well, take my example of immigrant labor. immigrant workers. it's been really interesting to look back at that 19th century past, in part because, i read a book that said, well, it was the treatment of indentured workers was terrible. but then the british regulated, the whole system and then it was okay. and it was no different than, say, europeans, the atlantic and coming to the united states. and i was like, what? you know, there was a regulatory system and. it worked. i need to know about that. what can we do now that did before? unfortunately, i ended up pretty critical regulatory system. it did not solve our problems. but but we're constantly learning about the present and then it's also just intrinsically interesting know about the past maybe studying ancient greece doesn't change anything right but it's

fascinating and students need to be fascinated. you know, it's not just about certification. it should be about education. when you go to university, you're supposed to open your mind. that's what we try to do. cindy hamm haimovitz, who is the past president of the labor and working class history association and professor at the university of georgia thanks for spending a little bit of time with us. american history. thank you all for joining us. and i'm really excited to be here. so i'm paul renfro i'm an associate professor of history at state university and the author of i'm reading my own biographer, author of stranger danger, family values, childhood and the carceral state. it was published by oxford university press in 2020 and also the forthcoming the life

and death of ryan white aids and inequality in america will be out with umc later this year and i am thrilled to to introduce our august panel. sarena martinez is a dphil student in american at the university of oxford. she studies 20th century american political development. her work traces the contours of the relationship between state legislatures and local governments and consequences. an important and often overlooked fulcrum of the political and economic development of the american welfare state. a rhodes scholar earned her m.s. is at mrc and in economic and social history at the university of oxford and b.a. from vanderbilt in psychology and french. previously, serena served as a manager of special projects in the department of innovation and economic opportunity, the city of birmingham, alabama, a team laser focused on facilitating an inclusive economy in one of america's foremost post-industrial cities. a great, great city.

it is caleb smith is a doctoral candidate in the department of history at brandeis university. he studies 20th century u.s. political history. his work concentrates on how black in the northern u.s. conceptual ized, practiced and expanded multiracial democracy from the post-new -- of the 1930s through the civil rights movement to the aftermath of the black movement in the 1980s. his research focuses on chicago black politics and neo liberalism. from the 1940s to the 1990s. elizabeth vreeland is an associate professor history at the university of illinois chicago. her research and teaching focus on century u.s., urban and social history, african-american history and the history of education. her political education. black politics. education reform in chicago since the 1960s was published by the university of north carolina press in 2018. todd vreeland's writing has appeared in the journal of

african-american history souls and various edited collections. she has also to popular outlets, including npr, espn, the washington post and local radio, television, print, online media. todd vreeland's research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the national academy of education and spencer foundation. andrew mellon foundation. american council. learned societies. social science council. ford foundation and the uic institute for research, race and public policy. and finally, julilly kohler-hausmann and is associate professor of history at cornell. she is the author of tough welfare and imprisonment in 1970s america again, phenomenal book. i mention this in our morning. princeton university press 2017 and her next book is a history of u.s. democracy since the 1965 voting rights act, which focuses on individuals who did not or could not vote. so please join me in welcoming our panel.

and sarita, would you like to go first? oh, no, i'm sorry. okay. okay. go ahead. kick us off, caleb. i'm sure. you can join this. oh, there you go. yeah. yeah, she mentioned it's people. i guess you just did. yeah. yeah, this is being filmed for c-span just in case everyone was going to throw things. you know, please refrain from doing that to disclose that. yeah, yeah, yeah. much closer to the speaker and anything. good afternoon, everyone. i suppose we should starting off with. we initially had a conversation with before the panel begins and what do we mean when we say neoliberalism, the idea of how it's been translated between different, different disciplines such as history, political science and other social science, field, sociology. for my dissertation and work, i've been looking at political scientists mostly.

there is one in particular? lester spence, john hopkins university and the simplicity of his work i think is very good. just an initial interpretation of it, where he defines neoliberal ism as the general idea that. a society with people institutions is better served when those forces work market principles. so basically when the institutions themselves are structured for capitalist gains and, limited welfare and are under limited sort of denmark constitutional democracy, then it produces the best points. all people involved. these points are nationally disputed, of course. it's a largely a thing that differenti between the scholar and the moment that they're talking about. and so i just like to keep mine very simple and in terms of my

work, it looks lot about how political actors are looking at privatizing and like shifting public institutions toward the the private sphere. especially at a time when the public sector is no longer able to provide the same services and resources. benjamin c holtzman, who is the historian who could not join us today, has written a wonderful book about phenomenon happening in new york. and you see different actors at various levels of the government or outside of it all contributing the privatization of public, the privatization of schools which. dr. breeland, i'm sure we'll talk more about and the privatization of police forces. and so, yeah, those are just some of the salient points that i'm going to jump off with. no high. hi, everyone. my name is, serena and my dissertation project is focused

on the 1990s governance of baltimore, specifically under the tenure of, its first black mayor, kurt schmoke. so what i'm really interested in understanding is how power works in the city. during this time period and sort of looking at, you know, what similarities there are with other with other urban areas, i think for me, i think what i'd like do is talk about a little bit of a roadblock that i've encountered in my research and to sort of, you know, maybe pick which i wish list item for us to sort of theorize neo liberalism, which is i think we need to sort of theorize or reconceptualize sovereignty specifically. you know, think about when and when actors might be considered to be quasi sovereign is such that they have amassed enough, you know, economic and political

capital that they can functionally do whatever they want. and i'll sort of talk about what this looks like in in baltimore, but i think conventionally we're used to thinking about territorial sovereigns, right? so like i'm a resident of the us, maybe you can you can sort of push that to a state level or an urban area. but what i'm i'm really interested in is if we were to of collapse those political jurisdictions under which, you know that sort of govern our lives what what sort of remains as far as the spheres of control that govern the way we sort of move through the world. and then what does tell us about this kind of amalgam of actors that be governing shoulder to shoulder with the city or with the state? so one of the big issues involves and more, when kurt schmoke is elected, so he comes in in 1987. and one of the really big issues is very high auto insurance

premium. gm's folks in this room will be familiar with the fact that auto insurance is mandated at a state level. baltimoreans in the nineties were paying on average about 7% of their income and 2 to 4 times what their suburban were paying, even though they had the same accident record. so we get here into sort of questions about governance of risk, what it means, and sort of who it is that governs risk in the first place. and this is a huge issue because if you're a baltimore and you need a car to get to work and so is actually a local organization that's started it's called quick that tried to issue a challenge to insurers. so they tried to propose and nonprofit insurer and tried to actually combat. they issued quite a formidable challenge private insurers in terms of governance, of risk. these auto insurers by the 1990. so the biggest in maryland during this time were geico

automobile insurance corporation and state farm were private purveyors mandated goods. they had robust pr efforts. the first pr firm in the us was actually the institute of life insurance, which just started in 1935 by a group of life insurers. robust. you know, they issued they had robust lobbying strategies, real estate. they were huge financiers of shopping malls and of suburban office parks. so they just had a lot of capital and they really could could functionally do what they want. since 1945, the mccarran, ferguson that had sort of pushed deregulation of the federal level into the states, that was legislation that was pushed by them. and so this sort of system hindered oversight and accountability and sort of rightfully relegated regulation to state insurance commissioners. and so by the time in this, you know, in the nineties, when is issuing this challenge to

insurers and their sort interacting with the mayor, they're interacting with other residents, the state insurance commissioner during this time actually calls a set of six hearings. the first one is held in baltimore, where he says, we're going to look at the way insurers actually assess and define premiums for the first time in 17 years. and so just kind of in thinking about how all these folks negotiated, you know what security needs to look like and did look like under capitalism. it's been very difficult to conceptualize like the power that insurers had when we think about the sort of conventional ways we think about sovereignty. so they're gatekeepers to the economy, you know, and to wealth building. and they sort of rule in many ways their customers, you know they're the architects of risk classification. and so they have a sort of stranglehold the governance of risk. and so i think what i would you

