University in Turmoil: The Politics of Change
About this ebook
This essential reissue of University in Turmoil returns Wallerstein’s penetrating analysis to a new generation grappling with similar questions of power, purpose, and protest within academic institutions. His firsthand account illuminates not just what happened during those tumultuous weeks, but why those events still matter in our ongoing struggle to reimagine the university as a site of social transformation. This new edition features a thought-provoking and comprehensive introduction by political theorist Jodi Dean, who situates this work within Wallerstein’s broader intellectual project, from world-systems analysis to his critiques of global capitalism, to demonstrate how this seemingly localized campus conflict connects to Wallerstein’s groundbreaking theories on structural inequality, institutional power, and social movements. As today’s students confront issues from climate justice to racial equity, from economic precarity to geopolitical conflict, Wallerstein’s insights resonate with renewed urgency, revealing the university not merely as a backdrop for protest but as a contested terrain where broader societal struggles are enacted and reimagined.
Both historical document and theoretical framework, University in Turmoil offers an indispensable perspective for anyone seeking to understand the complex relationship between academic institutions, student activism, and social change—then and now.
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About the author
Immanuel Wallerstein was Senior Research Fellow in Sociology at Yale from 2000 until his death in 2019. From 1976 to 1999, he was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University (SUNY), where he founded and directed the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. Between 1975 and 2018, he spent several months a year at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme in Paris. Wallerstein was recognized for his brilliance the world over. His many books and countless articles have been translated into dozens of languages. Of them, his world-renowned four-volume history of The Modern World-System is a masterful examination of the Western world from 1500 to the modern era. He is now and will be for time to come considered by many to be the most influential social scientist of his era.
Katharine Wallerstein is an independent scholar and associate researcher at the Centre de recherche sur les arts et le langage at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, and director of the Wallerstein Institute for World Futures in Paris.
