Newsweek reports that a rightwing group called “Accuracy in Media” or AIM has been surreptitiously filming educators as they explain how they evade state laws banning discussions of “critical race theory” and other controversial topics.
Their goal appears to be to smear public schools and educators, which advances the privatization agenda.
One educator talks of how a ban on teaching critical race theory could be skirted. Another boasts of how parents can be “tricked” over what goes in the school syllabus.
Both were recorded on hidden cameras by a conservative group that has been releasing videos periodically on the internet—and noting the fact that the videos have sometimes caused concerned parents to flood school board meetings.
As school battles take a central role at the grassroots of America’s culture wars over race, gender, language, COVID-19 rules and more, the group is going all out to draw attention to what progressives are saying, sometimes prompting accusations of unethical behavior with its recordings made under false pretenses….
“We’ll keep doing it until school officials stop lying. Public school administrators are not entitled to a monopoly on deception,” AIM President Adam Guillette, who joined from Project Veritas three years ago, told Newsweek…
AIM has been focusing largely on schools.
In January, it released a tranche of hidden-camera interviews. In Ohio, for example, there has been a so-far unsuccessful effort to ban the teaching of critical race theory and transgender issues to schoolchildren.
Critical race theory (widely known as CRT) is an academic framework based on the idea that there is systemic racism in U.S. institutions. It has become a hot issue for conservatives, who say it is divisive, while progressives say the controversy was stirred up by the right…
Progressives similarly take issue with conservative efforts to stop the teaching of young children about transgender issues in the name of child protection, saying that by doing so the LGBTQ community is being targeted.
Guillette says that AIM’s cameras recorded school employees suggesting that they’ll teach whatever they like, regardless of what laws are passed.
In one video, Matthew Boaz, the executive director of diversity, equity and inclusion for Upper Arlington Schools says to undercover AIM activists: “You can pass a bill that you can’t teach Critical Race Theory in a classroom, but if you didn’t cover programming, or you didn’t cover extracurricular activities, or anything like that, that message might still get out. Oops! There will be a way.”
Upper Arlington Schools did not respond to Newsweek’s emailed request for comment. An automated message from Boaz’s email said “I have requested leave and will be away from my office and email”.
Guillette wouldn’t say who he and others at AIM pretend to be when speaking to their subjects. “It would be a lot more difficult if they knew our tactics. I can confirm that the camera was not behind the salt shaker,” he said.
That said, a day after the AIM video hit the Internet, an email sent to parents from Upper Arlington Interim Superintendent Kathy Jenney said, in part, “We know the video was recorded with a hidden camera and under false pretenses by a man and woman who claimed to be interested in enrolling a student. The couple guided the conversation to focus on the topic of critical race theory.”
The video dropped in mid January, and at the following school board meeting about 40 people spoke on the matter, about 15 of whom were upset about what they had seen while the rest were there to support Boaz….
Writing in the London Daily, Nate White explains why the British don’t like Donald Trump. It’s not his politics; the Brits have elected conservative politicians repeatedly. It’s him they don’t like: his character, personality, and essence.
White writes:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
The Daily Beast posted startling news from a Sarasota police report. The Ziegler power couple sought out women for their threesomes. Bridget Ziegler was a co-founder of Moms for Liberty and an outspoken critic of LGBTQ+; Christian Ziegler was chairman of the state GOP. They liked threesomes.
Newly released documents say Moms For Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler and her GOP chairman husband went “on the prowl” in Sarasota bars to find women to have sex with.
Text messages quoted in a Sarasota Police Department (SPD) memo that was obtained by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune revealed how Ziegler sent her husband, Christian, hunting for a third sexual partner at local bars and directed him to send photos of possible hits. She allegedly told him to pretend to take pictures of his beer while photographing the women so he wouldn’t get caught sneaking pictures of them…
The Zieglers, a local power couple in Florida Republican politics, were at the center of a sex abuse scandal after a woman alleged that Christian had raped her while she was involved in a three-way relationship with the pair. They were both ousted from their respective positions at the Florida GOP and the conservative Leadership Institute, although charges were never formally issued. Bridget Ziegler also faced a barrage of attacks for her “hypocrisy,” since she had taken a very public anti-LGBTQ+ stance but had engaged in sexual relationships with women.
Wary of what further revelations would cause for their torpedoed reputations, Bridget Ziegler had sued to keep the records kept by SPD and the State Attorney’s Office sealed from the public. That case is pending in Sarasota County, court records show.