know, what i would be interested in hearing the reflections of folks is in sort of thinking sort of thinking sovereignty and and because it sort of turns our attention more to kind of how the actual process of how power is amassed, instead of sort of just assuming that that is how things should work and we'll turn it over. sorry, i just to make sure i'm clear format. do you want us talk more broadly now about sort of like our work and or is it just define neoliberalism go either way. all right. well, i'm going to start you on how to improve it. okay. hi, my name is elizabeth todd-breland. i guess say something about my own, how i to write about neoliberalism and, what i would say late and it didn't out of being a historian it came from writing in conversation with people in sort of critical education studies. so my work is on the history race in education history, urban

history. and so i feel like as a urban historian of black life, my, the contracts i was working with were like the urban crisis, someone who works in education spaces or ideas of desegregation, community control, etc. and then as i continued to write these topics, i'm clearly, you political economy was something important. and at the time that i was writing my first book, you everyone in the critical education studies area talking about more contemporary issues that my project sought to engage by the end of of the work. we're talking about neoliberal education to describe the the topics that i was discussing as so i was like, well, i need to read a lot about this. and figure out how to say something and that's what i did. i read a lot about it. i tried to figure out how to be a part of the conversation, but i think i still at the time, and i think more so even now and it's a very present is concerned that i'll speak to at the end i still think i have some ambivalence about what it the

using the conceptual frame of neoliberalism for my own work what it clarifies what it may actually obscure in different ways. so i'll talk a little bit about that. so i would say that think black education organizing presents an opportunity to examine both the possibilities and, constraints of neoliberalism as a conceptual frame for the periods broadly since the fiscal crises of the 1970s, i felt and i still kind of feel like the way that is discussed at times seems encompass everything and nothing and it felt really important in my own work to try to define what does this mean for me? and so me in my own work, i've used it to describe, i think similar to some you were saying love the significant economic restructuring that shaped life since the 1970s. but with roots certainly dating back decades earlier. and i also found myself on other people's concepts that both intersect with, but also have some differentiation there. so i draw naomi klein to use of the term corporatism to describe many of the features that

characterized these shifts in the global north. the transition from an industrial economy to a service economy, the rise of finance capitalism, the intensified consolidate of money and power by a small group of political and corporate elites and think in this political and economic realignment crises, both and imagined as klein discusses a lot pave the way for dramatic economic and social restructuring based on what klein describes as this the policy trinity quote the policy trinity, the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation corporations and skeletal social spending, and of her quote. so i certainly think that this economic restructuring profoundly impacted realm of education, where corporate and political elites have projected a perpetual state of crises and multiple crises of funding, of achievement of pedagogy to justify the transfer of public funds to private entities, renewed pushes for things like vouchers, attacks on teachers

unions, divestment from funding universally, accessible, high quality public education, and the embrace of market based ideals of competition. choice by private sector actors, officials, and corporate education reformers. so certainly i think the era of neoliberalism affected the context in which the actors who i am more sort of interested in about lived. so i write about how black activists educators, parents and students navigated challenged and also contributed the urban, political and educational as it transformed from the liberal politics of the mid-twentieth century to what we might describe as the more neoliberal of the late 20th century. however, i also that this history also needs to be understood in relation to other so things like urbanites, varied political responses to successive invocations of the urban crisis, which again was never just a single crisis. and so for example, the struggle for schools desegregate nation was a hallmark of mid-twentieth

century civil rights struggles. but as decentralize zation and white flight left behind school systems with black majorities in the late 1960s, many urban communities desegregation impractical and undesirable and these ideals conflicts emerged within black communities about how best to respond and black education reformers and organizers generated a host of different local community based responses to the urban crisis and the reorganization of the welfare state. so these efforts collided with and contributed to the proprietary decentralization and plans of corporate education reformers who came to see urban education as this new space of economic investment. but i don't think they're the same thing. and i do think the motivations matter. the 1954 brown versus board of education certainly looms large when we talk about understandings of black struggles for equity. however, the brown decision, which notably stated that educational facilities were

inherently unequal, was not a moment of resolution, but instead really a new period of contestation over strategies for racial justice and equity the desegregation policies that were actually then implemented in response. brown in some ways prefigure, neoliberal ideas of diverse, which would come some decades later over things like equity or racial justice. so i think my work, the way that neoliberalism, a concept clarifies and obscures, if i have to think of a particular area where this seems most pronounced, i would say it's in the sort of rise of corporate education reform and contemporary school choice policy. and here we see the models for education that were generated by local community based black education organizers in previous decades, things like struggles for desegregation and the creation of community control schools and experiments with community, the creation of independent black institutions as an alternative altogether to

public education system collide with and also contribute neoliberal models of school choice, of competition, of privatization and of high stakes accountability. and there are roots of neoliberal logics in black education struggles from earlier periods. so community is a good example of this in many community control projects, they were what, you might describe as like public private partnership. these public private partnerships became ubiquitous as a sort of character of, you know, 1990s governance. but the forces that brought together these public private partnerships were often very different than they were in the later period in the 1960s. one of the projects i look at is this woodlawn experimental project, and it was a case in which the community got really upset because the university of chicago was trying do like some research experimentation in the adjacent community, black community using federal law on poverty funds. well, the war on poverty funds,

that you have a community based partner. and so the community went to the government was like, they can't do this without us. and so eventually they became a part of this, an ultimately ended up basically running the program. and i would say that that's something different than like community development grants in the nineties or the types of public private partnerships that we see develop later. but nonetheless, you see some seeds and resonances there still, i would say certainly from the sixties through the 20 teens, there's a marked transition from urban education models seeking equity to promoting more market based school choice and. in the eighties and nineties, these conversations were situated within larger in chicago, which is the midcourse place study debates about things, the effective schools model or shifts to mayoral control of schools the proliferation of magnet schools and charter schools in. the eighties, there was an actual sort of more local democratically based movement for local control of schools, which is a decentral mechanism

that created called local school councils. and that was something very much backed by community. it was a community is different from that, but it still created this set of like mini school boards for every school. and at the time that these these were elected officials came from the community. it was the most. socioeconomically and group of elected officials in the country. and they were pushing things that were about community based education that was foreclosed upon in the nineties by mayoral control and these other sort of tightening up. so i guess i would also though as and this is i think what's as was the case historically other shifts in policy and political economy black chicagoans didn't respond monolithic to what we might call neoliberal and political models. so black parents of varying class class backgrounds did flock magnet schools and charter schools. black teachers in traditional public questioned the implications of privatization for very hard and long fought

gains, both within the teachers union and outside the teachers union. for black teachers black communities. and so while some education reformers were definitely directly challenged, the encroachment of private interests into public domains, others sought to stake a claim in this emerging order. so i'll use the example of a woman named barbara sizemore, who was local to chicago. but then she ran this woodlawn experimental schools project, a black woman. eventually became the first black woman to be superintendent of a large school district in washington in the 1970s, and also edmonds, who was very much involved both in new york city public schools, but also in national public school policy. and they used corporate organizational models to replicate to replicate high achieving schools for poor black black children. but this was in form not so by their interest in privatized fashion as a solution to the problems that black were facing in education. but from their own work, in struggles, desegregation and

