The brilliance of Filippakou's book not only on the unmatched critical analyses of the interplay of neoliberal austerity measures and the steady shrinkage of spheres for intellectual pursuits and critical thinking, but also her courage to dare to razor focus on the elephant in the room in higher education reforms that deform: market ideology.
By framing her analyses away from the usual euphemisms that hide ideologies that generate, shape, and maintain the ever-increasing bureaucratization of institutions of higher education through market cost analyses, Filippakou empirically demonstrates how the neoliberal ideology imposes power asymmetries, massive inequalities, and stunts democracy. This book is a clarion alert that we cannot have liberation without autonomy, democracy without education, and freedom without radical imagination.
Donaldo Macedo, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Liberal Arts and Education, University of Massachusetts Boston
Rethinking Higher Education and the Crisis of Legitimation in Europe offers not only a scorching criticism of the neoliberalization of the university and a spirited call for the overtly political, public, and democratic purposes of higher education. It also deftly illustrates the present dangers of rising fascism, cynicism, and apolitical complicity shot through higher education. Filippakou compellingly details the imperative for critical pedagogy as educational and social movement as part of a broader effort for resistance and democratic renewal. This is a book that breaks new ground in bringing the aspirations of critical pedagogy to educational policy. Though centered on the European context it is global in scope and must be read by educators, administrators, policy makers, and anyone who is willing to fight to bring us back from the precipice.
Kenneth J. Saltman, University of Illinois Chicago, author of Scripted Bodies: Corporate Power, Smart Technologies, and the Undoing of Public Education
