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How Will K-12 Book Bans Impact Higher Ed?

Social media are enabling like-minded parents to network and amplify calls to remove books from schools and libraries. Experts argue that parents' success will fail children's intellectual development and college readiness. 

The Tip of the Iceberg at Harvard?

Just after 38 Harvard faculty penned an open letter of support for Professor John Comaroff, a lawsuit by three graduate students against him and the university was announced. The allegations describe a repeated pattern of harassment and institutional protection for an abuser.

Betty Davis, Pioneering Queen of Funk, Dies at 77

Her brief marriage to jazz great Miles Davis and ultimate withdrawal from the music business have overshadowed Betty Davis's legacy as a songwriter and performer with lasting influence beyond her album sales. 

The Voting Rights Act is in Real Trouble

Since the 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court has held that states must create districts where minority voters have a reasonable chance of electing their candidate of choice. SCOTUS is poised to overthrow that standard, gutting another provision of the Voting Rights Act. 

The Paradox of Sourness

Of all the major taste categories, the relationship between human thriving and sensing sourness is the least understood. 

NC Elections Board Affirms it has Power to Bar Rep. Cawthorn from Ballot over Jan. 6 Actions

Without stating whether such action would proceed, North Carolina's elections authority affirmed that it has the power to bar Rep. Madison Cawthorn from seeking reelection if his actions on January 6 are determined to amount to support for insurrection. 

How Charlie Kirk's "America First" School Chain Plan Collapsed

An Arizona company thought it could rake in $40 million a year in revenues by operating schools promoted by the conservative agitator, but withdrew as experts warned of ideological influence and the possibility the venture was a cash-in on a hot culture war issue. 

What About Black Students' Discomfort?

Post columnist Jonathan Capehart points out a flagrant oversight in the recent state bills to ban "uncomfortable" discussions of racism in history and social studies classes. 

"I Swore an Oath": Professor's Plea to Testify Against the State of Florida

The University of Florida claimed it was a conflict of interest for Michael McDonald to work as a paid consultant on a voting rights case while on the UF payroll. But he wasn't allowed to take unpaid leave to testify. 

Women in Tech have been Pulling the Second Shift for Decades

“The greatest trick that capitalism ever pulled was convincing the world that what women do in the home isn’t work,” says Joy Rankin, a historian of computing.

Law Profs: How Progressives Can Take Back the Constitution

by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath

Like in the New Deal era, courts are thwarting the will of many Americans and the other branches of government to protect oligarchy. Today's progressives need to remember how their forebears fought back by contrasting concentrated wealth to the guarantee of a "republican form of government" the constituiton offers.

DeSantis Tears at the Seams of His Diverse State with Fight on "Woke" Schools

The governor's efforts to attack what he calls "wokeness" in Florida schools is putting Ron DeSantis on a collision course with millions of teachers, students and residents in a state where multiculturalism has been part of the past and is the reality of the present. 

Recent Actions by the University of Florida are Part of a Long History of Collusion Against Faculty

The Johns Committee of the 1950s and 1960s investigated UF faculty on behalf of the Florida legislature. Their brief was to connect communism and the civil rights movement; they ended up engineering the firing of 15 professors for their sexual orientation.

Todd Gitlin's Work Against the Dark

by Jeffrey C. Isaac

As an activist and later a chronicler of Students for a Democratic Society, Todd Gitlin shaped the path and the legacy of the New Left. 

Is "Cancel Culture" an Existential Threat to America or a Moral Panic?

by Michael Hobbes

Podcaster and moral panic debunker Michael Hobbes asks what's really happening with the current "cancel culture" uproar. 

National Archive Had to Retrieve White House Records from Mar-a-Lago

In an odd twist that no one could have seen coming, the Trump administration appears to have violated legal requirements for the preservation and security of presidential records. 

Baseball and the Unspeakable

As history teachers struggle with how to handle racist slurs in primary sources, an unexpected remark from a ballplayer in 1938 illustrates that this struggle isn't new. Columnist Neil Steinberg asks if making words unspeakable blows up in the faces of teachers more often than bigots.

"He Never Stopped Ripping Things Up": Trump's Habitual Document Destruction

Donald Trump's personal defiance of the Presidential Records Act appears to have been widespread, purposeful, and illegal. 

The Fate of Richmond's Confederate Monuments Lies with a Black Organization – As it Should Be

Columnist Michael Paul Williams writes that the decision to turn Confederate memorial statues over to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia shows the arc of the universe bending toward justice, but taking an occasional turn through irony. 

For Trump and Trumpists, the Law is Always White

by Melissa Gira Grant

In singling out the Black elected officials who thwarted his bid to steal the election and are investigating his political and business affairs, Trump evoked the Reconstruction-era rhetoric of white southerns under attack, which, as Eric Foner wrote, justified a massive wave of racist political violence.