Deadline for papers: May 31, 2009

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle Working Group on Teachers, Researchers, and other Education Personnel invites academics, scholars, researchers, education and social activists and progressive intellectuals to an international conference on “Education, Imperialism, and Resistance,” to be held in Shih Hsin University, Taipei, Taiwan on August 10-11, 2009. It will be hosted by the International Center for Taiwan Social Studies and Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies.

The conference aims to bring together academics and social activists to put forward a progressive critique of imperialism and education.

Imperialism is at the root of untold suffering for billions of people throughout the world. Imperialist banks and corporations reap huge profits from the exploitation of working people even as the world economy is racked by crises, the gap between rich and poor countries widens, hundreds of millions are thrown into unemployment, billions are kept in poverty, and environmental destruction proceeds unabated. The imperialist countries, led by the United States, wage wars of aggression to control valuable markets and resources and suppress revolutionary movements. All over the world, imperialism intensifies the oppression of women, exacerbates racial and ethnic conflicts, and incites discrimination against migrants.

In the guise of neoliberal globalization, imperialism is having a devastating impact on education. Drastic cuts in public spending for education have become the norm. Teachers, researchers, and other education personnel suffer deteriorating standards of living as salaries fail to keep up with rising costs. Large numbers are being laid off as governments close down schools and universities deemed inefficient. As education becomes the flashpoint for popular struggles, schools and universities are increasingly subjected to state repression.
Imperialism exercises an ever-tightening grip on education. The WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has placed liberalization of the so-called education market and the privatization of education on the agenda of future negotiations, along with other basic social services. Teaching and research are to an unprecedented extent driven and defined by corporate interests.
Imperialist control of education is a key element in imperialist domination of culture as a whole. U.S. imperialism, in particular, makes full use of the means at its disposal

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