We Demand - (American Studies Now: Critical Histories of the Present) by Roderick A Ferguson (Paperback)

The book "We Demand" by Roderick A.

Ferguson is a powerful and thought-provoking read that delves into the history of student protests in the post-World War II period and their impact on the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century.

The author provides a detailed account of how students fought for the new kinds of public universities that needed to serve women, minorities, immigrants, indigenous people, and more, with a success that had a profound impact on academia.

However, less than fifty years since this pivotal shift in the academy, the university is moving away from "the people" in all their diversity, with more resources being put toward STEM education and humanities and interdisciplinary programs being cut and shuttered.

This has had a devastating effect on the pursuit of knowledge and interdisciplinary programs born from the hard work and effort of an earlier generation.

The book provides an incisive and sobering account of reaction, of academic complicity in restoring the status quo and its exclusionary, anti-intellectual structures.

Ferguson's writing on the university is always on time, always urgent, and always aware that the struggle over knowledge is inseparable from the fight for our lives.

"We Demand" is an enormously valuable text that introduces students to the political history of the universities they inhabit and defamiliarizes features of those institutions that students might take for granted.

The book provides inspiration that we all need in this moment of renewed struggle for democratic and inclusive universities that make and share knowledge in the interest of social justice.