community control. and i think their ideas reflected a different history and set of motivations from the market based school choice policies of organizations like the heritage foundation or the liberal democratic leadership council. so another example would be when sort of community based, independent institutions entered into creating charter schools, and that was like a big within the independent black school community because some like we should never take government money. that's the whole point of being independent while others like, look, our communities can't afford to pay us tuition to be independent schools. so if we actually want to serve people at a greater level, we need to take these tax dollars and they're saying the tax dollars come with autonomy, which we don't have to do what they're doing in the public schools. we can do what we're doing in our space. now, ultimately, many of these of what i would describe as like mom and pop charters, community pacbio, community based organizations, charters become pushed out by the of franchise model of larger charters. but the history of charter

schools actually not about privatization. it came out ideas for from teachers unions. so again i just think there are these interesting pieces and and even, you know, these black charter school operators that ended up being in the space also said that charter schools were not the answer to the problems that they were seeing. so i thought that was interesting. so i think both contemporary proponents of school choice policies, both proponents opponents have also used the language and practices reminiscent of black reformers of the past to frame their arguments. so the ideas, the symbols, the education practices developed by black education organizers to create quality for students became remixed. this sort of corporate education reform movement that took over. and the social justice idea oriented ideas of self-determination and localism generated a very different political context have now repurposed for ends. moreover, i think expansion of

private interests into public has very much challenged the role of public entities in the future of urban all together. but i also to note that some of the fiercest pushback this turn in corporate came from black communities and came from organizing that brought together working class people, teachers unions, community based organizations, many legacy civil rights era organizations, and also because the naacp has had its own journey over the course of this time that pushed back against this. and chicago certainly became, you know a ground zero of this. so i guess would just say on this overall thing that think these a macro level discussion of neoliberalism doesn't necessarily tell the whole story of urban racial politics and certainly not school reform. i think neoliberalism both powerfully, powerfully articulates shifting and economic dynamic dynamics. a race is previous historical struggles, racial justice and that the response is of black education organizers to shifts

in political economy where. the products of history that included the development politics of black achievement that precede it the rise of neoliberalism. these struggles are ongoing and i'll just end with saying coming back to where i started, i think my own continued ambivalence about what neoliberalism in the education and sort of racial space reveals in education. that, for example, just saying corporate education reform doesn't. and maybe one of the things when i say i go back and forth like i'm a historian, i believe in historical contingency, i think it's important that, you know, a political economy in one moment is different from another and that may generate different response ideas and different forms of activism as well as different sort of top down political force. but i guess the other part i'll say and again explicitly present this here is as someone who my, my intentionally goes to the present and a present that is ever moving because time keeps going. i also wonder if we are now in a, in some type of different

period and i wonder how 2020 for white supremacist and or libertarian interface with or supersede the way talk about nine sort of nineties and into the 20 teens ideas of neoliberalism i'll say my other hat in life is that i'm one of the the chicago board of education and just in the education space say that thinking of like covid era education and debates that i would say covid accelerated debates about things like anti masking, pro vouchers, pro book bans. they don't feel grounded in the same logic as those that govern the pre 20, 20 years, even on some of the same. so i'll stop there because this but i want to add some more do you want to say some more stuff? okay. sure. yes. but i don't want to. please. no, go ahead. yeah, well, i want to jump on a couple of things in trying to

respond back to point that serino made about how we're thinking about power, especially within the 1970s and 1980 spheres where a lot of the historiography when it encounters ideas of neo liberalism traditionally we're pushing this top top to bottom elites policy on like working class and poor class african-americans, other racial minorities within, these metropolitan cities. but the actual like text and the history are showing us something quite different. in a moment we see these different communities, especially in the city of chicago. my work is based. they're coming into 1970s, facing the white flight. all of these economic opportunities are leaving the city, the city of chicago at this point is still under the control of the daley machine, which is functionally blocking sort of like actual help, city

resources, the pay for play of politics that rules the city of chicago this time. and in response to that, the there are more alderman black aldermen on the city council ever before but they can only deal in piecemeal. robert h. miller of the six ward in the city of chicago speaks out once again daley, nominee to the board of public education and daley just completely shuts them out of this next election. they wish retirement and he's gone. so these politicians, while their representation on the board and representation is another advancement of neo liberalism, looks really good when you have more these african-americans within positions of power and they become they begin to understand their own power in terms of my representation is the advancing pit of the race does show the advancement of civil rights as opposed to meeting the material needs of african-americans within different communities. so in response to different sections of issues including

policing including education and including housing, they begin coming up with their own solutions. do it yourself sort of options that we see evident in the black power movement in cities across the united states in these metropolitan urban centers. and this has coming to a head in the 1970s where black politicians are having this very public fight and we see this in the national black convention for power, also known as the gary convention, with these politicians. so what are you doing for the race? maybe need to form our own political party and after the gary and its outcome over the busing and the isreal controversies completely sinks the black power narrative. these black democrats come the spotlight saying we are now the voice of african-americans within these cities. we're going to direct the politics. and you see the congressional black caucus go from a moment in the 1970s when there's still a select committee. they are pushing things like a

new convention. they want universal health care. they want complete pulling of military forces out of these centers in africa and these different nations. and we see this carried on in the apartheid discussions throughout the 1980s. but as they feel more infused in power on a national level, they begin retract, they begin to like soften the kind of legislation, proposals and so in specifically in the chicago case, we see see the south side community of cafe avalon on starts forming its own police patrols when to when two police officers are killed in the cabrini green housing project. jesse jackson comes and basically says i want the nixon to declare this area a disaster area. we need to form our own private security forces. and you see the slow marching where they're looking for. if daley and the machine and nixon administration with its cuts will not come in and help us, then we need to be taking under our control, community

control. and it leads to these various private relationships we see manifest in throughout the decade. and i would say even the harold washington administration in the 1980s. and so in the end, these different sort of politicians are being pulled politically. they're looking at what's happening in different communities and they're saying like a langford of the third district of the third ward excuse me, civil rights lawyer and famously anti anti daley, huge reform. she's saying, oh, look at what's happening in. my community, i want to function, legislate fashion and policy that i propose on the city council on what people are doing. and we see this continue throughout the 1970s, into the 1980s with the washington administration and where he basically, once again not like development to happen give the their own say and let them be able to function in terms how they think this money should be spent. but at this time it's all kind of private, public relationships. just as you were explaining, dr.

breeland and, i just find that so politically interesting, because we must understand the actions of these black politician means, these alderman alter persons of a different sort of backgrounds and different interpretations, not monolithic opinions. they are being pulled in a direction by their circumstance, since it's not so much, we always have to remember their actions in the context of a racial capitalist system that is driving the kinds choices that they make under limited choices. compromises still, like a lot of the political choices of african-americans throughout the city, during this time. and so i think it's a very interesting conversation of like who's forcing who to go in which. throughout the 1970s that we see, at least in chicago. but i know i've seen evidence of it in other cities. well. but you mention or i'll a few. yeah. so we were both brought in for

picketers outside so i don't have any formal comments. there's julilly kohler-hausmann and i guess i should just like take this opportunity to confess all my problems with neoliberal, which is i really like you when you were i was just like and getting excited a lot. i feel so profoundly ambivalent about and i feel it's funny because i just it's like whoever, talked to me last. i'm like, yes, you're right. we should totally use neoliberals. it's very helpful, completely works. and then and then i just slip in this other direction, i'm like it's i get frustrated and so and i confused and then i'm like, maybe i just didn't it closely, you know? then i get like a posture syndrome that i'm like, maybe i so it just brings up lot for me as you guys are all here and helping me work through this. but so it's so like the things that i struggle. it's like the obvious one, which is like the floating signifier where, you know, there's just times where i'm like, depending

