BY RUSSELL RICKFORD This article was originally published by Black Perspectives, and is reposted here with permission. Black Perspectives is a project of the African-American Intellectual History Society. Russell Rickford is an associate professor of history at Cornell University. He is the author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN It was a tale of two speeches. Yesterday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos addressed the right-wing American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC) meeting in Denver, where she accused teacher unions of being “defenders of the status quo” who care only about “school systems” and not about individual children. Just hours earlier Randi…
BY HANK REICHMAN Earlier today Martin Kich posted a piece on legislation being considered in Congress that, according to an account by Glen Greenwald, “would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel.” While I think this legislation is unnecessary, ill-advised and frustratingly vague, I am skeptical that it is, as Marty argues,…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for the Intercept, Glen Greenwald reports: The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel. The U.K. has enacted a series of measures designed to outlaw such activism. In the…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH At first glance, I thought that this might be a video of a lively discussion at this year’s annual meeting: As the video captioning makes clear, a debate about a massive infrastructure bill in the Taiwanese legislature degenerated into a partisan melee. I have checked several sources, and I have…
BY MARTIN KICH The Trump Administration’s “Made in America Week” is a cruel con on the working-class Americans who voted for him—and not just because almost all Trump, Inc., products continue to be produced by cheap foreign labor. It is an insult to the intelligence working-class Americans because it ignores the very obvious reality that…
BY HANK REICHMAN Although Americans overall believe by a 55-36 percent margin that colleges and universities have a positive rather than a negative effect on “the way things are going in this country,” self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45%…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The following item appeared in CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter for Monday, July 3, 2017: Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Fox & Friends” and was asked about the tweet Trump posted depicting himself metaphorically body slamming CNN. She retreated to a familiar White House talking point: the media is too focused on Trump’s tweets, not…
