Spending a little bit of time with us. American history. You all for joining us. And im really excited to be here. So im paul renfro im an associate profeste university and the author of im reading my own stranger danger, family values, childhood and the carceral state. It was published by Oxford University press in 2020 and forthcoming the life and death of ryan white aids and inuality in america will be out with umc later this year and i am t 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. 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 ameri scholar earned her m. S. Is at 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 andecomic opportunity, the city of birmingham, alabama, a team laser focused on facilitating an inclusive economy in one of americas foremost postindustrial cities. A great, great city. It is caleb smit 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 postnew rough the Civil Rights Movement to the aftermath of the black movement in the 1980s. His research focuses on Chicago Black politics and neo liberalism. Froms. 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, africanAmerican History and the history of education. Her political education. Black politics. Education reform in chicago sinceiversity of North Carolina press in 2018. Appeared in the journal of africanAmerican 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 vreelands research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Academy of education and spencer foundation. Andrew mellon foundation. American council. Learned societies. Socialrd foundation and the uic institute for policy. And finally, julilly kohlerhausmann and is associate professor of history at cornell. She is the author of tough imprisonment in 1970s america again, phenomen i mention this in our morning. Princeton University Press 2017 an book is a history of u. S. Democracy since the 1965 Voting Rights act, which focuses on individuals who did join me in welcoming our panel. And sarita, wod you like to go first . Oh, no, im sorry. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Kick us off, caleb. Im sure. This. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, she mentioned it people. I guess you just did. Yeah. Yeah this is being filmed for cspan 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 and anytng. Good afternoon everyone. I suppose we showith. We initially had ans and what do we mean when we say translated between different, different science and other social science, field ical scientists mostly. There is one in particular . Lester spence, John Hopkins University work i think is very 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 r limited sort of denmark constitutional it produces the best points. All people involved. These points are nationally disputed, of course. Is a largely a thing that ween the scholar and the moment that theyre talking about. And so just like to keep mine very simple and in terms of my work, it looks lot about how political actors are looki 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 in new york. And you see different government or outside of it all of public, the privatization of schools which. Dr. Breeland, im sure well talk more about and the privatization of police forces. And so yeah, those are just some of the salients that im going to jump off with. No my name is, serena and my dissertation project is focused onbaltimore, specifically under the tenure of, its first black mayor, kurt schmoke. So what im really interested in undersg is how power works in the city. During ts time pd d looking at, you know, what similarities there are with other with other urban areas i think for like do is talk about a little biof a roadblock that ive encountered in my Research Pick which i wish list item for us to sort of theorize neo liberalic is i think we need to sort of theorize or reconceptualize sovereignty specifically. You know think about when and when 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 ill sort of talk about what this looks like in in baltbut i think conventionally were used to thinking about territorial sovereigns, right . So like im a resident of the us, maybe you can you can sort push that to a state level or an urban interested in is if we were to of collapse those political jurisdictions under whiknow 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 through the world. And then what does tell us about this kind of amalgam of actors that be governing shoulder to shoulder 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 insurapremium. Gms folks in this room will be familiar with the fact that Auto Insurance is mandated at a state level. Were paying on average about 7 of their incomemes what their suburban were paying, evenord. So we get here into sort of questions about governance of risk, what it means, and sort of who it is that governs risk inthe first place. And this is a huge issue because ifre a baltimore and you need a car to get to work and so is actually a local organization thats started its 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 prfforts. 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 su 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 federa 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 when is issuing this challenge to insu sort interacting with the mayor theyre interacting with other si re state insurance commissioner during this time actually calls a set of six hearings. The first one is held in baltimore, where he says, wegoing 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 ne needs to look like and did look like capitalism. Its been very difficulte like the power that insurers had when we think about the sort of conventional ink about sovereignty. So theyre gatekeepers to the economy, you know, and to wealth building. And they sort of rule in many ways their customers, yo know theyre the architects of risk classification. And so they ha astranglehold 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 oftention more to kind of how the actual process of amassed, instead of sort of just assuming that that is how th work and well turn it over. Sorry, i make sure im 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. , how to improve it. Okay. Hi, my name is Elizabeth GuessSay Something about my own, howv[ and, what i would say late and it didnt 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 a urban historian of black life, my, the 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, im clearly, you political economy was something important. And at the time that i was writin you everyone in the critical education studies a about more contemporary issues that my project sought work. Were talking about neoliberal education to describe the the topics that i was discussing as so i was like, weleeand figure out how to Say Something and thats 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 its a very present is concerned that ill speak to at the end i still think i have some ambivalence about whatusing the conceptual frame of what it clarifies what it may actually obscure in different that. So i would saysents 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 what does this mean for me . And so me in my own work, ive used it similar to some you were saying love the significant economic restructuring that shaped life since the 1970s. But with roots back decades earlier. And i also found myself on other people concepts that both intersect with, but also have somee different i draw naomi klein to use of the termes that characterized these shifts in the Global 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 imagineda lot pave the way for dramatic economic and social d on what klein describes as this the policy trinity elimination of the public sphere, total 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 pedagogy to justify the transfer of public entities, renewed pushes for things like vouchers, attacks on teacherunions, divestment from funding universally, accessible,igh quality Public Education, and the embrace of marketf competition. Choice by private sector actors, education reformers. So certainly i think the era of 2neoliberalism affected the context in which the actors who i am more in about lived. So i write about how black s educators, parents and students navigated challenged and also contributed the urban political and educational as it transfor liberal politics of the midtwentieth century to what we might describe as th neoliberal of the late 20th century. However, i a also needs to be understood in relation to like urbanites, varied political responsurban crisis, which again was never just a single crisis. And so for example, the struggle for schools desegregate nation was a hallmark of midtwentieth 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 and undesirable and these ideals conflicts emerged within black communities about how best to respond and black formers 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 investment. But i dont think theyre the same thing. And i do thinkhe motivations matter. The 1954 brown versus board of education certainly looms large when we talk about undersblack struggles for equity. However, the brown decision, which notably st 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 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. So i think my work, the way that a concept clarifies and obscures, if i have to think of a particular pronounced, i would say its in the sort of rise of corporate n 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 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 tion, 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 pu partnership. These Public Private partnerships became ubiquitous 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 upsetecause the university of chicago was trying do like some Research Experimentation in the adjacent community, black Community Using federal 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 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 thats Something Different than Like CommunityDevelopment Grants in the nineties or the types of Public Private partn we see develop later. But nonetheless, you see some seeds and i would say certainly from the sixties through the 20 tion 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 cproliferation 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 likeards for every school. And at the time that these these were elected 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 tighteng up. So i guess i would also though as and this is i think whats as was the case historically other shifts in policy and politicaleconomy black chicagoans didnt respond monolit 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