on whether you like game of thrones or not, it's either is neo liberal or is it neo liberal. it gets just like sometimes you're like, oh, that's neo liberal. and it's like, i love, modern family. so i think it subverts neo, you know, i mean, so there's this sense that it's this thing that, you know, kind of it's like, are we who's not neo, you know? so there's issue but that's musician yeah. and then then there's this sort of epithet aspect of it, which is just like anything i don't like i'm like, oh, of course the administration, cornell is doing that neo liberal educational system like. i don't know. i guess maybe just a jerk, you know? so it's, so. but that's kind of the problem. but then again, now i have the other personality. i'm like, that's just any big heuristic is going to sort do stuff like that. so then i'm done. then i was kind of like, oh, okay. so there's, there's also this sort of more substantial thing. my first book dealt a lot with the rise mass incarceration, and i just have to say, i just spent as much time trying to wedge neo

liberal like the sort of big picture neo liberal stuff into the growth of this penal system. and i don't know i'm looking because i'm not sure if you're the same thing, but it's just like it's actually a mass of state project. it actually largely defined. i mean, again, ways where you can find neo liberalism, but it actually like private prisons are like the wrong place to look if you're trying to understand the growth, the penal system. patrick it's i mean, it's not only a small yeah, a small percent, but it's really not the like it's not the it's not an anti status at all. you're just going to get. so it's i mean, it is anti status in a really important way in some ways, right, like that the state can't do this project. it can't be an equalizing force but anyway so but then i'm so i've been like it doesn't quite work me and then i'm like maybe again, maybe i misunderstand neoliberalism and then i'm like, am i contorting myself to make the thing fit the rubric, you know? so these are some of my struggles it's also not an

actor's term or it's weird. it's, it's i wish we almost called it like who would you like something because there are a few people calling themselves neo liberal neoliberals. you know, and like there's historians that have found them and they're around. so, so so it's an actor's term for some people, but now it's an act, but it's a not an actor's term for others. and then now we know it's actor's term for us because we get mad people and them neo liberal. i definitely my 12 year old, a neo liberal all the time when. she's being obnoxious and i'm right you know, so it's just very confusing. so so there's that. so that makes it hard for me to work when i sort of think about putting it in my work, it makes it that makes it challenging me because i always want to be like, are you trying to be a neo liberal right now. you mean like because some people are like, i think the liberals and good and i'm going to try to be a neo liberal and go and do stuff, you know now nelson rockefeller, when he passes the rockefeller drug laws like was he trying to be a neo liberal? doesn't matter if you're just like animated the gods of neo liberalism and. they're like making you do stuff, you know, it's just anyway. so that's for me another way in

which it becomes analytically tricky. the other one, and this is where it just becomes almost like a parlor game that i do in my head where where i'll be like private. this is sort of like public, private. and i'm like, yeah, that does change in that, you know, that is neoliberals. it's true and now they look, i thought if i'm one of the parties, you know, and then you just play this game of finding it like because so many of the things that we think of as neoliberal, even, i mean, whether it be sort of some economic formations, you can find examples where it's us and in other places or you can particularly when we get into that again super fun stuff about like neal about like ration isn't like sort of like political subjectivity. all this theorizing that like we're all a market agents now and it's like and and i'm like is my soul different like did it is my different than it was and then i kind of get like i'm questioning it and then i read benjamin franklin's things and i'm like, see, he's sounding really neoliberal, like maximizing his productivity, you know?

but then it's just like, that's the point. and so, so i have these moments when, like oh, it doesn't, it doesn't work. and then i'm teaching it in front of my students and i'm like, i mean, come on, this neoliberalism really happen. i mean, there's no, like, neoliberals and rationality i mean, you don't all think you're like a market commodity. my students are like, here's my dating profile. i've maximized my swipes. like, okay, maybe there is something here, you know? so then there's so there's a long some complaints, but then there's a long list of reasons why it does. why i do think it's really helpful and so i think some of those are sort more understood. it is it's a dominant heuristic and i think in part at a certain point, a heuristic becomes important because everyone's using it as a hair, a stick that, you know, it becomes a thing that that we should work with just because it's sort of helping us discuss something together. so, so many brilliant people are working with it. there's a part of me that just to just like neoliberalism, because i just like the smart thinkers that are thinking, you

know. and so anyway, but that seems like a weird reason to use it. it's an ongoing bugbear and i've also found it helpful working on a couple more things. i found it helpful. i'm working on this book on democracy, the voting rights act and there's not that much historical on democracy per se. you like it's like the story sort of again, there's a lot of amazing exceptions to this, but it's sort of this story of like the franchise expands and expands and like and then in political discourse, a little bit like we won like, it's done gay and then it's like tap out and and obviously, you know, last couple of years have raised some issues about narratives, completion and full realization of american, you know, american democracy. so for me it's the sort of neo liberal writers are hopeful because it's a thinking about the period after like you know roughly the same period like pose for me i think sort of post 1965. but it's sort of the, you know, after the seventies this period

that in so many narratives that i'm dealing with, it's a sort of ish like like no problems post 65 you know cans clean and it's a neil their liberalism is sort of a theory it's a declension test it's theorizing declension, i think in some in some. so for me, it's helpful in in the sense of thinking about it's like a place where people have thought about what happens in democracy that, you know, isn't although less than i would like has people thought about it in terms of like a sort of problem with democracy. there are some, you know, and we could talk about that if we wanted. but i do think there's a trap and i said this this morning, like i do think we also even in democracy, it's tricky because like people say neoliberalism, this, you know, this sort of market, you know, market dymock or see where it sort of evacuates it to the point where people are sort of picking their favorite, you know, commodity. ronald reagan, always a good one. and and so it's become of

eviscerated of it's you know of of it's sort of more robust. you know content or it's sort of now capital is is protected from democracy whereas before it wasn't and i think some of that is really helpful but again the trick is like there's a risk there kind of that those frames start actually like celebrating a democracy 1965 which is like a position i not willing you know get super late. i mean i think things that i mean again i'm not to say that we should all just be trying to issue citation in different periods, but, you know, like that there's so, so so i'm struggling with that too. so i think the thing that i'll like kind of close my confess final ramblings with is i guess the question for me or that i would love that i want to ask us is like, do we what, what do we need? neoliberalism for like what does this do? like, what do we like? what does this for us? and i think we should just remember, i think at least this is me talking to myself now.

it's like it's heuristic. it's not a thing like we don't know whether or not, like neo liberalism doesn't like objectively exist, something that we put together to help us understand and talk about the past. so i think for me, when i find myself being like, is that, is that neoliberal or is that so i that you where i'm playing this game where i'm trying to say like this is this or that is that, it's like, no, it doesn't objectively exist. it's like a construct that we create to help us understand things. and if to the extent that it's helping us do that, i think is definitely real things that it's pointing to that we need to do. but i just think sometimes we flip and we think we're studying the thing as opposed to using the neoliberalism as a heuristic that helps us understand the world. does that make sense at all? that's the part that i'm struggling with, trying to figure out. yeah, i just wanted to add one more thing. it makes me think previous conversations in the 1970s that are being had by black politicians about capitalism, which is the term they wrote a whole book on it by black capitalism is a myth. it doesn't actually it's just

capitalism. but the way african-americans specifically look at it and apply it in terms of their this is very real for them they want to see the state promoting like black entrepreneurs in ways that it allows both parties to take advantage of. and so i just it's something that just like puzzles me in terms of how we don't use the term black capitalism and everyone basically agrees with that framework. but here at a certain point in time, it was governing a lot of the ways that these political actors were moving through state legislatures. and it's. yes, and like black, but black capitalism is a just like it's like a it's a heuristic. is this is the actor's heuristic. but that it's an analytical framework, you know, and then you sort of sliding back in and so they're they're let's move over to. yeah, yeah. i can i can say a few things if they'll useful. so i'm kind of coming at this from more of a, i guess not more of but from a historiographical

