Dr. Henry A. Giroux

Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, end torture, close Guantanamo, restore the constitution, heal our wounds, wash our feet. None of these things has come to pass. As president, with few exceptions, Obama either has embraced the unconstitutional war powers claimed by his predecessor or has left the door open for their quiet…

This commentary originally appeared in truthout. In 1977 I took my first job in higher education at Boston University. One reason I went there was because Howard Zinn was teaching there at the time. As a high school teacher, Howard’s book, “Vietnam: the Logic of Withdrawal,” published in 1968, had a profound effect on me.…

On the surface, the Tiger Woods media saga appears to be about the loss of a pristine public image that accompanied the public notoriety and disbelief over the sexual improprieties revealed about one of the globe’s most famous athletes. These revelations suggest not only an individual moral failing but also a public betrayal, since Woods…

Introduction by Tolu Olorunda: Last week, video surfaced of a 15-year-old Black boy, Marshawn Pitts, recounting an experience that left him scars, bruises, fractures, and a broken nose. Pitts, a special needs student, was walking to his locker when a police officer began verbally abusing him, then flung him across the hall, smashed his face…

Before the thick fog of government censorship stifled electronically mediated videos and pictures of savage state violence and repression in the streets of Tehran, one image became both a rallying point and an iconic symbol of the fierce protest movement challenging the allegedly stolen election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the repressive nature of…

[We welcome Dr. Henry A. Giroux, PhD, as the newest BlackCommentator.com Columnist.] As the uprisings in Iran illustrate, the new electronic technologies and social networks they have produced have transformed both the landscape of media production and reception, and the ability of state power to define the borders and boundaries of what constitutes the very…