I received this article from my friend James Harvey late last night. He remarked on the hypocrisy of some of the Christian Right’s moral leaders. There was Jerry Falwell, his wife Becki, and a 20-year-old pool boy. There was the president of the ultra-conservative Hillsdale College, George C. Roche III, who led the college for nearly three decades. He allegedly had an affair with his daughter-in-law over 19 years; she committed suicide. Hundreds, thousands of religious leaders—the people who are supposed to teach us about morality and ethics—have been accused of pedophilia (google “pastors or priests or rabbis accused of pedophilia” or “sex abuse”).
As young Georgians, we share the belief that all children should have the freedom to pursue their dreams and that our futures depend on receiving a great education. To get there, we must equip every public school with the resources to deliver a quality education for every child, no matter their color, their ZIP code or how much money their parents make.
Unfortunately, we find ourselves in yet another moment of massive resistance to public education with increasingly aggressive efforts on behalf of the state of Georgia to privatize our public schools and return us to a two-tiered system marked by racial segregation. As public school students in high schools across Georgia, we believe that the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education is not just a cause for celebration but an invitation to recommit ourselves to the promise of a public education system that affirms an essential truth: Schools separated by race will never be equal.
Even as our country celebrates the anniversary of Brown this month, we know that our state actively worked to obstruct desegregation, which did not meaningfully take place for another 15 years. Seven years after the Supreme Court’s ruling that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, the Georgia General Assembly revoked its school segregation law in 1961. Another 10 years later, a court-ordered desegregation plan finally took effect — in 1971.
In 2024, educators across Georgia, from Albany to Atlanta, from Valdosta to Vinings, from Dalton to Dublin, and everywhere in between, are working hard to provide students like us with a quality education, empowering us to build a brighter future in Georgia for all. Yet politicians in the Georgia Capitol seem dedicated to resegregating and privatizing our public schools by taking tax dollars meant to support all of the students in our communities and giving it to unaccountable voucher programs that favor the wealthiest few.
The long and shameful history of vouchers is something that politicians who forced them to become law this year don’t want us to know. In many cities, public education funding was funneled to private “segregation academies” where white children received better resources than children of color. Instead of making our public schools stronger and moving us all forward together, these politicians are defunding our public schools by more than $100 million and working to drag us backward to the days when Georgia was still resisting court-ordered desegregation.
We want our leaders to get serious about what works: fully funding our public schools so that we can improve our neighborhood schools. That’s where 1.7 million public school students in Georgia learn and grow, and where we all can have a say. Research all across the country shows that voucher programs will not improve student outcomes in Georgia, but we know what will best serve students.
Young Georgians like us need investments in our public schools so we have the opportunity to learn and thrive. Gov. Brian P. Kemp has $16 billion of unspent public funds — enough to cover the costs of funding our schools and investing in our communities. Georgia has one of the highest overall rates of child poverty in the nation. Yet our state is one of only six states that provides schools with no specific funding to support children living in poverty. By refusing to give our schools what they need, we are setting our schools and our students up for failure.
Politicians brag about Georgia’s teachers being among the highest paid in the South even though they know they have created a crisis around public education that puts our teachers, our parents and students like us in an impossible position. Right now, nearly every school district in Georgia operates with a waiver to avoid adhering to classroom size restrictions because they cannot afford to hire enough teachers. And though the American School Counseling Association recommends a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:250, Georgia mandates a counselor-to-student ratio of 1:450 students. Many schools cannot even meet that ratio because of a lack of funding. All of that is by design because politicians have refused to update Georgia’s school funding formula for nearly 40 years.
This year, as we celebrate 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education, we invite every Georgian to join us in our call for fully funded neighborhood public schools so that every Georgia student has an inviting classroom, a well-rounded curriculum, small class sizes and the freedom to learn.
The writers are members of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition. Nia G. Batra is a sophomore at Decatur High School. Hunter Buchheit is a senior at Walton High School. Ava Bussey is a senior at Marietta High School. Keara Field is a senior at McDonough High School. Saif Hasan is a junior at Lambert High School. Jessica Huang is a senior at Peachtree Ridge High School. Shivi Mehta is a junior at the Alliance Academy for Innovation. Bryan Nguyen is a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology. Rhea Sethi is a senior at North Gwinnett High School. Maariya Sheikh is a senior at Campbell High School. Harrison Tran is a junior at Jenkins High School. Sharmada Venkataramani is a sophomore at South Forsyth High School. Thomas Botero Mendieta is a junior at Archer High School. Kennedy Young is a senior at Campbell High School.
Steve Suitts wrote an important essay on the continuity between the “school choice” movement of today and its roots in the fight against the Brown decision in the 1950s.
Charter schools and vouchers are not innovative. Their most predictable outcome is not “better education,” but segregated schools.
