The Roundup Top Ten for June 2, 2023
Determined to Remember: Harriet Jacobs and Slavery's Descendantsby Koritha MitchellPublic history sites have the potential to spark intellectual engagement because when they make embodied connections between people and the sites they visit—even when those connections evoke the cruelty of the past. |
Commemoration of the Tulsa Massacre Has Put Symbolism Over Justice for the Victimsby Victor Luckerson"The neighborhood’s historical fame has become a kind of albatross slung over Black Tulsans’ necks, as efforts at building concrete pathways toward justice are buried under hollow symbolism." |
Dodgers' Controversial Invite to "Drag Nuns" Group Highlights Catholics' Selective Sense of Faithby Kaya OakesCatholic groups expressing outrage at the team's recognition of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence overlook the centrality of mercy in the Gospels. |
Will the Debt Ceiling Deal Derail Environmental Justice?by Robert Bullard and Larry ShapiroThe idea of permitting reform—easing the environmental constraints on building new energy infrastructure—has been a bargaining chip in the debt ceiling negotiations. Reforms could help bring a green energy grid online, but it could also put more polluting industry in poor and minority communities. |
The Right to Dress However You Wantby Kate RedburnNew anti-transgender laws should prompt a legal response, but they also require a fundamental recognition: laws prescribing gendered dress codes infringe on everyone's freedom of expression. |
When Witches Took Flightby Chris HalstedThe modern association of witches and flight in fact emerged from a relatively obscure corner of medieval church writings that gained prominence in the context of contemporary political anxieties about women's political influence. |
Why is the American Right so Thirsty for Generalissimo Franco?by David Austin WalshIncreasingly "respectable" conservative intellectuals are openly advocating for a dictator to enforce cultural traditionalism as part of a battle to control the politics of elite institutions. |
Amid Anti-Woke Panic, Interdisciplinary Programs Inherently Vulnerableby Timothy Messer-KruseBecause standards of academic freedom like those of the AAUP tie that freedom to expertise within recognized professional communities of scholars, those doing interdisciplinary work and working in programs like ethnic studies have less institutional protection against political attacks. |
Can We Solve the Civics Education Crisis?by Glenn C. Altschuler and David WippmanUniversal schooling created the potential for a unifying civic curriculum that, paradoxically, has been the subject of perpetual disagreement regarding its contents. A recent bipartisan roadmap for civics education that makes those disagreements central to the subject matter may be the only way to move forward. |
WGA Strike Latest Example of Cultural Workers Joining Together as Entertainment Technology Changesby Vaughn JoyThe development of television and online content have historically forced multiple Hollywood unions to join forces to secure a share of the returns of new techology or risk being frozen out entirely. |