BY BRIAN C. MITCHELL Thirty years ago, we all understood what the term “culture wars” meant. It was about Mapplethorpe vs. Helms and teaching dead white men vs. revisionist and black history. There were lines. Whichever side you were on, you knew where you stood. The battle lines changed and have morphed into something quite…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN The following statement was released by the American Society of Journalists and Authors: A free press is one of the standards of American democracy. In the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Founding Fathers guaranteed the rights of a free press and free speech. Any attempt to…
BY HANK REICHMAN My title may be — indeed, probably is, alas — overoptimistic, but the rapid-fire sequence of events surrounding putrid provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, including the revoking of his invitation to speak at CPAC, the loss of his lucrative book deal, and finally, today, his forced resignation from Breitbart News, the repulsive fake news…
BY HANK REICHMAN I usually try to limit my posts to this blog to topics more or less directly related to higher education. However, given the many questions swirling around President Trump’s relations with Russia and Vladimir Putin and the importance to higher education of how Trump’s presidency develops, I thought I would share some…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Timothy Snyder is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is the author of six highly praised works in European history, including most recently the award-winning Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Black Earth: The Holocaust…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Here are some excerpts from a scathing article in Roll Call on the Senate’s silencing of Elizabeth Warren. Written by Mary C. Curtis, the article is titled “GOP Seeks a Safe Space from the Words of Coretta Scott King,” highlighting the hypocrisy in the Far right’s absolute disdain for the creation…
BY HANK REICHMAN Fox News’s Tucker Carlson once had a totally undeserved reputation as some sort of “thoughtful” and urbane conservative. But check out the latest from this button-down bigot: TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): If you’ve been awake at any point in the last 50 years, you know that American colleges are basically pretty liberal. But…
BY MARTIN KICH Each week The Hill distributes a newsletter called Sunday Show Wrap-Up. Ahead of this week’s shows, I think that it is instructive to review the headlines and summaries from last week, collectively gathered under the heading “Spotlight Shines on Trump Travel Ban.” Please skim the list, which sets up some extended commentary…
BY HANK REICHMAN I thought of the old adage in my title when I read the following in today’s San Francisco Chronicle: UC Berkeley police are investigating the theft of names and emails of people interested in joining the Berkeley College Republicans, the student group whose invitation to Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart News prompted a…
BY MARTIN KICH If you have not seen Tavis Smiley’s interview with the linguist George Lakoff, it is very much worth watching. Lakoff offers much insight into how progressives need to frame issues in order to reach the broadest possible spectrum of voters: http://www.pbs.org/video/2365951602/. Here are the opening paragraphs of Lakoff’s blog post “Understanding Trump,”…