perspective because i'm thinking of neoliberalism as this kind of evolution in a sense from the rise of the right sort of narrative that so prevalent in the historiography really in the early 2000s, right? so basically everybody was writing a dissertation how the new right rose you know conservatism rose and kind of embedded that idea is that we're living in a conservative age right. and conservatism kind of triumphed in some some spheres. right and, you know, i think by 20 tens, historians like matt lasseter were really kind of pushing against that. they were contesting these narratives, urging historians look beyond what would matter. lasseter calls the red blue divide idea that there is he argues that there is this tendency to kind of replicate the sort of crude red blue dichotomies that are employed in electoral college kind of

formulations. also on on the nightly right where people talk about red states and blue states, you know, this is you know, it obscures far more than it clarifies. and he he worried that historians were sort of replicating. so he is kind of urging people and this was, you know, in 2011 that he really started to do this to find continuity of continuities, the major political parties and major political traditions in the united states, specifically liberalism and conservatism. right. during the so-called neoliberal era. and i you know, so he's also pushing against idea that there's not necessarily rightward turn or a rightward shift. right. and to kind of shoehorn everything that framework obscures a lot more than it than it clarifies. right. and i think a lot of that work was done or that kind of tendency was evident in kind of liberal historians who wanted say, well, you know, developments of the eighties, nineties, this is just

attributable to the right word term. right. there's there's a rightward turn and liberals are just kind of playing the game because electorally they had to. but lasseter and others are saying no. you know, if you look and, you know, your work is instructive here, you look at the carceral state, right? this is a massive state project. and although liberals and conservatives are coming to this from perhaps different advantages, they are nevertheless kind of convinced that this something that needs to be done right this carceral up needs to be done. and so there's a tremendous it's not a conserver this thing, right? it's not it's not a liberal thing necessarily. there is this intersection where we're kind of the carceral build up happens for these different reasons, but nevertheless, important reasons write us empires realm in which this is also true in lesser kind of looks at a lot of a lot of other spheres in this is also true and so i think some historians began to really embrace this right and so they started to say okay we should jettison this sort of red

blue divide and try not to understand in those terms necessarily. and pay greater attention to neoliberalism. but i think oftentimes accounts have kind of overstated the differences between the new deal order, the so-called deal order and the so-called order and. i think we've all sort of been gesturing that right. so and i think a lot of this comes from maybe a misunderstanding of of the new deal and kind of a failure, kind of recognize the ways in which this a kind of public private thing in many respects. right. and and there are other sort of realms in which this is clearly what we imagine to be. i mean, might i always try to tell my students, you know, this is not this is not right. but my students really struggle with that, they say, no, it has to be it's socialism, the government doing stuff and that's not that's not what it is. right. this is market conforming, right? this is completely market conforming. even the welfare state is

totally up after the market. right. injecting certain people into the market, taking some other people out of the market. it is it is sort of shore of capitalism. and and so i think there's this idealization, the new deal order that that kind of enables this theory zation of neoliberalism as a narrative of decline. right. and i think that is something that historians like brant, siebel and others are really productively sort of demonstrating is true. right. are kind of undermining. so, yeah, i mean, to to julie's point, i mean, neoliberal, i think it just doesn't do it for me necessarily. but oftentimes it's it as a shorthand. it's it's needed, right. as this sort of frame. right. it's almost necessary right. to kind of use as a shorthand to refer to certain developments or maybe an intensification of processes and principles that are already but are not new.

you know. so the neo is not really doing the neo work that it that it should be doing right or it wants be doing. and i often back to this dissent forum in dissent magazine about kind of the uses and abuses of term is the name of the forum and rogers kicked it off and he called neoliberalism a linguistic omnivore. you know, it gobbles everything up, right? it can be everything. it can be nothing. and the that i really returned to you again and again is connolly's piece in that, because, you know, i'm kind of drawing on some of the old discussion about race, right, and its role here. and i'll i'll just read a little and maybe elaborate, hopefully a little bit on on what connelly saying. he writes that neoliberalism boasts a faux precision an almost tax on taxonomic authority in a supposedly clean chronology moving from laissez faire capitalism to new to

keynesian liberalism, we use to close out capitalism's biography. so not unlike the ways which historians use the rise of the right to explain kind of where we are we're here right and we're living in a you know, the the kind of reagan revolution. right. he writes it's a it's a good story. right. this is a good narrative. right. one that dana rogers does well to outline. it is indeed in the classical sense of a story we tell ourselves about. it's also at least half wrong. more specifically, it's a white story structurally right. so in his view, you know, the the kind of the social contract gets cast as universal a kind of obscures the ways in which other folks people of color primarily lived and queer folks right margot canaday is in the room i think lived in a certain kind of precarity right before the rise of neoliberalism, which this kind of precarity is supposedly universalized. so i'll leave you with that.

you know, not not satisfying in any way. i don't think. but hopefully that can maybe spur some sort of conversation. and again, it's it's great to be in such esteemed company. i don't know if anyone want to elaborate on that or on anything. or we could turn it over to the audience. it's up to you all. yeah. i mean, i think just quickly like i, i think connolly has said it best. i just, you know, on c-span record. well, i but but my were there. no, i mean, just to two things. one is i think i very much consider myself an urban historian and i think and sort of hear like resonances with other folks up here what they're sharing. you know, when when you think one of the ways in which i think neoliberalism is sort of invoked sometimes is as an and i think what i in baltimore and it sounds like we all see in chicago and other is people are not always acting according to ideology. you know, a lot of folks that are organizing in their community or are trying to, you know, make make the economy more

inclusive or make schools more whatever is right. there's sort of a material aspect. there's a practical aspect. there's sort of doing the best with what they have and it doesn't always adhere to the sort of ideological component. and then i think the other piece of it is and i, you know, i see this prefaced with a lot of commentary neoliberalism that it is usually a top down story. i think that's really important to pay attention to. right. and like think the role to the extent that what we're interested in talking about here is the intersection, race, class and the economy. you know, we need to think about the way cities are sort of depicted in this top down story conventionally. you know, it's cities are sort of rendered powerless. that's that sort of decline narrative by these big and super bowl like market forces. and i don't that necessarily in my work. others don't either know. and so i think those are just some like important contradictions that to keep in

mind. like we're doing or should be turning over to the audience and let's do that and i will serve as the microphone. yeah, yeah, yeah. okay. no, no, i'm happy to do it. but yeah. okay, i will walk over there. okay. all right. i would like for us to define what you mean by neoliberalism. i can smell that. who wants to take. i can, you know. yeah. so i think been trying to do this right. i mean so there are some of these different that i've kind of that use and you know maybe maybe not all people use but there's this idea idea that it's welfare retrenchment kind of a

retreat the states i not saying that. that's correct it's just how people this term right devalue. right. so devolving responsibility not only to local agencies and entities but also to individuals and families is, i think, melinda cooper has really productively shown, you know, this is kind of building on the thatcher idea that, you know, in a society there is no society, right? it's just individuals and families. so a lot of risk is is devolved to to the family and thus you see kind of the rise of personal as that's the revival of this poor law tradition is what she's talking about that for her is really characterized of neoliberalism, deregulation. right. privatization and financialization. this more kind of this top down of thing. right. as serena was was discussing and. also, y'all talked a bit about progressive neoliberalism. and nancy formulation and right

there's this you see this in the gay rights movement, for instance, or within gay liberation this idea that, you know, basically liberation can be achieved through the market and through kind of a fulfillment, one's own personal identity. and that, you know, for and others is kind of obscures, you know, other kind of structural concerns. and that is typical of neo liberalism. but is yeah deeply problematic. right. and you see this kind of, i think, the ultimate example example of this is the push marriage equality, right? this this kind of fulfillment of a kind of -- normative to use that sort of, you know, language that queer theorists of have used -- normative ideal, essentially just kind of inserting queer people, gay people into, what already exists. right. and not kind of seeking sort of broader structural change. i think also the sort of rightward shift idea is, is key here where liberals, it is

