At present… the cost of higher education in public universities ranges between Rs 10,000 and Rs 50,000 per year. However, in contrast foreign universities are expected to charge anywhere between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 50 lakh per year which is an amount that puts them entirely out of reach for the lower and middle… Read More Welcoming Foreign University Campuses Won’t Address Indian Education’s Structural Woes
Readers outside of India can donate here to support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue: DOCUMENTS: BOOKS: IMAGE & SOUND: Editor’s Picks Books of Note
NB: The source of the above wisdom by America’s new Secretary of Defense is this fact-sheet. There are many others sources. Here are the latest figures of genocidal mayhem in Palestine accomplished by the vanguard of civilisation – viz, the USA and its proxy, Israel. Both main American political parties were and continue to be,… Read More Zionism & Americanism are the front lines of Western civilisation and freedom in our world today: Pete Hegseth US Secretary of Defense
Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argues that “Zionism and Americanism are the front-lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today” — pedals the usual absurdity that the Hebrew Bible, written 4,000 years ago, can be used to draw contemporary national borders. Chris Hedges Christian Nationalists who form the bedrock of support for Donald Trump… Read More Trump’s Christian Fascists and the War on Palestine
The problem is becoming worse than the condition of inter-passivity, with student disengagement now often leading to mass chronic non-attendance in lectures and seminars. Rather than go through the motions of learning, many students simply do not bother to go through the motions, except to submit essays and often that is done with the assistance… Read More Apathy and the neoliberal university
Chris Hedges Education is meant to be subversive. It gives students the ability and the language to ask questions about reigning assumptions and ideas. It questions dogma and ideology. It can, as Zinn writes, “counteract the deception that makes the government’s force legitimate.” ************* The attacks on colleges and universities — Donald Trump’s administration has warned some… Read More Trump’s War on Education
Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion NB: This is one of the most thought-provoking studies in the history and philosophy of religion that – in my limited reading – I have come across. The author Jan Assman (1938-2024) was a German Egyptologist, cultural historian, and religion… Read More The Price of Monotheism
The opening weeks of the second Trump administration have produced daily headlines that read — no, this is not hyperbole! — like science fiction. The spectacle of a South African tech billionaire and his cronies staging a twenty-first-century cybercoup with the acquiescence of an aging lunatic of a president beggars belief. Elon Musk has given… Read More Juan Cole: Cyberpunk Nation
A generation who came of age online now feel deprived of real connections. The upside is they are doing something about it Gaby Hinsliff It’s the love-hate relationship that defined a generation. We think we know all about teenagers and the phones to which they’re so umbilically tied: sleeping with them under the pillow, panicking… Read More It’s the age of regret: gen Z grew up glued to their screens, and missed the joy of being human
NB: Whereas I agree with Professor Mehta’s arguments about the sinister significance of Trump’s treatment of President Zelenskyy; the following is where I disagree. He says the Russian invasion of Ukraine was only the second time since World War II that one country had claimed an entire other country… It was a war to erase… Read More The Mask is Off. After Ukraine, imperialism is now the norm
After the truth-shower 