culture war

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• SOURCE: Politico
  3/24/2023
  

  Culture Warrior Chris Rufo is DeSantis's Most Important Ally

  The closeness of the Florida governor's alliance with the fomer documentarian turned anti-CRT crusader shows DeSantis's commitment to claiming a position on the right of the culture wars. Who is setting the agenda? 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/27/2023
  

  Does Gov. Whitmer Have a Formula for a Democratic Response to GOP Culture War?

  In Michigan, the Democratic majority is repealing "right to work" laws and protecting abortion rights and LBGTQ antidsicrimination by law. Historians Erik Loomis and Michael Kazin argue that it's not a historical anomaly for the party to push for inclusion on multiple fronts. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  3/18/2023
  

  Florida Professor: I was Fired for Teaching about Racism

  Although Palm Beach Atlantic University is a private and Christian institution, English instructor Sam Joeckel says that a parent's complaint to the administration that led to his firing goes hand in hand with the efforts of Ron DeSantis to attack higher education in Florida to advance his "anti-woke" crusade. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  3/5/2023
  

  Moral Panics Around the Humanities Reflect Long-Developing Paradigm Shift

  by Steven Mintz

  The ferocity of attacks on the humanities and academic research as "indoctrination" reflect the recent integration of ideas with long histories in academia into highly visible protest movements. Can humanists connect newer thinking to the established concerns of the humanities for understanding justice or the good life? 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/17/2023
  

  Vincent Lloyd: What's Gone Wrong with Antiracist Politics

  The Villanova professor explains the incidents that led him to ask whether a center-right critique of antiracist rhetoric and discursive rules has some justification, and how a broader coalition against domination can be rescued from some censorious excesses.

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• SOURCE: TomDispatch
  2/16/2023
  

  The Specter of Woke Corporate Communism Haunts the Republican Mind

  by Steve Fraser

  How do you run a politically useful Cold War without any actual Communism? Just declare that the organs of global capitalism are, in fact, red—borrowing some anti-Semitic tropes along the way. 

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• SOURCE: African American Studies Faculty in Higher Ed
  1/31/2023
  

  600 African American Studies Faculty Sign Open Letter in Defense of AP African American Studies

  "We categorically reject DeSantis’s autocratic claim to knowing what college-level material should be available in an AP African American Studies course. There is no precedent, of which we are aware, for him or the Florida Department of Education to claim expertise on any other subject matter for AP course adoption."

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• SOURCE: Organization of American Historians
  2/1/2023
  

  Organization of American Historians Statement on AP African American Studies

  "The OAH further rejects the characterization of these scholars and their scholarship as examples of “woke indoctrination,” and instead recognize them as central to the interdisciplinary research and teaching of African American history and culture, as well as American history more broadly."

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• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  1/27/2023
  

  Kids Could Teach Republican Pols a Lesson About Handling the Harsh Truth

  by Margaret McMullan

  "Decades after she first walked into Little Rock Central High, Elizabeth Eckford said, 'True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared past'."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/27/2023
  

  Florida's Vague Content Laws are Being Used to Intimidate Librarians

  The DeSantis administration has declined to issue clarification of the requirements of the "Don't Say Gay" and "Stop Woke" laws, which leaves school librarians fearful of potential prosecution if they leave books on their shelves. 

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  1/17/2023
  

  Ilya Shapiro and Chris Rufo Urge State Legislators to Force Colleges to Change

  by Ilya Shapiro and Christopher Rufo

  Two prominent critics of "wokeness" and "critical race theory" in higher education lay out their suggestions for how state legislators can enact the changes they want to see in public colleges and universities—outside of changes to the curriculum. 

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• 1/8/2023
  

  Hillsdale College's New Strategy in the School Wars Merges Curriculum and Privatization through "Choice"

  by Megan Threlkeld

  During the Progressive era, as today, American education reformers examined the connection between schooling and the cultural and political divisions affecting the nation. Today's conservative agenda, however, openly rejects the idea of public schools as a force for unity and democratic culture. 

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• SOURCE: ProPublica
  1/3/2023
  

  Florida's Anti-CRT Law is Influencing Professors to Cancel Classes on Race

  Faculty, particularly those without tenure protections, are deciding that the vague terms and harsh penalties in the state's new law make the risk of teaching about racism too high. 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  12/12/2022
  

  Food Has Long Been a Culture War Weapon

  The likes of Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan were eager to use the symbolism of food to characterize Democrats as scolds, busybodies, and elitists. What Americans eat has been difficult to untangle from politics ever since. 

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• SOURCE: The Progressive
  12/5/2022
  

  The Culture War on Public Education

  by Peter Greene

  The multifront culture war beseiging schools has one unifying principle: undermining trust in public schools so they can be privatized, without regard for the best interests of children. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  9/28/2022
  

  This Conservative Thinks TPUSA is a Dangerous Turn Toward Campus McCarthyism

  by Jonathan Marks

  Turning Point USA is now a $40 million a year behemoth. Its influence is steering campus conservative culture to the conspiratorial and extreme, "more Alex Jones than Allan Bloom."

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• SOURCE: Observer
  9/15/2022
  

  What "Parental Rights" Debates are Getting Wrong

  by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

  The success of the right-wing Moms For Liberty organization in raising fears of critical race theory and gender ideology obscure other historical models of parental activism; a cartoonish image of parents as reactionaries prevents dialogue that can get parents productively involved. 

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• SOURCE: The Racket
  9/1/2022
  

  Why the Right Hates History Now

  by Jonathan M. Katz

  Conservative intellectuals like L. Brent Bozell used to claim the authority of history because the saw it as a set of texts that affirmed the right of men like them to rule. Now that the field has changed, pundits like Bret Stephens have little use for it. 

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  6/30/2022
  

  One Absurdity of Texas's Divisive Concepts Law? Call to Rename Slave Trade as "Involuntary Relocation"

  A working group proposed the change for second grade social studies to the Texas State Board of Education under the shadow of legal jeopardy educators and school systems face under a new law that makes it unclear how the subject of slavery can be taught.

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• SOURCE: ProPublica
  6/29/2022
  

  The Other Cancel Culture: A University Administration Caves to a Conservative Crusade

  The Idaho Freedom Foundation has lobbied state legislators to use the leverage of the higher education budget to attack everything from diversity-related courses to affirmative action to an indigenous land acknowledgement in Boise State's virtual commencement.