assumed to have adopted, you know, right wing positions or increasingly moved to the right of this consolidation of an order that is antithetical to what came before presumably the new deal order. anything i would like to add to that that was amazing. yeah, it's beautiful. i think of the issues is that it's often people are i mean i think those that cluster of things is usually there is i mean i always i find for instance emphasis on financialization. i was really convincing because that's something i feel like definitely happened. it was very profound. very profound. you can really see, really profound change in the economy. the percentage, the economy, there's things like that. but then there's other people who use neoliberalism to talk about political rationale already, which is again which is about sort of a political subject, you know, a sort of distinct political subjectivity where, you know, the rise -- economicus. and we were every you're you're

the economist. yeah. you're customization of it. so you're it sort of constantly maximizing your human capacity as opposed to being like, i guess what we were before, which was like true humans, not necessarily like in society or able to be true political beings. i this is where i mess it up. but there's but but so so there's so some people are that's where you know, sometimes it can cause because you know you teach you're talking to some people and they're talking about like very particular political economic transformation that happening like who's running schools you know, like under what's there and you know, often referring to very concrete like economic structural shifts. and then other times it's sort of whether our see themselves commodities on the you know in the dating and not like human beings and family you know i think sometimes it slides between those two things and obviously those that's important to think of those things together. i'm not trying to be glib, but you know, because i think the argument is those things are mutually constitutive, you know,

and are producing each other in our. so that's where you know you can see why people would theorize these together but you can also see where we start, you know, getting questions like what is it? what is the thing that we're talking about, you know, yeah, yeah. do you do you know now is it all very clear? i like to know that the affordable care act and neoliberal act. absolutely. i mean, i. i think that would be the classic. that would be the classic because it embrace it because it's not like a national health care. it's, you know. it's up to insurers. yes. it's sort of. it's it's because it's the market as you know, the state steps in. yeah. i mean, what i do a precursor, i sort of think i have nothing to say about neoliberalism, but evidently i have a lot to say about sarah of the where it's helpful is there's a tendency with the sort of rise of the right literature to be like oh, the rise of the right was a sort of anti status project, which is so crazy to say in the face of mass incarceration and in the

face of the largest default defense books, just like the history of the world, you know, so, so where i think there is of neoliberalism is helpful, is it's basically saying, no, the state has active role, but it is to facilitate the market and to facilitate these market logics through things. what you started with. with. yeah, i would just want to point out if we want to think about specific pieces of legislation what has been really important. my work is thinking about the blighted areas and redevelopment and relocation act of 1947 where the. city marshall field's and the chicago real estate board and arnold hersh talks about this and, you know his seminal book, making the second ghetto, where he's working the mayor of chicago at the time, martin connelly, and the governor of illinois's otto, i believe it is. and they they're basically saying form your own group and write this. we will help you get it passed.

and they do they go form their own sort of what's to be best, most profitable? how do we basically kickstart urban renewal in, these blighted areas in the city of chicago when they're coming off of a massive housing shortage and just like very violent housing, sort of housing transition because. the racial dynamics of, the different neighborhoods are changing. we're going to see the end of like racial covenants being enforced by the courts just one year later with a kerner kramer decision. and so they constructed this piece of for a housing kickstart, urban in the city. and basically the industry is writing the housing for the city of chicago. and that basically becomes model that different administrations at to do housing policy throughout united states. hirsch talks about how the university of illinois basically asked for power of eminent

domain to decide who will be within its neighborhood close to its university borders. so just breaking that line where the states because i think the role of the state here is crucial in the actions of private industry always needs to be taken into account in definition of neoliberalism. but that was 46. again, we're playing a parlor game, you know. okay, so that early, you know. yeah. is that the training? is it like training wheels for neoliberalism like. yeah, but that's not the point. i yeah. i sorry, go ahead. ask a question so i will wait a that. okay. all right. okay. well, thank you all for this one. i feel so on the spot here. thank you all for this really wonderful panel and being so open about your discomfort with the term or the ambiguities of the term. i really appreciate that. i think to make a really crude, generalized about the history biography of late 20th century politics lately, i feel like there's two tendencies.

there's either a narrative of the rise of the right led to the collapse, the new deal, or the collapse of the new deal led to the rise of the right. right. which to say an ideological argument or a structural argument, but about what could probably be called the same transition. right. not everyone uses the word neoliberalism on either side. i think there's a lot of ambiguity. so i think matt lester, who you invoked earlier, is like a, you know, perfect example of the second narrative. he hates the word neoliberalism and refuses use it despite the fact that many people on that side would say you know yeah not living in this time of political polarization we're not living in this time of ideological shift. we're living in a time of, you know, unipolar or political things, which could be called neoliberalism or whatever. that's an ideological explanation. and he rejects it. and he's my advisor and. you should see the red ink that comes out if use the word near neoliberal. but okay. so i'm wondering about how you all feel about that shift,

right? if you agree on this polarity, how you how you fit into it. i feel like there is. you know, on on this spread we see sides of that and some people of trying to thread the needle between it. maybe between this ideological argument and a structural and the part of that question. so so that's a about causality, right? what's the cause of this shift that we're looking at the? second question, which is maybe informs first question is, is this an american or is it a global story? right. so i think there's an increasing i mean, obviously, we can you live in britain it happened in many countries. it's an explicit ideological movement. okay. they're certainly part of a global story. but is this shift fundamentally rooted in american economic, political, cultural order, whatever that affected a global shift? or is it a global shift that affected a in the us? right. so to give you an example. i also work i work on american history and soviet history, a really big, really interesting shift now and in the history of

the socialist imposed socialist world is seeing the stagnation of socialism late socialism, market socialism, all these different movements as neoliberalism, despite the fact that none of those people would identified as neoliberalism or liberals or anything like it, but, you know, in the late brezhnev era, soviet getting really interested in the idea, letting the market decide, you know a fundamental political decision despite the fact they didn't have a market like in the way that we would imagine it. right. but they understood those things as rooted in an, you know, an economic order in which the us supreme and whatever changes happened to domestic politics in the us affected the world right. and so it's that hard to fit it into a single story about one global shift. in a transition. so anyways, if you're all willing to take that on, but what's global story can? you restate the first part about what you saw as the ideological versus. yes, let's surveys that. i hadn't heard about it that way. okay. so if this is if there is a shift, political shift, is it a

fundamentally ideological shift leads to a structural shift or is it a structural shift that leads to an ideological shift? right. which is more important ideology or structure from what to what, though you would mentioned from what to what the of the right? yeah, that's what i was like. that's that's the hard to do. the neoliberal the rise of the right the collapse the new deal. some people would say there is no shift. so i don't want to force that into your hands. but to say that the shift that we commonly call the rise neoliberalism, i would say there's no shift. right. or he would say there's no. yeah, there's no it's not a stark would say we're living in the late contradictions of capitalism. yeah. yeah. i just want to be like, all right, what. oh, no, no, no. it's not you. i don't know how i ended up on this panel, but i like i do. someone asked me and i was like sure i means the word before and i've written about it, but like, i'm not strongly wedded to it, i guess is what i would say. and i feel some ambivalence across the board. but i think part of it for me is

these are not actually the central questions of my work. and i think in fact, what brought me to the that i do is that in the story of when i was writing the the rise of the right or the collapse of the new, which premise that it worked for everyone, all the people that i care about were absent in the term of the rise to the right after. white people left cities. no one else there mattered anymore politically or otherwise. and that was something i was not willing cede. and so that is where my side of research and questions were. what what what would the black thinking and doing? who did not fully. and then i think some which i think is actually part of what like the three of us are. but i'm interested and i think it's partially and you can tell me what you think part of why whether it's the rise of the right neoliberalism as a way to discuss this period we act black people are actors things are done to and all these stories and that's not how black people live their lives now things are

