Elections in fledgling democracies are punctuated by perceived and observed cases of vote buying otherwise also called electoral clientelism -- regarded as a major threat to democratic consolidation. Notions of vote buying are variously captured in the burgeoning literature on democracy, but the ongoing scholarly discussions have failed to engage…

In his writing in the mid-nineteenth century -- "The Idea of a University," John Henry Newman argues that the university provides a platform for human advancement through teaching and research. Over a century later, our public university now hedged on several social, political, ecological and economic factors that bully its traditional…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the digitalization of education to be accelerated to continue the teaching-learning processes in confined populations. The irruption of this fact caused the evolution that had previously been occurring in the integration of digital technologies, and in general information and communication technologies (ICT), in…

In Georgia, the question of academic freedom emerged only after the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and its universities could begin reckoning with a heavy past of ideological pressure, censorship, governmental control and top-down management. Despite official declarations of the right to academic freedom and its…

Universities around the world are increasingly digitalising all of their operations, with the current COVID-19 pandemic speeding up otherwise steady developments. This article focuses on the political economy of higher education (HE) digitalisation and suggests a new research programme. I foreground three principal arguments, which are…

Rapid development and expansion of technology has created massive shifts in people's lives around the globe. China's focus on transforming the nation into a global leader in technology has resulted in the proliferation of policies, which are typically interpreted as part of the Western neoliberal economic expansion and imperialism. However, in…

This study examines the emergence and evolution of madrasa as a specific organizational form of higher learning from a comparative-historical perspective. The article begins by discussing how the madrasa emerged and which factors contributed to its rise and spread among the Islamicate political regimes during the Middle Ages and afterwards. Then,…

As music remains one of the most popular activities of everyday life, this paper builds on critical and popular geopolitics to introduce music as a key endeavour in teaching such topics. The paper attempts to go beyond scrutiny of the popular music by connecting it with the historical strings of geopolitical evolution and their current…

Teaching economic history requires the study of how to combine the economists' modeling and statistical methods with the methods used by historians and the other social sciences. It often involves learning how to search for quantitative data from a variety of sources and then building panel datasets that match the data found with existing…

This article examines the role that Indigenous language learning and use can play in the establishment of false or spurious claims to Indigeneity. These acts of "race shifting" are situated within the political discourse of "Truth and Reconciliation" and serve to enable settlers to situate themselves in positions where, both…

Recently, the Canadian government has initiated a wide range of actions and gestures aimed at reconciling historical injustices including the state's relationship with Indigenous peoples and nations. Reforming K-12 education to adequately teach Canada's difficult past has been a key priority in this movement, leading to curriculum change across…

The 1948 war created a new situation in Palestine. Palestinians became dispersed across political borders that had not existed before, and these borders continued to change in different ways into the 21st century. In many respects, these political borders have had notable linguistic effects, introducing bilingualism and multilingualism for some…

This paper examines the design of school buildings in the last decade of the Portuguese dictatorship (1964-1974) and its relationship with the country's educational policies, geared towards the objectives of industrialisation and economic growth. It also considers the economic constraints placed on the building of schools, the technical and…

This paper examines the utility of youth participatory action research (YPAR) and critical media literacy as strategies to promote the sociopolitical development (SPD) of Black youth. We use the case example of Our Voices, an afterschool program implemented with Black high school students in which participants analyzed the representation of Black…

In this study, we share a classroom-based project that will be referred to as "the Talk about the system." The "system" is a loose term used to signify the combination of economic, political, and social composites where our decisions take place. Our business students will be future business decision makers. Therefore, it is…