Dr. Weiner Publishes “The Radical Educational Imagination Of Stanley Aronowitz” for 3 Quarks Daily
Posted in: College News and Events
Dr. Eric Weiner, Associate Professor in the Educational Foundations Department, was chosen to write monthly essays for the prestigious web site 3 Quarks Daily. The online magazine posts essays about art, science, literature, politics, and philosophy from some of the top writers, thinkers, and scholars around the world.
Dr. Weiner notes, “On August 16, 2021, Stanley Aronowitz, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban Education at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, labor organizer, educational theorist, author, and dissident public intellectual died. Essentially self-educated, he told me once that he began with Spinoza and just kept reading. He may have actually started with Kafka or Dostoevsky, but the order of things is less important than the central lesson. It’s because of him that I often find myself telling my students—who overwhelmingly come to Montclair State University for a credential or, in Aronowitz’s lexicon, to be ‘schooled’—that to be educated all they really need is a ‘library card’ and intellectual curiosity. Through his radical and relentless pursuit of knowledge and justice, Aronowitz provided a blueprint for living an intellectual life that matters to those of us who refuse to accept the status quo. He showed us through his dissident research and activism how to direct the imagination toward the utopic horizon of radical democratic freedom and economic justice. At the heart of Stanley’s intellectual project was his life-long rejection of fatalism; his revealing criticisms of the status quo always pointed to radical possibilities for social change. Aronowitz never feared freedom like so many ‘intellectuals’ who camouflage their conservative bias within critiques overburdened by cynicism. His embrace of what Erich Fromm called ‘positive freedom’ was amplified by his deep respect for working people and his willingness to get his hands dirty in the fight for a future that looked radically different than the past or present.”