done to us be clear but like the fact that there's consideration of what those other stories may be, what the other perspectives of those things may be is. in fact, i think what brought me to work. so there are people who who i think will be far more equipped actually speak to the construct part this. but i think part of the tension i'm in the conversation is that i think the questions being asked are just not the central questions of my own work or brings me to the work. one thing i kind of want to go back to around and again in the education, what i will say is the place where neoliberalism feels most important that i have a stronger sense of at least how other people speaking about education are thinking about it is in thinking about the privatization of public goods and the public sphere are but public goods and market based logics applied to things that are supposed be universally guaranteed public goods. and so that still does resonate for me as a way to make sense, in fact, of the demands being made by people all across the board and ideologies and

structure of education that feels important. this is sort of going backwards, but relate, we were talking there was something you said, lili, that made me think of this idea about investment and what's being privatized and, what's not. and it made me think very much about aversion have to when people talk about in a contemporary sense but also in other disinvested communities which again would be many of cities that people left, well, they've been disinvest to these are dissimilar investments have been made it's just not in the things that people so there's been massive investments in the rise of the carceral state public investment in the rise of the castle say massive public in policing massive public investment in surveillance, just not public investment in housing, a public good in, you know, education, a public good in these other that are part of the public sphere. so it doesn't answer your question. i just want to be clear. i think i can like it's not my it's not my my ministry for an

ideological take on someone instead of just the you know, i just i agree think that's the i also don't. yeah, well i think that's what's to about why understanding of your project is that you i shouldn't tell you what your friend is going to do. so i just i just feel like it's sort of threading some of the things that you're talking about. it's like, how are you how are these? these like black political actors navigating some of these changes and making, you know, like not being done to but being part of these. i think if you are thinking of these political transformations and being part of it and yet operating within this caste, this, these, these structural right, that's i guess that's what i imagine you are. you don't have a say, right? i that's the way i that's what i find exciting. what you were saying. i want to agree with dr. freeland and with you as and i think in terms of the question i

would say a number of historians would argue that is more of a global phenomenon in that we are seeing it in various nations besides, the united states. but for me, like coming back to the points of my colleagues of the privatization question interests the most. and i'm sort of what draws me to the work is a lot of the historiography that i read about neoliberal typically leaves out these perspectives, especially about african-americans working class black people and what they were doing in these cities. and even when they're included, it's really not focused on their choices that they're meeting, but like the things that are being done to them instead. and i want to see how the state is an active role and how black participants, especially are just like responding when say like have a actor take over a public space like privately owned public spaces or when a new special service area comes in and just like we like conditions in neighborhood

beautifies by a private corporation. suddenly the black folks that were in that space can no longer afford to live there. and so understanding those questions have been like really driving me in terms of understanding the ideological versus the structural kinds changes that we encounter. your question. yeah so i wanted to ask a question about schmoke era in particular that you look at and i'm sure, kurt, let also full disclosure. i'm from maryland and i have like family friends who were part of the schmoke administration. and i'm curious though like, you know, he wouldn't have used the term neo liberal, but i think he would have called himself a liberal. right. and so what i'm curious about like what liberalism meant during the schmoke era, but also to your questions about like financialization, how make sense of, you know, these sort of like pro-growth democrats that also because of who their constituency are have to speak to, you know, sort of a broader a broader demand for public goods and public services. mm hmm. yeah i mean, it's a it's a

really interesting question. i think one of the one of the big things that sort of characterizes this period in baltimore is and maybe across other as well is like in the sort of period of economic austerity. i mean, the federal funding to baltimore is cut by something mean 70% or so. i couldn't find the exact statistic but it is just in insane depletion of resources for the city and so in this kind of period of fiscal austerity. i mean the schmoke doesn't have, you know, economic growth to legitimize or to bring credibility to his administration. right. and so he turns to in some ways to community participation to sort of legitimize his authority. and i think that's something that we see in other cities as well. and it's sort of an interesting it's an, you know, haven't quite threaded yet because.

i actually think that it's that particular conflict of like what does it mean to sort of grow but also like grow inclusive is maybe like the central question of the schmoke administration and is also true for on all across all the different critical goods. i look at i look at housing, education, jobs and the needle exchange program that started and then auto insurance and. it's the same thing all the different community activists that are involved know they need more money. they know that means making some sort of deal. they're okay aligning. i mean, schmoke, baltimore is one of the six cities in the us that gets in $100 million empowerment zone grant schmoke is a really early supporter of clinton. when i interviewed he told me he was so much better than what we had before, you know, so so how do you actually make sense and and square this yeah you know i don't know. right and i also sort think i mean, the the direction i was

sort of thinking when i was hearing is this structural or ideological, i sort of started thinking about i do by the sort of connerly narrative that this is like a white story. it hasn't just been him. obviously, that's that's commented on this. but i think he has done it, you know, in a very sort of a precise way. but yeah, i do think like we have the first just sort of speaking about black mayors. we have the first two black mayors that are elected in 1968. by 1993, you know, 70 of the largest cities the us have black mayors. if this is a white story of sort of state mediated extraction of communities, what happens the state apparatus like is it surprise to us that we see an increase in privatization of these important goods for people's lives like, is that is that surprising? i don't know. not to me. right based on sort of what i'm seeing. and so i think that's kind of,

you know, when we're trying to sort of thread these these ideological on these structural like this needle, and that's what's really hard to do. i so very much this been very helpful to me. i am a doctoral student and my goal is my first year. i'm going to study late 20th century urban history schools, neoliberalism. now i'm like a oh. so there might not be an answer to this question, but are there other like purist -- or characterizations of this kind of period that you think approximate many of the aspects of neo liberalism? are there like things that are eclipsing neo or or is that yet to be determined? because you mentioned your advisor says something else that i also was noting. yeah, so that's my question. well i mean, in education, you know, i one, i do think it still resonates right and it still is

a very important and i do think there's a value to being in conversation with people using the same language. they're using that that something that's called legibility, right. like let me let me speak to you in a way you understand the way that people are making sense of it. and i, i do want to say this isn't just top down, right? i mentioned briefly, but i would argue that chicago led by both community based organizations, the chicago teachers union was one of the most robust and at least in a short term, successful pushes back against many of the education policies that were prevalent in the early to the from the nineties into the early 2000s and then have been retracted upon in some cases since 2012. right. and certainly the last more shorter term, a move away from that as the common sense. and they studied neoliberalism they had reading groups, they got together and named the problem. and sometimes it was called neo liberalism and sometimes it was the characteristics of what people were actually that to be

in their day to day lives that was useful to organize a system that was not serving the majority of young people chicago public schools and the majority of communities in the city of chicago. so i do like i don't want to say i think there's use right i don't know i think for myself i feel like sometimes just in like having conversations, just talking about like a corporate logic education makes more such a logic. and i say that particularly in the context of having conversations about both the longer history and problems with school choice as. a model is that you what i find it for example having conversations with people and saying like talking about the longer history of the development of school relative to both people like milton friedman and also segregationist that were created at the time of so that white children did not have to go to school with black children and could take their voucher. not called that at the time vouchers to pay for that right so to tell that longer history i think is important but i think

the other way that that is useful now in terms of like saying you know we have in many cities and particularly in cities not for others places but in cities with large low income and of color populations, school choice, elaborate school choice systems. and that that's built off an idea market based competition. it's been embraced every level of government across democratic and republican. and i mean presidents and downstream since at least the clinton era, if not earlier and that that if you're governing schools public as a public good with a market based, then, you know, like the logics of capitalism say that there are winners and losers. some firms rise and some firms falls and which kids do you want to fall right. so i do think that like there is a currency to talking about in particularly education space whether you're calling it neoliberalism, the privatization of a public good. also make the defense for the importance public education as a public good that there still is utility, whether you're calling

