Curtis Marez (Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego) will present the Spring 2014 IAS Distinguished Speaker Lecture, “Schooling Debt: Critical University Studies Today.”

What are the effects of higher education’s growing reliance on student debt as a revenue source? The trend has contributed to the privatization of contemporary universities and catalyzed cultural, social, and political struggles over their future.  Students often lead those struggles, shaping local and global cultures of debt and dissent.

Curtis Marez discusses creative and collective actions against higher tuition and regimes of debt, including public protests, the organization of mass debt refusal or default, conferences, websites, and journals.  He links activism targeting the institutional activities debt finances and calls for institutional divestment from companies complicit in human rights abuses and exploitation.

Curtis Marez is author of Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics (2004), and is currently completing a new book called Speculative Technologies: Farm Workers and the Secret Histories of New Media.  He has been the editor of American Quarterly (2006-10).  He is currently President of the American Studies Association.

This is event is free and open to the public. Directions to the UW Bothell campus and parking information are available here.

If you have questions or would like more information, please get in touch with Miriam Bartha at MBartha@uwb.edu.