Female Secondary School Leaders: At the Helm of Democratic Schooling and Social Justice

We chose the philosophical tradition of phenomenology as the qualitative methodology to study four women school leaders. Semi-structured interview data indicated that their professional experiences impacted how their leadership practices advance social justice in their education organizations, espouse the belief that equity matter, and exemplify the torchbearers of democratic ideals.

The ethical paradigm of Jose Marti's writings beyond Modernity

This dissertation explores the nature of Jose Marti's ethical ideas in relation to the rise of late Nineteenth Century Modernity and in tandem with the deconstruction and subversion of the principal constituencies of colonial and aesthetic discourses. Marti proposes a new paradigm that question the insatiable pursuit of novelty, the hostility towards tradition, the historical perspectivism and a critical stance with regard to social aesthetic Modernity. He also questions the cult of reason, the linear historicism, and the teleological progress framed in philosophical utilitarian pragmatism of bourgeois Modernity. His radical criticism of the structures and institutions of the hegemonic power of the modern state override the ontological and epistemological foundations of Modernity. Marti's deconstruction of the fundamental discourses of euro-centristic Occidental culture leads him, through his ethical writings, to an arqueology of Native American civilizations, thus reinserting, within the false premises of European universalism, his counter-discourse of tradition and the voice of the Other.

Ballots for Equality: An Approach to the Radical Tradition in U.S. Electoral Politics

Posing radical challenges to structural inequality is the defining quality of the Left. What role electoral politics might play in such processes is a dilemma of radical politics, the contours of which vary by historical and national contexts. For the U.S. Left there is a distinctive aspect of the dilemma directly related to the failure of a "Left" party of even the most moderate social democratic type to take root, creating a seemingly never ending debate over the value if any of "third party" progressive organizing. This debate is current, as illustrated by three divergent approaches; independent left electoral politics (Socialist Alternative), organizing within the less conservative of the dominant parties (Progressive Democrats of America), and a social movement focus outside the electoral process (Occupy Movement). The present day examples of alternative Left strategies noted here in passing are but three of many such specific organizational options for progressive politics. This article does not seek to advocate for any one of these options to the exclusion of the others but rather seeks to provide historical perspective.