The Roundup Top Ten for December 9, 2022
The Blindness of the Supreme Court's "Colorblindness"by Drew Gilpin Faust"Affirmative action opened a door I would walk through.... My professors, soon to be my colleagues, could imagine me among them because the very notion of women faculty had been given a legitimacy and a thinkability." |
The Biggest Threat to America's Stability is the Class Divideby Kim Phillips-FeinWe mistakenly bemoan "polarization" instead of reckoning with the economic power of radical right-wing elites, who have the resources to fund growing organizations, and the growing number of people disaffected from the social order who are susceptible to their messages. |
Mythmaking in Manhattan: 1776 and Santa Clausby Benjamin L. CarpContemporary New York elites downplayed the possibility that rebellious colonists set the Great Fire of New York in 1776; the same people were responsible for the modern myth of Santa Clause. The connections between the two are surprising. |
The Racist Origins of Georgia's Runoff Systemby Steven F. LawsonRunoff elections were installed in Georgia to ensure that Black voters could not elect their preferred candidates, allowing white voters a second chance to consolidate support around white candidates. |
The UC Grad Worker Strike is the Most Important Labor Action in History of Higher Edby Nelson LichtensteinThe strike aims not only at raising the pay of graduate workers and postdocs, but reversing the austerity politics that have gutted California's public higher education and created a climate of precarity for intellectual workers in the system. |
Libertarianism's Philosophers Come Out Worse For Wearby Rebecca Brenner GrahamA fellowship at a leading libertarian institute convinced the author that the movement sees its luminaries as icons, not as historical figures. |
Qatar's World Cup Echoes Brutal American Labor Historyby Jason SteinhauerExposés of the brutal conditions faced by migrant laborers who built Qatar's World Cup facilities echoes the history of American public works, where workers' bodies and lives were subordinated to budgets and timetables. |
Getting History Right Means Paying Attention to Pronounsby Lora BurnettThe pronouns of history are "they, them and theirs," not "we, us and ours." Reactionaries want to dissolve the difference students need to understand the past critically. |
A Medical Historian Confronts Her Own Diagnosisby Lindsey Fitzharris"The experience has got me thinking about the women who came before me and how their pain and suffering accelerated medical advancements from which I am benefiting." |
How Freaked Out Should Professors Be About Artificial Intelligence Language Tech?by John WarnerChatGPT can crank out essays full of plausible "content," but it can't engage in contextualization, analysis, or intuitive connection of ideas. The problem it reveals is an education system where outcomes have overtaken process and students are encouraged to write mechanically. |