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This event is hybrid, register to attend online here.
Despite high levels of access to primary schooling, educational quality in Latin America remains low. Why? Raised to Obey uncovers the deep roots of this enduring problem, documenting that the original goal of primary education systems was to promote obedience, not skills.
Speaker: Agustina Paglayan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UCSD.
Moderated by Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Agustina S. Paglayan is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego, with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the School of Global Policy and Strategy, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development. She studies what motivates politicians to expand educational access and provide high-quality education, as well as the long-term political repercussions of education policy choices. Her research builds on her interdisciplinary training in political science, economics, education, and public policy, and on her professional experience working on economic and education reform in developing countries. Dr. Paglayan's research has received numerous prestigious awards, including the 2023 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the Best Article published in the American Political Science Review, awards from the American Political Science Association recognizing the Best Article in the fields of Political Economy, Politics and History, and Democracy and Autocracy, and recognition as exemplary research on the politics of policymaking by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Her book, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education, explains the emergence, expansion, and characteristics of public school systems in Western societies, and will be released by Princeton University Press in November 2024.
Steven Levitsky is the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 25 languages. He has written or edited 12 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022), and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (with Daniel Ziblatt) (Crown Publishers, 2023). He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic resilience across the world.
Presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.