it neoliberalism, describing it as corporate education reform, describing it as market based education, whatever you want, school choice, however. right. but to talk about what that looks like, i think, is still really important, important for the future of education and honestly for all public goods right. to and in defense of public goods, the public good, you know, it's when you were talking what i was what i heard you saying or what came to my mind is just think maybe it's interesting to think about like, are you are we studying? are you using neoliberalism to study something, you know, like you could see a project where you're studying the idea of neoliberal, the fact that people are getting together and having like reading groups, the fact there's like a panel of i mean, you can think about the idea of neoliberalism as a sort of to think about that could be, you know but then you can also use the kind of heuristic of neoliberalism to help you make sense of, these very real world, you know, i mean, like the context in which other things are. yeah. and then it becomes almost like a short like, like a sort of a shorthand, something to grab some together and leave, ideally

leave some stuff behind, you know, so, so anyway, that was what i was thinking. like you can, you know, i think it's worth all of us thinking like are you use if you're going to use it, are you using it to study something? are you studying it because it is. like i said, there is no thing like it is. it's a heuristic know so if there's some other have and you want to come right here, it's up to him like oh sorry he has the power. yeah. go for it. i a question based upon the charter that you mentioned, i'm a high school teacher and i've worked in charter schools two different times in my career is one so much of predominantly african-american inner city school, one a predominately latino latino next school, an urban setting, and in both cases, i was wondering in terms of your comments, you know, do you see charter schools as a manifestation of of neo liberal policies breaking away from neo liberal policies in an attempt to try something new and as a public good, do you see them as

successful in their new in their reinterpretation, what education can be or you know, or i'm just trying to kind of feel like where your conclusions are on this. why charter schools and answer or are they a warning. yeah so i'll one thing just to say something about the history of charter schools really quickly. so charter schools in the early were actually put forward as a recommendation from teachers unions and very early on. right. and unions said we need spaces and we're collaborating with others who say we need spaces where we can innovate, where we can try new things, where we don't have all of the we have a different set of sort of collective bargaining pieces here than in regular schools to try new things and share best practices. and that's it initially started, but very quickly, i think something different, which is a mechanism of this broader school choice landscape where rather than fully fund and resource students, i would say based on equity. so what students need, not just what equal would look like that

charter schools were put forward increasingly as a space that could do this better, cheaper than regular public schools. and with that expansion and again a bipartisan push for their i do think that like individually people, young people in their have benefited from charter schools like it's not i worked at a charter school myself as well i don't think that teachers in charter schools don't care about kids or something like that. right. which i think is how it ends up being framed. but i think if we look structurally at what bringing charter schools into the larger public school system did, first of all, in many public systems that were already experiencing some form of declining enrollment, they both created this competitive marketplace right. schools are competing against each other. but in an environment with less and less kids as so at some point, like schools are going have to close. right. but we didn't talk about that part. it it was just that we're going to compete and best ones will win out because that's how the market works and that's what's good for kids in schools. so structurally it prevent

underfunded and defunded neighborhood and you know, often particularly in black communities are where black parents vote with their feet like they voted with their feet very. rational choice. if you've been like not well served by the existing system, why would you not try something else? same thing with, you know, other communities who had not who not attended, fully funded, equitable public schools. so think our charter schools, like charter schools, have helped some kids. but i find structurally the privatized version of public education of which they're a part to have overall undermined education and people like well, they have better results. the data is actually very mixed like research is very mixed. on the education side, what they have been very good at is rates of expulsion, higher rates of exclusion. and i would say not just charter schools. but the other forms of choice we have in the system have also created a space where, you know, we're testing four year olds to see where they go to school. and everyone knows that that's not educationally sound, but we do it right. so i think structurally i would

say create using market based competition for public education as a public good has been a net bad idea and charter schools are part of that but not the only part of it. and i just want to read you something, because i think it's actually instructive. i it's a quote. do i my password. i do and this is from a school operator who was one of the operators of one of these sort of more community based schools that entered the charter space. they were african school. they wanted to become they were if everyone else is getting this tax stop, this money, like in particularly if white corporate charter operators going to get this tax money, why shouldn't independent schools who have been doing this work on a shoestring for years also take advantage of this new opportunity? and i asked him, i said this from haki madhubuti, who was one of the founders of the institute of positive education, became the betty shabazz charter schools. this was in 2010, and he acknowledged that. and this is a quote, quote, the schools or the private schools or the contract schools, that's not the answer this is a charter operator who says this that an

answer. but that is not the answer and we want three charter schools. so telling you it's not the answer the answer is we've got to deal with the public schools issue. you don't have serious people who understand education and we're not serious about. so i'm saying that you need billions and billions of dollars. at the end of the day, the thing we have never tried for public education, particularly for those who are furthest from opportunity, are poor young people. our young people of color is providing with a robust, fully funded, excellent public education. and so we can continue to tinker and, toy and wait for superman. but in the meantime, like i still like believe that's answer to what would actually serve young people best. you know. here we have time for one more question. we're going to be right to comment on the collapse of public housing, public was a major thing in the 1940s.

it had the support of mr. republican senator and it seems me that there were some attempts were bad failures in the sixties and like that but basically gone i mean it's almost totally gone. i mean, they're ripping down some of the thirties projects in buffalo now, etc. so how does that fit into this overall picture? you. well, i think just speak of oh very briefly on the chicago bastion of uh and this would date back to a lot of the fights over open housing that were happening in the 1960s. but as other historic ins have fabulously. hersh again laid out that when urban renewal kicks in the city of chicago, there are just a massive campaign for any alderman that votes for public housing outside of the black in the black belts traditionally

defined on the south side, in the west side of chicago, where african-americans had been segregated for generations, that any public housing tried to build any to build public housing outside of those will be met with fierce resistance. and the alderman that votes for it losing their seat. so by the 1960s when the open housing marches happened in 66 and they're trying to push for more sort of incremental change. and just like letting african-americans decide live where they want to live, there's just like no real movement. and daley is just playing a kind of coy game of, well, we would like to help, but there's not really much that we can do to clear the slums. people live in the slums because they want to live in the slums and so that public housing question becomes more politically toxic and we see these other sorts kind of innovations for how african-americans are trying to get around affordable housing in the city because again, the

blighted areas and redevelopment and relocation act these real estate firms the forties laid a stipulation in that legislation of saying you must provide like relocation for people that are booted out because of urban renewal. you have to do something for these people. and the city of chicago basically says, yes, of course we will. but as goes on, they never lay out any concrete plan. and so those people are displaced, they are locked out of the system. and so it just becomes another way for. the kind of lost city of, chicago, and these private real estates speculators to just completely like charge these poor communities with exorbitant prices will not ever really doing anything about the question of public housing. i think you see the blueprint for disaster is an excellent on that and hersh of course so i think just really quickly on that i think you know back to the sort of historiography free question of the new deal and such right i think far more than something like education where there's this much tradition of

education being an honored public good understood as public good, enshrined as a public good. now, who and at what quality as well? people will see at different periods in time. but housing is not like that, right? there was a very short window where housing understood to be something that may be a public good or that at least part of should be a public good. and so i think part of what seeing you now and certainly in the period since the increase in demolition of public housing is just reaffirming, housing is one, not a human right. certainly in the broad sense, people don't imagine such and not necessarily something that we broadly is under the logic is not that it should be a good although that you know there are certainly people pushing for that everywhere and and also globally like very different perspectives on this on this question in places outside of the states think we're out of time thank you all so much.