Peter McLaren

Peter McLaren
McLaren in 2015
Born	(1948-08-02) August 2, 1948 (age 75) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Spouse	Yan Wang
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Waterloo University of Toronto Brock University
Thesis	Education as Ritual Performance (1984)
Doctoral advisor	Richard Courtney[1]
Influences	Paulo Freire[2] Henry Giroux Emmanuel Levinas[3] Karl Marx[4] Paul Ricœur[3]
Academic work
Discipline	Pedagogy
School or tradition	Critical pedagogy Marxist humanism[5]
Institutions	Miami University University of California, Los Angeles Chapman University

Peter McLaren (born 1948) is a Canadian-American scholar and Emeritus Professor of Urban Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, having taught at UCLA from 1993 until 2013. Prior to that, he taught at Miami University of Ohio (1985-1993). Most recently, he served as a Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies at Attallah College of Educational Studies, Chapman University (2013-2023) until his retirement, where he was Co-Director of the Paulo Freire Democratic Project and International Ambassador for Global Ethics and Social Justice.^[6] He is the Honorary Director of the Center for Critical Studies in Education at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China. According to Stanford University's database, McLaren belongs to the top 2% of the world’s most influential scientists.^[7]

McLaren is the author and editor of over forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters. His writings have been translated into over 20 languages.^[8] He is married to Yan Wang from Northeast China. They currently live in Orange, California. He has a son and daughter from previous marriages.

McLaren is known as one of the leading architects of critical pedagogy,^[9] and for his scholarly writings on critical literacy, the sociology of education, cultural studies, critical ethnography, and Marxist theory. Paulo Freire, a founding figure of critical pedagogy, stated: "Peter McLaren is one among the many outstanding 'intellectual relatives' I 'discovered' and by whom I, in turn, was 'discovered.' I read Peter McLaren long before I ever came to know him personally. ... Once I finished reading the first texts by McLaren that were made available to me, I was almost certain that we belonged to an identical 'intellectual family'."^[10]

During a keynote address at Chapman University on October 25, 2014, Nita Freire, eminent educational scholar and widow of Paulo Freire, remarked: "It is ... a huge thrill for me to see Peter McLaren and Donaldo Macedo, who ever since through discussions and dialogue became old friends of work and friendship, partners of ideological and theoretical ideas of Paulo. They along with Henry Giroux formulated the critical pedagogy as we know of today." McLaren is also the recipient of the 2023 Paulo Freire SIG Legacy Award.

McLaren has met with Abahlali baseMjondolo, in South Africa; the landless workers' movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST, in Brasil, the Zapatistas in Mexico, and members of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela,^[11] and with the left education workers union in Turkey where amid a demonstration he was teargassed and hurled to the ground by a police's riot shield.^[12]

McLaren is a faculty member at the Institute of Critical Pedagogy at The Global Center for Advanced Studies and lectures worldwide on education's politics. In Finland, he gave an Opening Lecture at Paulo Freire Center–Finland on November 20, 2007.^[13] La Escuela Normal Superior de Neiva in Colombia has named one of its buildings after Peter McLaren.^[14]

As of 2022^[update], McLaren is ranked in the top 15 percent of all social science and humanities scholars in the world, based on his D-index (Discipline H-index); he is ranked 217 in the United States and 428 in the world.^[15]

Peter McLaren made a brief appearance in Juli Kang’s 16-minute short film The Liberation of Everyday Life (2004)^[16].