Dr. Robin DeRosa, a longtime advocate for open education, recently delivered a keynote titled "Open and the Oligarchs: Planting Seeds in a World on Fire" at the OE Bootcamp on May 13, 2025. The talk, streamed live by the University of Regina's Open Education Program, challenged the open education movement to confront its complicity in broader systemic crises.
DeRosa, who has spent over a decade advancing open educational resources (OER), open pedagogy, and open access, posed a stark question: How can promising open initiatives gain momentum while public institutions—schools, libraries, publishing models—slide toward privatization and economic collapse? She warned that the movement's investments in equity and access are unfolding against a backdrop of rising neoliberalism, plutocracy, and fascism.
Revisiting the concept of the "tragedy of the commons," DeRosa reinterpreted it not through Garrett Hardin's 1968 lens, but in today's context: as wildfires rage in Los Angeles and political turmoil deepens globally. She urged attendees to pause and ask where open education has truly led us—and whether its seeds are being planted in soil that can sustain them.
The presentation slides are available for public access. The video remains on YouTube with a Creative Commons Attribution license.