Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

In the latest organized attack on academic freedom in Aotearoa New Zealand, the constellation of far-right actors, ACT Party, the Indian-origin MP Parmjeet Parmar, and Hobson's Pledge, have concocted a crisis around the international reputation of Universities.  Academic Freedom and Institutional Autonomy As I have argued elsewhere, the autonomy of institutions lies at the heart of academic freedom.  This means that universities as spaces for teaching, learning, research, and engagement have the freedom to determine curricular structures, research infrastructures, and infrastructures for public engagement, enabling the development of an institutional space where academics have the freedom to pursue teaching, research and public engagement that is anchored in peer review, academic expertise, and deliberation among academic experts who are trained in a subject area. This institutional autonomy is particularly critical in Aotearoa New Zealand, where the Education Act places on ac...

We need to speak plainly.  The left, as it exists today in the commanding heights of liberal power, is not a project of the 99 percent. It is not the property of the working class. It is not the voice of the dispossessed, the precarious, the evicted, the indebted, or the bombed. It is a focus group. It is a branding exercise. It is a curated performance of empathy—delivered by political marketers, pollsters, and campaign planners who know exactly which centrist slogan will soothe the suburban professional while leaving the structures of power untouched. This is not left politics. This is neoliberalism in progressive charade. The Betrayal of the Professional Left Look at the record: Hillary Clinton preached “stronger together” while her foundation took millions from Wall Street and Gulf monarchies. Barack Obama spoke of hope while deporting three million people, bailing out banks, and expanding the drone war. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, “ended welfare as we know it,” and ...

Meeting of the United Packing House Workers of America (CIO), who went out on strike (1946), Bettmann/Getty In the contemporary landscape of global capitalism, identity politics has emerged as a dominant framework for understanding and addressing social injustices. Rooted in the struggles of marginalized communities for recognition and rights, identity politics has undeniably played a crucial role in highlighting the experiences of oppression based on race, gender, sexuality, and other markers of difference. Yet, as a scholar grounded in the culture-centered approach (CCA), I argue that the current iterations of identity politics, particularly under the grip of extreme neoliberalism, serve more to obscure than to liberate. This blog post interrogates these limits, exposing how neoliberalism deploys identity politics as a tool to deflect from working-class politics, perpetuating economic exploitation while offering superficial representations of diversity. Neoliberalism's Strategic...

From Instagram I write from Aotearoa New Zealand, where the land itself—whenua—whispers a truth the world keeps forgetting: diversity is not decoration. It is the operating system of life. Yet halfway across the planet, two mirror-image movements are busy flattening that truth into a single, suffocating slab of grey. One calls itself white Christian nationalism. The other, Hindutva. Both promise greatness. Both deliver mediocrity. Not the mediocrity of low IQ or bad haircuts. No. This is the mediocrity of supremacy—a structural laziness that mistakes exclusion for excellence, homogeneity for harmony, and loudness for leadership. From New York Times The Core Lie: Inheritance is the Original Sin Let’s name the lie plainly. White Christian nationalism is not about Christ. It is about whiteness—and the quiet, murderous belief that white skin is the measure of all things. Hindutva is not about Hinduism. It is about Brahminical caste hierarchy—and the ancient, murderous belief that birth in ...