The Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) webinar series continues on February 3 with a very special event: “Public Education in Chains: The Road to Privatization of Our Nation’s Schools.” The webinar features Dr. Nancy MacLean, award-winning American historian and author of Democracy in Chains, in conversation with Dr. Diane Ravitch, President of the Network for Public Education.

PFPS webinars explore issues related to private school vouchers and the campaign’s goal of ensuring public funds are used to maintain, support, and strengthen public schools. This webinar is co-sponsored by the Network for Public Education.

To register for “Public Education in Chains: The Road to Privatization of Our Nation’s Schools” on February 3 at 3 p.m. EST, please click here.

About the speakers:

Nancy MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, and the award-winning author of several books, including Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan; Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace; The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents; and Debating the American Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present. She also served as the editor of Scalawag: A White Southerner’s Journey through Segregation to Human Rights Activism.

Her scholarship has received more than a dozen major prizes and awards and has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowships Foundation.

Her most recent book is Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The Guardian said: “It’s the missing chapter: a key to understanding the politics of the past half century.” Democracy in Chains was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Current Affairs, the Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award, and the Lillian Smith Book Award. The Nation magazine named it the “Most Valuable Book” of the year.

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education. She recently retired from New York University. Among her books are: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education and Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. Both were national bestsellers. She is a member of the National Academy of Education, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. She won the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award from the American Academy of Social and Political Sciences. She writes a daily blog which has received nearly 40 million views.

To register for the February 3 webinar, click here. To access previous PFPS webinars and additional tools for advocates, please click here.