Notes Introduction 1. Slavoj Zizek, Violence New York: Picador 2008, pp. 20–22. 2. See Robert Arnove, Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism and William Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education. 3. Neoliberalism involves redistributing public goods to private controls while espousing market triumphalism. As David Harvey explains it is a project of class warfare. Chapter 1 goes into greater depth about both neoliberalism and neoliberal education reforms as expressed through VP. 4. Notable early exceptions to this include Frederick Hess’ edited collection With the Best of Intentions from a neoliberal perspective and the liberal work of Janelle Scott such as “The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy” Educational Policy 23(1), 106–136 and the work of Rick Cohen of the Center for Responsive Philanthropy discussed in Chapter 1. Mike and Susan Klonsky’s book Small Schools. New York: Routledge (2008) and Philip Kovacs’s scholarship on Gates stand out as some of the rare critical work on VP. See for example, Philip Kovacs and H.K. Christie “The Gates Foundation and the Future of U.S. Public Education: A Call for Scholars to Counter Misinformation Campaigns” The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 6(2), December 2008. 5. See Henry Giroux’s chapter in Disturbing Pleasures New York: Routledge 1992 for a brilliant criticism of the way Benetton conflated political agency with consumerism. Chapter 1 1. I refer to the traditions of critical pedagogy and critical theory as well as to the varieties of thought characterized by radical democracy with its focus on the expansion of egalitarian social relations and its emphasis on the priority of cul- ture as well as the redistributive economic theories of the socialist tradition. 2. In this chapter, I will look broadly at the varieties of right-wing approaches to corporatization making a division between fiscal and cultural conservatives. For a more elaborate discussion of the varieties of rightist thought including neoliberalism, neoconservatism, religious fundamentalism and authoritarian populism see, Michael Apple, Educating the Right Way (2nd ed.) New York: Routledge, 2006. 3. Despite the centrality of broader social struggle and structural transformation, critical perspectives on corporatization are hardly identical and tend to map to 164 Notes the different political, economic, and cultural referents for theorizing the phenomenon. Criticism of corporatization can be found grounded in per- spectives including Neo-marxist (Apple and Lipman), Marxist (McLaren, Hill, etc.), critical theory, radical democracy (Giroux, Aronowitz, and Trend), Foucauldian (Ball), poststructuralist, pragmatist (Molnar and Boyles), and anarchist (Spring and Gabbard) with many authors drawing on multiple tra- ditions. There is not space here to elaborate fully these different political referents for the criticism of corporatization. However, some of the major disagreements involve questions of the centrality of class and economics as opposed to the centrality of culture, identity, difference, and language, as well as debates over the possibilities for the role of the state in public versus private spheres. Many of the debates that face criticalists often have a legacy that recapitulates many of the central debates initiated by Marx and carried down from the Marxian tradition, though the minority of criticalists define themselves as Marxists. Other disagreements in the perspective on corporati- zation are a matter of methodological emphasis on institutional analysis as opposed to broader structural analysis. Joel Spring—writing from the anar- chist tradition—and Alex Molnar—grounded in Deweyan progressivism— each tend to offer valuable institutionally focused analyses. These are highly compatible with other perspectives that emphasize the situating of corporati- zation in relation to broader structural forces and trends. All critics of corpo- ratization from a critical perspective view the corporatization of public schooling as an expression of neoliberal capitalism. 4. This critical view of hegemonic struggle can be traced from Gramsci to Althusser and can be seen in the critical response to corporatization in con- temporary writers such as Apple, Giroux, Lipman, Saltman, Leistyna, and numerous others. See Gramsci’s The Prison Notebooks; Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards an Investigation.” 5. Joel Bakan’s The Corporation, New York: Free Press, 2004, p. 57. 6. See Farhad Manjoo, “Microsoft’s Media Monopoly” Salon.com, October 29, 2002 available at http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/10/29/ microsoft_media_one/index.html. 7. See Joel Spring’s excellent history in Educating the Consumer-Citizen. 