The Roundup Top Ten for March 25, 2022
Nuclear Power Plants Aren't Made to Survive Warby Kate Brown and Susan Solomon"It is difficult to believe, but in all the decades of imagining nuclear-emergency scenarios, engineers did not design for an event so human and inevitable as war." |
Who Gets to Be American?by Jonna PerrilloJohann Tschinkel, a Nazi scientist, was recruited by the United States after the war. His reflections on his educational experiences in Germany and those of his children in segregated American schools, offer a warning about the efforts to control the social studies curriculum today. |
Does Academic Freedom Require Tolerance for Prejudice or Falsehood by Faculty?by Michael Bérubé and Jennifer RuthAcademic freedom and free speech aren't the same thing, and it's time for professional standards in academia to draw boundaries around bigotry and falsehood as potentially disqualifying for faculty members. |
Now is the Time to Revisit Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianismby Anne ApplebaumThe political and economic supports for stability and prosperity in the developed world are more precarious than ever; the revival of authoritarianism that Arendt predicted may be at hand, making her work more vital than ever. |
Does Zelensky's Image Upend Stereotypes about Jewish Masculinity?by Miriam Eve MoraThe emergence of Ukraine's Jewish president as an exemplar of wartime valor challenges longstanding stereotypes about Jewish men. |
The University in Ruins: Against Farcical "Innovations"by Johann N. Neem"It’s not clear what role universities should play in society, and to what or to whom they are accountable, other than their corporate interests." |
Black Mayors, Black Politics, and the Gary Conventionby Brandon StokesThe National Black Political Convention of 1972 demonstrated that Black political power had been linked to urban governments, foreshadowing challenges of disinvestment, white flight, and exclusion from broader coalitions in national politics. |
America *IS* Exceptional. It's Not a Good Thingby Aviva ChomskyThe climate emergency requires Americans to reject the nation's exceptional consumption of resources and hoarding of wealth in favor of a political economy that enables a global good life for all within the limits of the planet. |
Get Ready Now for the Storm of Takes Coming at America's 250th Birthdayby John Garrison MarksMajor anniversaries tend to crystallize debates about how Americans learn and remember history. America's 250th will follow a presidential election and years of political argument about the teaching of history and make all parties eager to win the symbolic war. |
Questing for the Pastby Katherine ChurchillA nameplate in an 1864 edition of Gawain and the Green Knight led the author to discover the connections between a mythic medieval past and the Lost Cause ideology of Jim Crow Virginia. |