Suitts’ essay delves into the issue, state by state. I encourage you to open the link and read it in full. I skipped over large and important sections. Read them.
He begins:
Overview
On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education—the US Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s public schools—Steve Suitts reveals an emerging, seismic shift in how southern states in the United States are leading the nation in adopting universal private school vouchers. Suitts warns that this new “school choice” movement will reestablish a dual school system not unlike the racially separate, unequal schools which segregationists attempted to preserve in the 1960s using vouchers.
INTRODUCTION
On the seventieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in the nation’s public schools, the states of the southern US are pushing to reestablish publicly financed, dual school systems—one primarily for higher-income and white children and the other primarily for lower-income and minority children. This seismic shift in how states fund K–12 education through universal vouchers isn’t confined to the South. But it is centered among the states that once mandated racially separate, unequal schools and where segregationists in the 1960s attempted to use private school vouchers to evade the watershed US Supreme Court decision.
More than thirty-five states have created voucher programs to send public dollars to private schools. At least nineteen, including most in the South, have adopted or are on a path to enact legislation making state-funded “Educational Savings Accounts” (ESAs)—the newest type of voucher approach—available to all or most families who forego public schools. These families can use the funds to send their children to almost any K–12 private school, including home-schooling, or purchase a wide range of educational materials and services, such as tutoring, summer camps, and counseling.
In recent times, private school vouchers were pitched to the public for the purpose of giving a targeted group of disadvantaged children new educational options, but legislatures are now expanding eligibility and funding for vouchers to include advantaged students. By adopting universal or near universal eligibility for ESAs, states will be obligating tens of billions of tax dollars to finance private schooling while creating a voucher system for use by affluent families with children already attending or planning to attend private school.
States are rushing to enact ESAs while they still have the last of huge federal COVID appropriations to distribute among public schools. This timing allows ESAs’ sponsors—Republican legislative leaders and governors—to entice once-reluctant, rural legislators to support vouchers. It also camouflages the severe fiscal impact this scheme will have on routinely underfunded public schools after the special federal funds run out.
The states adopting ESAs are also structuring this emerging, publicly funded, dual system so that private schools and homeschooling remain free of almost all regulations, academic standards, accountability, and oversight. These sorts of rules and regulations are always imposed by state legislatures on public schools and are understood as essential to protect students and to advance learning. Even as legislatures are adding restrictive laws on how local public schools teach topics involving race, sex, ethnicity, and gender they are providing new state funding for private schools and home-schooling that will enable racist, sexist, and other bigoted teaching.
If state legislatures succeed in establishing and broadening this dual, tax-funded system of schools, the tremors will transform the landscape of US elementary and secondary education for decades to come. Calling for “freedom of choice,” a battle cry first voiced by segregationists who fought to overturn the Brown decision,1 predominantly white Republicans will take states back to a future of separate and unequal education.
THE UNIVERSAL VOUCHER SYSTEM
By the seventieth anniversary of Brown, five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) have enacted ESA programs that allow all or a vast majority of families with school-age children to send their children to private schools with state funds that equal or closely match the states’ per pupil expenditures for public schools. South Carolina adopted a “pilot” ESA last year, and a bill making its program permanent has already passed one chamber. The lower house of the Louisiana legislature passed a bill for a statewide universal ESA program to start next year, but the state senate is likely to delay adoption for another year to confirm estimated costs. Both states have governors who are likely to push adoption again next year.2
The Tennessee legislature adjourned in April without passing either of two pending universal ESA bills—only because Governor Bill Lee and legislative leaders failed to agree on which voucher bill to enact. They vow to pass legislation next session. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott used campaign funds from a Pennsylvania billionaire in the state’s Republican primary to defeat a handful of legislators who blocked his ESA bill last year. Abbott expects to defeat the two remaining state house members who failed to vote for his legislation—giving him the number he needs to pass his bill, while sending a political message that will keep his supporters in line…3
The historical context is shameful. Five of the southern states that now have universal vouchers also enacted open-ended vouchers in the 1960s—attempting to defeat Brown’s mandate for school desegregation. All but three of the states that have already embraced publicly financed ESAs were the only states authorizing segregated public schools on the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision.9
The fiscal impact of this rush to fund private schooling will be devastating to public schools. In 2018, all fifty states allocated $2.6 billion to finance private school vouchers. In 2021, legislatures increased the total amount to $3.3 billion and more recently to over $6 billion. If the eleven southern states enact the bills currently adopted or pending in their legislatures, their total funding for vouchers will be as much as $6.8 billion in 2025–26 and, according to independent estimates, as much as $20 billion for private schooling in 2030. This sum would equal the total state funds to public schools among six southern states in 2021.10
In 1950, about 400,000 students in the South attended private schools. By 2021-22, the number of private school students was about 1.8 million.
