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The Roundup Top Ten for June 16, 2023

Lady Vols Country

by Jessica Wilkerson

The author remembers Pat Summitt's championship women's basketball teams at the University of Tennessee as a demonstration of how sports "encompass a battleground for determining how gender manifests in the world, how women and girls can use their bodies, and who can access self-determination."

The Targeting of Bail Funds is an old Weapon in the Civil Rights Backlash

by Say Burgin and Jeanne Theoharis

Atlanta and Georgia law enforcement's arrest of the leaders of a fund dedicated to securing bail for protesters opposing "Cop City" shows that protest movements have long depended on bailing out activists, and the forces opposed to change have long known it. 

The Lesson of Germany's Most Famous Trans Woman? Freedom Requires Joy

by Samuel Huneke

As anti-trans and homophobic legislation and rhetoric pervade the political arena, this Pride month may feel less than celebratory. A historian of queer life under both Nazism and East German Communism says it's a mistake to embrace doom. 

Is Oklahoma's Religious Charter School Good News for Secularists?

by Jacques Berlinerblau

Oklahoma recently approved the first publicly-funded religious charter school in the United States. Is it possible that this ambitious move will backfire when schools representing all denominations and faiths demand equal treatment? 

Pat Robertson Helped Make Intolerance a Permanent Plank in the Republican Platform

by Anthea Butler

Pat Robertson lived at the intersection of public piety, apocalyptic rhetoric, and the pursuit of profit, and did as much as anyone to make the vilifiation of opponents as threats to the moral fiber of the nation a part of conservative politics. 

DEI Education in America Goes Back to the 18th Century

by Bradford Vivian

The pioneering Quaker educator Benezet implemented student-centered reforms that accounted for differences in background and experiences of injustice, reflecting the spirit, if not the language, of contemporary DEI principles in education and teacher training. 

Turning Universities Red

by Steve Fraser

American colleges were built to serve the children of elites and maintain the social order they dominated. Despite fears of liberal indoctrination on campus, growing labor movements including all workers are the only way that colleges will really make a more egalitarian society. 

Indoctrination in Schools? How About a Century of Capitalist Propaganda?

by Jennifer Berkshire

A century ago, the electric power industry faced an existential crisis as government mulled over public rural electrification programs. Their solution was to provide teachers and schools with propaganda for the magic of private enterprise, the first wave of business's efforts to control curriculum.

The Forgotten History of Japanese Internment in Hawaii

by Olivia Tasevski

Although Hawaii is associated with the United States being victimized by foreign attack, the history of internment of Japanese Americans on the islands should also remind us of the U.S. government's human rights abuses. 

The Daiquiri is the History of American Empire in a Cocktail

by Ian Seavey

"The daiquiri rose to prominence as a direct result of the American imperial project in the Caribbean during the burgeoning classic cocktail age from 1860 to 1920."