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The Roundup Top Ten for April 29, 2022

Earth Day is a Chance to Win the Messaging War Against Polluters

by Laura J. Martin

Climate protectors are at war with the fossil fuels industry in the arena of public opinion, and they're losing. It's time to stop allowing Earth Day statements of corporate concern to substitute for real change. 

Why Isn't Joetha Collier Known as a Victim of Racism in Mississippi?

by Keisha N. Blain

A young woman's murder by white men in 1971, on the day she graduated from a newly integrated high school, doesn't fit easily into a narrative framework established by Emmett Till's killing – of martyrdom leading to change for the better.

Harvard President and Dean: Slavery Shaped the University

by Lawrence S. Bacow and Tomiko Brown-Nagin

Harvard's financial, infrastructural and intellectual legacies are unavoidably entangled with slavery. A new report is meant to signal the university's efforts at reckoning and reconciliation. 

What Makes a Conservative Christian College?

by Andrea L. Turpin

What does it mean when a self-identified "Conservative Christian" college determines that it has violated its own mission by teaching Critical Race Theory? Is the violation religious or political in nature? 

Journalists and Academics: Stop Fighting!

by Maggie Doherty

How can academics and journalists better understand the relationship between their two camps? 

Once More in Ukraine, Dehumanization Precursor to Mass Murder

by Anne Applebaum

Suppressing knowledge of the horrors of starvation inflicted on Ukrainians in the 1930s is a key to Russia's ability to use similar dehumanizing rhetoric to justify attacks on civilians today. 

The Unbearable Whiteness of Ken Burns

by Timothy Messer-Kruse

In the context of today's battles over teaching the history of racism in America, the new Franklin documentary unfortunately uses its subject to spin a narrative of national self-correction that ignores historians' attention to conflict and struggle. 

"Under the Banner" Improves, but Doesn't Sanitize, Book's Reductive History of LDS

by Benjamin E. Park

The new series raises questions about America's homegrown faith, and shakes off some of the source book's post-9/11 concerns with extremism and religious violence to show the complexity among different tendencies and branches of the faith. 

The Dark Money Behind KBJ Attacks Is Coming for Public Schools

by Alyssa Bowen

"Dark Money" organizations allow a small group of elite families to use their wealth to control the content of education around the country. 

The Decline of Tenure is the Greatest Threat to Higher Education

by Marc Stein

While states like Texas threaten tenure politically, in California the instititution is under attack by austerity and attrition; either way, higher education itself is threatened by the abandonment of employment security.