Departments

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Cancel Culture

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    3/26/2021

    The Social Justice Purge at Idaho Colleges

    Concerns about free speech on campus should consider the Idaho legislature's recent attacks on "critical race theory" as an effort to use education funds to restrict academic freedom, says NYT opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg.

  • 3/21/2021

    The Same Mistakes Twice? Teaching Dr. Seuss

    by Walter Kamphoefner

    Step back from the current media controversy and consider how Theodor Geisel's cartooning illustrate the contradictory nature of America's posture toward foreign and domestic racism in the World War II era, a pivotal moment for the nation that must be understood in all its complication. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    3/16/2021

    Why We Should Cancel The Phrase ‘Cancel Culture’

    by Max Boot

    There are legitimate and important arguments about how much society should tolerate offensive or controversial speech, and how much the markets or public opinion should sanction individuals for what they say. The current "cancel culture" outrage on the right has nothing to do with these arguments. 

  • SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
    3/9/2021

    Dr. Philip Nel on the Legacy of Dr. Seuss

    "A lot of people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that an artist and a writer can be both a genius and a racist, can do brilliant work and be profoundly damaging. Those are not mutually exclusive categories."

  • SOURCE: Tampa Bay News Weekly
    3/3/2021

    Historian Unjustly Forced to Walk the Plank

    by Michael E. Carter

    When a historian published an editoral about the history of piracy near Tampa Bay during Super Bowl Week, right-wing media took an effort to present historical knowledge as evidence of a liberal culture war, subjecting them to harassment and threats in their own cancel culture campaign. Is the goal to intimidate historians from weighing in? 

  • SOURCE: Slate
    3/3/2021

    How Dr. Seuss Responded to Critics Who Called Out His Racism

    by Rebecca Onion

    If anyone wants to examine the particulars of Dr. Seuss Enterprises' decision to discontinue the publication of six of the late author's books before jumping in to culture war combat, writer Rebecca Onion's interview with children's literature scholar Philip Nel is a good place to start. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/26/2021

    The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness

    Columnist Michelle Goldberg examines the roots of the academic Critical Race Theory movement, and concludes that while its practitioners are sometimes willing to prioritize justice over free speech, the right today simply wants to suppress ideas it fears.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    2/19/2021

    Rush Limbaugh and the Nineties Roots of “Cancel Culture”

    by Alex Pareene

    Rush Limbaugh's career ended in a siloed media environment where the right occupied its own channels. But it began in a mainstream media that was eager to profit by marketing his brand of down-punching reactionary grievance. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    8/28/2020

    Whose Anger Counts?

    by Whitney Phillips

    Many complaints about "cancel culture" depend on a false equivalency between left and right forms of internet argument that ignores the nature of far-right online harassment as a tool of power.