Sol Stern

Last updated

Sol Stern (born 1935) is the author of the book Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice (2003) [1] and has written extensively on education reform. [2]

Contents

Early life

Stern was born in Ramat Gan, Israel (then Mandatory Palestine) in 1935. He was raised in the Bronx from infancy and attended the City College of New York; the University of Iowa; and the University of California, Berkeley.

Radicalism

Stern began his career with the radical magazine Ramparts to which, in 1967, he contributed the article "A Short Account of International Student Politics and the Cold War with Particular Reference to the NSA, CIA, etc." It included the allegation that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had supported the National Student Association, ties that later were confirmed by the organization itself. The CIA funded overseas projects to the tune of $3.3 million, and it recruited NSA staff members for intelligence work. [3] In 1968, Stern signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments to protest the Vietnam War. [4]

Conservative shift

His departure from radicalism came after New Left attacks on Israel. [5] He also collaborated with Ronald Radosh on a research project into the evidence against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Originally intending to prove their innocence, Stern and Radosh came to believe that the Rosenbergs had been guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. In 2008, The New York Times described him as a "cantankerous provocateur against liberal education policies, criticizing reading curriculums that de-emphasize phonics as well as public schools that focus on social justice." [6] Stern has written critiques of Paulo Freire's work [7] , Bill Ayers's career as an education reformer for City Journal and elsewhere and of Palestinian motives "A Century of Palestinian Rejectionism and Jew Hatred (2011)". [8] [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death of the two founders, the foundation owned 90% of the non-voting shares of the Ford Motor Company. Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julius and Ethel Rosenberg</span> American spies for the Soviet Union

Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime. Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working in Los Alamos, was convicted in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pine Gap</span> Military satellite ground station near Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia

Pine Gap is an American satellite intelligence gathering and signal intelligence surveillance base and Australian Earth station approximately 18 km (11 mi) south-west of the town of Alice Springs, Northern Territory in Australia. It is jointly operated by Australia and the United States, and since 1988 it has been officially called the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG); previously, it was known as Joint Defence Space Research Facility. It plays a crucial role in supporting the intelligence activities and military operations of the US around the world.

Ronald Radosh is an American Social Conservative writer, professor, historian, and former Marxist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paulo Freire</span> Brazilian educator (1921–1997)

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement, and was the third most cited book in the social sciences as of 2016 according to Google Scholar.

Ramparts was a glossy illustrated American political and literary magazine, published from 1962 to 1975 and closely associated with the New Left political movement. Unlike most of the radical magazines of the day, Ramparts was expensively produced and graphically sophisticated.

Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myles Horton</span> American educator

Myles Falls Horton was an American educator, socialist, and co-founder of the Highlander Folk School, famous for its role in the Civil Rights Movement. Horton taught and heavily influenced most of the era's leaders. They included Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Lewis, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, and others who would create the Nashville Student Movement, Ralph Abernathy, John B. Thompson, and many others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Greenglass</span> Atomic spy for the Soviet Union (1922–2014)

David Greenglass was an American machinist and atomic spy for the Soviet Union who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was briefly stationed at the Clinton Engineer Works uranium enrichment facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and then worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico from August 1944 until February 1946.

The United States National Student Association (NSA) was a confederation of college and university student governments that was in operation from 1947 to 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Bamford</span> American author, journalist and documentary producer

James Bamford is an American author, journalist and documentary producer noted for his writing about United States intelligence agencies, especially the National Security Agency (NSA). The New York Times has called him "the nation's premier journalist on the subject of the National Security Agency" and The New Yorker named him "the NSA's chief chronicler."

Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war, and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a global area of operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rashid Khalidi</span> Palestinian-American historian (born 1948)

Rashid Ismail Khalidi is a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East and the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. He served as editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies from 2002 until 2020, when he became co-editor with Sherene Seikaly.

Ira Shor is a professor at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, where he teaches composition and rhetoric. He is also doctoral faculty in the PhD Program in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY.

<i>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</i> Book by Paulo Freire

Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a book by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, written in Portuguese between 1967 and 1968, but published first in Spanish in 1968. An English translation was published in 1970, with the Portuguese original being published in 1972 in Portugal, and then again in Brazil in 1974. The book is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy, and proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society.

Ellen Wolf Schrecker is an American professor emerita of American history at Yeshiva University. She has received the Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Tamiment Library at NYU. She is known primarily for her work in the history of McCarthyism. Historian Ronald Radosh has described her as "the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians."

Peter Mayo is a professor, speaker, editor, writer, and former head of the Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education at the University of Malta, in Malta. He is responsible for the UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education at the same university. He formerly served as the university's head of the Department of Education Studies from 2008 to 2012. Mayo was a member of the Collegio Docenti for the doctoral research programme in Educational Sciences and Continuing Education at the Università degli Studi di Verona. He teaches in the areas of sociology of education and adult continuing education, as well as in comparative and international education and sociology in general. He was previously employed as a school teacher and later as Officer in Charge of Adult Education in the then Department of Education, Ministry of Education, Malta. Mayo has held visiting professorial appointments at multiple universities and was a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Education, University College London during 2014. He was previously a member of the Collegio Docenti for the international doctorate in intercultural sociology and education at the University of Messina and was the President of the Mediterranean Society of Comparative Education (MESCE) from 2008 to 2010. He was visiting professor at the Institute of Education, University College London

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Ayers</span> American professor and activist

William Charles Ayers is an American retired professor and former militant organizer. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the far-left militant organization the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group that sought to overthrow what they viewed as American imperialism. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings caused no fatalities, except for three members killed when one of the group's devices accidentally exploded. The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Ayers was hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) is a network of anti-Zionist Jews pledged to "Oppose Zionism and the State of Israel".

References

  1. ↑ "Breaking Free". 14 September 2015.
  2. ↑ "Manhattan Institute".
  3. ↑ "Student Officials Seek to Abandon the Cold War Arena". Washington Post. 1967-08-14.
  4. ↑ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post
  5. ↑ "Conservatives plant a seed in NYC". The Boston Globe. 1998-02-22.
  6. ↑ Sol Stern interview at the New York Times, published February 13, 2008
  7. ↑ "Pedagogy of the Oppressor: Another reason why U.S. ed schools are so awful: the ongoing influence of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire.", City Journal, Spring 2009
  8. ↑ "The Ed Schools’ Latest—and Worst—Humbug: Teaching for “social justice” is a cruel hoax on disadvantaged kids.", City Journal, Summer 2006
  9. ↑ "Obama’s Real Bill Ayers Problem: The ex-Weatherman is now a radical educator with influence.", City Journal, 23 April 2008
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.