HIGHER EDUCATION Democratic Dialogue in Education: Troubling Speech, Disturbing Silence. Megan

Megan Boler is a philosophical inquiry into the merits of fostering dem-ocratic dialogue in the college classroom through the selective silencing and voicing of student participants. The contributors offer creative and some-times conflicting perspectives on the use of dialogue in the classroom; however, all are critical theorists committed to empowering minority stu-dents and challenging discrimination. Drawing from well-known scholars ranging from Paulo Freire to Michel de Certeau to Judith Butler, the au-thors make complex claims that challenge academics to critically reconsider the ways classroom practices can either passively advocate or actively dis-mantle dominant ideologies of racism, sexism, and homophobia. The excellent essays in Democratic Dialogue in Education respond to Boler’s initial proposal for ‘‘affirmative action pedagogy’ ’ that intentionally silences dominant voices in order to foreground the experiences of mar-ginalized groups. Boler’s goal is to cultivate democratic dialogue in college classrooms, which she defines as a conversation where any expression of racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism, ableism, or classism is critically analyzed. According to Boler, ‘‘an affirmative action pedagogy seeks to en-sure that we bear witness to marginalized voices in our classrooms, even at the minor cost of limiting dominant ones’ ’ (p. 4). In this case, dominant voices belong to white, heterosexual, middle-class men and sometimes women. The idea is to deliberately silence these students to create a space for nonprivileged students to speak out, a process Boler justifies through ‘‘historicized ethics’ ’ (p. 7). Boler asserts that despite the nation’s promise of free speech, America’s violent history of minority oppression has created