Rebranded fascism, higher education and the burden of conscience
Release Date: 03/12/2025
Hands Off Our Education! Ontario Students Mobilize in Campus Walkout on Thursday, November 5th
Needs No Introduction
In our fourth episode of the season, we welcome Cyrielle Ngeleka, Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario and Trudy Kuropatwa Trent, Chairperson of the Student Mobilization Committee - Toronto. We discuss the Hands Off Our Education Campaign and the province-wide campus walkout on Thursday November 5th and the Ford government’s Bill 33, cuts to student funding and erosion of public post-secondary education driving students to mobilize across Ontario. Speaking to Ontario’s government and students, Ngeleka says: “Keep your hands off our...
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Requiem for Gaza: In Conversation with Joe Sacco
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In our third episode of the season, we are very pleased to feature celebrated cartoonist, author and pioneer of cartoons journalism, Joe Sacco and his recently released Requiem for Gaza, a profound work of graphic reportage co-authored with journalist Chris Hedges. We discuss the experience of Palestinian families displaced by the ongoing genocide, the imprint of history on the current moment, the killing and chilling of journalism and the obligation to truth in a time of relentless and arrogant power. On the dedication of Requiem for Gaza to Palestinian journalists, Sacco...
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What Is Reconciliation Without Truth? Protecting Residential School Survivor Records
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Kimberly Murray and Connie Walker discuss the impending destruction of 38,000 residential school survival records and the project to preserve them. In our second episode of the season we are joined by co-leaders of the Indian Residential School Records Project, Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning journalist Connie Walker and former Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Kimberly Murray. We discuss the scheduled destruction of 38,000 records containing the testimonies of Indian Residential School survivors, the resilience and courage of survivors,...
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The carbon bootprint: How Canada’s war economy fuels the climate crisis
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In the season 11 premiere of the Courage My Friends podcast series, we are pleased to welcome environmentalist, feminist, peace activist and Senior Researcher with Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, Tamara Lorincz and climate policy researcher and advocate with Greenpeace Canada, Keith Stewart. As we head into the Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice, we discuss Canada’s accelerating shift toward a militarized economy, what this looks like and how this is not only failing to address our true security needs, but is coming at considerable cost to our sovereignty, people...
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Diana Chan McNally: Bringing community work to Toronto’s City Council
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This week, we welcome and spotlight community worker, homelessness advocate, and candidate for Toronto City Council, Diana Chan McNally. We discuss Chan McNally’s run to become City Councillor for Toronto’s Ward 4, Parkdale-High Park, top-of-mind issues for the Ward and the city, provincial encroachment on municipal government and her vision of bringing community work to municipal politics. Chan McNally says: “Part of why I'm running too, I also very much do not appreciate the provincial encroachment on municipalities. I have a history of fighting Ford. I have won resources from...
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Labour Fair 2026 Keynote: New modes of organizing for a working peoples’ city
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Today’s episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series features the keynote discussion from the 34th annual Labour Fair at Toronto’s George Brown College. Founding representative of the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council Sean Smith and member of the Parkdale Housing Justice Network (PHJN) Matt Whitfield, discuss the crises of labour precarity and housing insecurity, how these are the outcomes of systems rigged against workers and communities and methods of effective grassroots and labour organizing toward the building of working peoples’ cities. On the housing “crisis”, Whitfield...
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From ecosystems to economics: How Canada’s conserved and protected areas contribute billions to the economy
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In episode six we welcome national director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Sandra Schwartz and CPAWS economic analyst, Jason Wong, lead author of the CPAWS white paper, . We discuss the first of its kind report that offers a new way of valuing conservation and the protection of our lands and waters, not as barriers to economic growth,but as long-term and essential green infrastructure that enriches our lives,our communities and our economy. Explaining the reasons for the report, Schwartz says: “The point was actually to have a different way to talk to...
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Labour Fair 2026: The radical labour of care
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This latest episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series features “The Radical Labour of Care” panel discussion with: Indigenous midwife, leader, and educator, Claire Dion Fletcher; crisis outreach worker, case manager, and advocate in Toronto’s Downtown East, Lorraine Lam; and program director of the Latinx Womyn’s Program at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, Grissel Orellana. It is moderated by Eliza Chandler, associate professor in the School of Disability Studies and executive director of the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan...
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Mining, militarism and organizing against the march to war
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In the latest episode of the Courage My Friends series, we welcome organizer with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network Kara Anderson and welcome back Canada organizer for World Beyond War and coordinator of the Arms Embargo Now Campaign, Rachel Small. We discuss Canada’s radical turn toward militarism and its ramping up of defence spending, the many and deep connections between militarism and mining in the mining capital of the world and solidarity organizing against the march to war. Reflecting on Canada’s increased defence spending, Small says: “ Canadian military spending...
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Pension divestment: From funding crises to a radical pension politics
Needs No Introduction
In our third episode of the season, Tom Fraser, a union researcher and author of Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future, and Becca Steckle, a research and policy analyst with Just Peace Advocates, join us to discuss how Canada’s public sector pensions are funding crises from housing to genocide, the restructuring of Canadian retirement security into capital funding for militarism and welfare erosion around the world and the urgent need for divestment toward a radical pension politics. According to Fraser: “What I see as specifically contradictory about the structure...
info_outlineIn episode five, we are pleased to welcome back Henry Giroux, scholar, cultural critic and author, most recently of The Burden of Conscience: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence. We discuss the rise of authoritarianism in the US and around the world as an updated fascism, its attack on democracy and higher education and the urgent need for solidarity, critical pedagogy and resistance in the face of the unspeakable.
Reflecting on the necessity of higher and critical education in these times, Giroux says:
“Education is the glue. Education is the bridge that stands between fascism and hope, between fascism and justice, between fascism and a socialist democracy, a real democracy, a radical democracy. And if we don't grasp the centrality of education here in terms of both its power and its role, both in and outside of schooling, we're in trouble. It's not going to work.”
About today’s guest:
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022); Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-revolutionary politics (Bloomsbury in 2023), co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2024), and Burden of Conscience (Bloomsbury, 2025). His website is www.henryagiroux.com
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute.
Image: Henry Giroux / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)
Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.
Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.
Host: Resh Budhu.