New Books in Education Marshall Poe

What do universal rights to public goods like education mean when codified as individual, private choices? Is the “problem” of school choice actually not about better choices for all but, rather, about the competition and exclusion that choice engenders—guaranteeing a system of winners and losers? Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education (U Minnesota Press, 2024) addresses such questions through a compelling ethnography that illuminates how one path of neoliberal restructuring in the United States emerged in tandem with, and in response to, the Civil Rights movement. 
Drawing on ethnographic research in one New York City school district, Unsettling Choice traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007–2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Ujju Aggarwal argues that this strategy, positioned as “saving public schools,” mobilized mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side, thereby solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private—where contingency was anticipated and rights for some were marked by intensified precarity for poor and working-class Black and Latinx families. As Unsettling Choice shows, these struggles over public schools—one of the last remaining universal public goods in the United States—were entrapped within neoliberal regimes that exceeded privatization and ensured exclusion even as they were couched in language of equity, diversity, care, and rights. And yet this richly detailed and engaging book also tracks an architecture of expansive rights, care, and belonging built among poor and working-class parents at a Head Start center, whose critique of choice helps us understand how we might struggle for—and reimagine—justice, and a public that remains to be won.
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Pete Imperial has been principal of St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Berkeley, California, a Lasallian Catholic School of 160 years and going strong. Yet only 45% of the students are Catholics (though a similar number are Protestant Christians) and some of the kids have had no religious experience at all. How does a good Catholic school infuse the souls of its charges and the secular society at large with the Gospel and the teachings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church?
Dr. Imperial has a BA from the University of California in Berkeley, an MA in history from San Francisco State University, and an EdD in Educational Administration from the University of San Francisco. In addition to running the school, he also teaches Islamic Studies, Economics, and East Asian History.
This episode is indebted to Ryan Anderson, the listener and a friend of the podcast who suggested this episode and introduced me to Peter.

St. Mary’s College High School website and Pete’s faculty webpage.


About Lasallian education.

Other Almost Good Catholics episodes on the subject of Catholic Education:

Joseph Nagel and Heather Skinner on Almost Good Catholics, episode 8: It's Elementary! Catholic Education in the 21st Century.

Rich Meyer on Almost Good Catholics, episode 45: Education in the World not of the World: A School Director and Father Talks about Forming the Whole Child.

Here is the pilgrimage with Monique and Joseph González this coming September with Inside the Vatican, and the related episodes from Almost Good Catholics:


Pilgrimage to Mexico: Our Lady of Guadalupe & the Flower World Prophecy 2024

Colleen Dulle on Almost Good Catholics, episode 16: Marxists and Mystics: A Vatican Journalist discusses her Biography of Madeleine Delbrêl and the New Papal Constitution


Father James Martin, SJ, on Almost Good Catholics, episode 30: What if You’re Gay? Starting Conversations with and about LGBT Catholics.

Joseph and Monique González on Almost Good Catholics, episode 74: Our Lady of Guadalupe and Aztec True Myth: How the Flower World Bloomed into History in 1531.

Here is my first discussion with Pastor Brian Zahnd and the film A Hidden Life which we will be talking about in August:


A Hidden Life (2019) trailer, IMBD, and on Amazon Prime.

Brian Zahnd on Almost Good Catholics, episode 82: The Wood between the Worlds: Why Death on the Cross?



