The author examines some of the key figures leading the neo-liberal attack on education in Chicago. In this current battleground the teacher's union has gone on strike with widespread popular support.
Levitt is a dyed-in-the-wool Milton Friedman neoliberal from the same “Chicago Boys” network that brought you the “shock doctrine.” When he isn’t pursing research into borderline eugenicist policies or studying the benefits of privatized prison labor on GDP, he’s hard at work doing his part helping the oligarchy put unionized Chicago school teachers up against the wall.
Specifically, Levitt has worked with Chicago’s notorious union-buster Arne Duncan, who was the CEO of Chicago public schools until Obama tapped Duncan to be the U.S. Education Secretary in 2008. Duncan has been credited with doing more than anyone else to help bring the neoliberal nightmare to Chicago’s impoverished and mostly nonwhite public schools, funnelling public funds to dysfunctional private voucher schools, terrorizing unionized teachers, closing schools and turning public education into feeder tube for the prison-industrial complex. And Levitt, a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, was right there along with Duncan.