8. See David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism. In education, see Kenneth Saltman’s Collateral Damage and Strange Love, Michael Apple’s Educating the Right Way, and Henry Giroux’s The Terror of Neoliberalism. 9. See Alex Molnar, Gary Miron, Jessica Urschel, “Profiles of For-Profit Educational Management Organizations: Eleventh Annual Report” September 2009 Commercialism in Education Research Unit available at http://epicpolicy.org/files/08–09%20profiles%20report.pdf. 10. See Kenneth J. Saltman’s Capitalizing on Disater, Boulder: Paradigm Publishers and Kenneth J. Saltman’s Schooling and the Politics of Disaster, New York: Routledge. 11. For the clearest and most up-to-date coverage of the terrain and scope of public school privatization and commercialization, see Alex Molnar’s annual reports on school commercialism online at the Educational Policy Studies Laboratory available at www.schoolcommercialism.org as well as Alex Molnar’s School Commercialism, New York: Routledge, 2005. Molnar’s Notes 165 theoretical perspective draws on Deweyan pragmatism and the institutional analysis typified by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s media analysis that focuses on the active role of the public relations industry in “manufactur- ing consent” to business dominance. Joel Spring’s important historically sweeping Educating the Consumer-Citizen, Lawrence Earlbaum and Associates, 2003 likewise offers essential institutional analysis. Such histori- cal institutional analyses are crucial yet incomplete in that they need to be coupled with a more comprehensive cultural theorization as well as broader situating within global economic structural dynamics. For important recent scholarships on a range of issues involved in privatization, see, for example, Deron Boyles (editor) in Schools or Markets?: Commercialism, Privatization and School-Business Partnerships, New York: Lawrence Earlbaum and Associates, 2004; Joel Spring’s Educating the Consumer-Citizen, Lawrence Earlbaum and Associates, 2003; and Alfie Kohn and Patrick Shannon’s Education, Inc., Heinemann, 2002. See also Kenneth Saltman, “Essay Review of Education, Inc.” Teachers College Record, 2003. 12. See Molnar, School Commercialism. 13. State run schools in capitalist nations being a “site and stake” of struggle for hegemony appears in the work of Antonio Gramsci and is developed from Gramsci by Louis Althusser in, for example, his “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” essay in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001 and more explicitly with reference to Gramsci in Machiavelli and Us, New York: Verso, 1997. The limitations of the repro- duction theories have been taken up extensively and importantly, for exam- ple, with regard to the theoretical problems of Marxism including the legacies of scientism, class reductionism, economism, and so on. See, for example, Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux Education Still Under Siege, Westport: Bergin and Garvey, 1989. Despite these limitations, Althusser’s work appears important for theorizing the state at the present juncture. 14. See, for example, Giroux’s important discussion of the politics of “No Child Left Behind” in Abandoned Generation, New York: Palgrave, 2003. 15. Neoliberalism in education has been taken up extensively by a number of authors. A very partial and incomplete and U.S.-focused list includes the fol- lowing: Kenneth J. Saltman, Collateral Damage; Robin Goodman and Kenneth J. Saltman, Strange Love, Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market; Kenneth J. Saltman and David Gabbard (eds.) Education as Enforcement: the Militarization and Corporatization of Schools; Michael Apple, Educating the Right Way; Henry Giroux, Abandoned Generation; Henry Giroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism; David Gabbard and E. Wayne Ross, Defending Public Schools. 16. An excellent mapping of these conservatisms and others can be found in Michael Apple’s Educating the Right Way, New York: Routledge, 2001. 17. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 66–67. 18. John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools. 19. Jeffrey Henig, Rethinking School Choice, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. 20. Stephen J. Ball, Education plc, New York: Routledge, 2007. 166 Notes 21. I take up these issues in greater detail in Kenneth J. Saltman, The Edison Schools, New York: Routledge 2005. 22. Within the field of education, the contemporary traditions of critical peda- gogy and critical literacy continue to pursue and develop this. Chapter 2 1. The most significant collection of essays from mostly advocates of neoliberal venture philanthropy is Frederick Hess (ed.) With the Best of Intentions, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press (2005). However,