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This interview with Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz about Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Identity and Libraries and Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Archives and Practice (available in 2024 from the Litwin Books Series on Gender and Sexuality in Library and Information Studies) explores how queerness is centered within library and archival theory and practice. Smith-Cruz and co-editor Sara A. Howard invited library and archives workers to share conversations which became the chapters for these two volumes. These conversations explore a huge range of topics: identity, community practice and outreach, visibility and coming out or being outed in the library, as well as the archive as a site for reclamation, narrative storytelling, ancestral recalling, and historical revisioning within LGBTQ+ communities. Contributions to these volumes integrate interpersonal experiences of professionalism for queer folks in the field, dive into their relationships and points of connection with each other and the communities they serve, and engage with the implications of race and sexuality in archival practice. Readers are invited to listen in and join these conversations that consider the fluidity of our bodies as queer bodies, and our lives as queer lives inside of the library and the archive.
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz is a volunteer archivist at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and an Assistant Curator, and Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning, and Engagement at New York University Division of Libraries.
Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.
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Israeli universities have long enjoyed a reputation as liberal bastions of freedom and democracy. Drawing on extensive research and making Hebrew sources accessible to the international community, Maya Wind shatters this myth by documenting how Israeli universities are directly complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights. 
In Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (Verso, 2024) shows, Wind argues that Israeli universities serve as pillars of Israel's system of oppression against Palestinians. Academic disciplines, degree programs, campus infrastructure, and research laboratories all service Israeli occupation and apartheid, while universities violate the rights of Palestinians to education, stifle critical scholarship, and violently repress student dissent. Towers of Ivory and Steel is a powerful exposé of Israeli academia’s ongoing and active complicity in Israel’s settler-colonial project.
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A primary question for many librarians, directors, and board members is how to evaluate diversity in a collection on an ongoing basis. Curating Community Collections: A Holistic Approach to Diverse Collection Development (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Mary Schreiber and Wendy Bartlett provides librarians with the tools they need to understand the results of diversity audits and to formulate a reasonable, achievable plan for increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion not only in the collection itself, but also in library collection policies and practices. Information on ways to make diversity, equity, and inclusion part of a library's everyday workflow will help ensure the sustainability of these principles. Schreiber and Bartlett teach readers how to increase the number of diverse materials in their collections and make them more discoverable to library patrons through the implementation of a community collections program. Stories from librarians around the United States and Canada who are auditing and improving the diversity of their collections add broad, scalable perspectives for libraries of any size, budget, and mission. Action steps provided at the end of each section offer a practical road map for all types of libraries to curate a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community collection.
Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited are offering listeners of the New Books Network 20% off this title at Bloomsbury.com using the code NBN20.
Mary Schreiber received her M.L.I.S. degree from Kent State University’s School of Information. She has worked in children’s services, collection development, and is currently a branch manager for Cuyahoga County Public Library. She authored Partnering with Parents: Boosting Literacy for All Ages, which was released in 2019.
Wendy Bartlett is the Collection Development and Acquisitions Manager at Cuyahoga County Public Library. Wendy has also served as a branch manager for CCPL. Previously, Wendy was the Assistant Director at the Kent Free Library in Kent, Ohio, and before that Wendy was the Regional Manager for the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Borders Books and Music stores. Wendy's first book, Floating Collections: A Collection Development Model for Long-Term Success, was published by Libraries Unlimited.
Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.
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Building on the success and impact of Library 2020: Today’s Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library by Joseph Janes, Library 2035: Imagining the Next Generation of Libraries (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) edited by Sandra Hirshupdates, expands upon, and broadens the discussions on the future of libraries and the ways in which they transform information services to best serve their communities. Library 2035 explores the lessons learned over the past decade and forecasts the opportunities, strengths, and challenges for libraries in the future. Contributors including R. David Lankes, Kelvin Watson, Annie Norman, Miguel Figueroa, and Nicole Cooke, along with 25 other library leaders, were asked to describe the “library of 2035” in whatever way they wanted. Their responses to this question will inspire, provoke, challenge, and expand our thinking about the role and importance of libraries in the future. Library leaders, LIS students and faculty will find this book particularly meaningful and useful as we grapple with what the future of libraries and the profession will be.
Dr. Sandra Hirsh hosts the Library 2035: Imagining the Next Generation of Libraries Webcast with contributors to this work
Dr. Sandra Hirsh is the Associate Dean for Academics in the College of Professional and Global Education at San José State University (SJSU). She previously served as professor and director of the SJSU School of Information and worked at HP Labs, Microsoft, and LinkedIn. She is past president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) and the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T).
Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.
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