In 2021-22, 38.9% of white students attended public schools, and 63% enrolled in private schools.
AS VOUCHERS SPREAD, BROWN’S PROMISE DIES
During the last seventy years, the nation’s public schools have struggled in meeting the promise of Brown, despite clear proof that racially integrated, well-funded schools improve outcomes for Black children.39 This promise has been especially important to the South, where the states’ first education laws prohibited Black persons from being taught to read or write; where racially segregated schools offered children of color an inferior education across more than a half century. Due to stubborn, racially defined housing patterns, increasing class disparities, adverse, even hostile Supreme Court decisions, a lack of local, interracial community support, and, as recent research confirms, the growth of school choice, public schools continue to face far too many hurdles in providing all children with a good education.40
Mural by Michael Young celebrating the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision, in the Kansas State Capitol, Topeka, Kansa, May 23, 2019. Photograph by Flickr user Joe Shlabotnik. Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
The South’s new dual school system renounces and annuls the mandates and hopes of Brown v. Board of Education. As universal vouchers spread, Brown’s promise dies. By their design, vouchers are an abandonment of Brown’s goal of equality of educational opportunity.
Reestablishing a dual school system will damage the prospects of a good education for all who attend public schools—not just low-income and minority children. The southern states were not able to finance two separate school systems during the era of segregation, even though Black students received a pittance of funding. Today that inability remains. The South continues to be far behind the rest of the nation in state and local funding of public schools. The new schemes of universal Education Savings Account vouchers will exacerbate the lack of sufficient funds for all except those higher-income families whose school-age children can attend private schools or home-schools and enjoy the enhancements and enriching experience that vouchers will subsidize.
Parents, grandparents, and others who support public schools and the democratic promise of public education must raise our voices against this reactionary movement and in furtherance of the importance of public schools. Like democracy itself, public schools may be the worst system for delivering all children an equal opportunity for a good education—except for all the others. We must not betray or abandon public education if we are committed to the democratic goal of a more perfect union and a good society for all.
After Spectrum News reported that millions of dollars had been sent from Texas charter schools founded by Mike Miles to Colorado charter schools in the same chain, parents and students demanded Miles’ resignation as superintendent of Houston Independent School Disttrict. Elected officials have called for an investigation but recognize that neither the State Commissioner (Mike Morath) nor Governor Abbott are likely to criticize Miles, whom they appointed.
In the letter dated May 15, the Congresswoman refers to recent news stories that reported Ector ISD near Midland, Texas allegedly sent state funds from Texas to Third Future Schools, a charter school operated in Colorado. She requested that an audit be conducted on Ector ISD.
A Spectrum News Texas report highlighted a pair of million-dollar-plus checks allegedly sent from Third Future Schools in Texas to its campuses in Colorado. The report accused Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Milesof sending Texas tax dollars out of state.
Miles has issued a statement responding to the report, saying the report “either intentionally or through gross incompetence, mischaracterized commonplace financial arrangements between charter schools and the charter management organizations that support them.”
Garcia expressed concerns over the financial stability of HISD following last year’s takeover by the state of Texas. This comes after widespread layoffs were announced leading to protests from those affected and HISD families.
The congresswoman also requested the issuance of federal funds by the state from the pandemic that were to be used to supplement public education at HISD be audited.
“It pains me that my home school district has been taken over and is seemingly being intentionally run into the ground and (I) request any additional assistance you can provide to protect our schools and our students,” Garcia said in the letter.
Garcia went on to claim that the state is punishing HISD.
“Houston is a vibrant and diverse community, and our state government is punishing us for that; we need your help,” she said in the letter.
Mike Miles, the Superintendent imposed on the Houston public schools by a state takeover, set up a chain of charter schools in Colorado. His charters are running a big deficit. They are also getting poor academic results. One of them closed.
Miles is still getting paid as a consultant to his charter chain.
When he asked the charter leaders about this transfer, he was told that all the charters are in the same chain, so no problem.
But Texas parents complain that their schools are underfunded. When Shipp interviewed them, they were shocked to hear that their tax dollars were being sent to underwrite the deficit of charters in Colorado.
He promised to reverse all Biden’s efforts to promote clean energy and fight climate change. He said he would open the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic to drilling. Whatever Biden has done to preserve the environment, Trump promised to void.
Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.
Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles…
Anand Giridharadas is a brilliant writer and thinker who blogs at The Ink. In this post, he interviews Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan College in Connecticut, who describes how he has handled student protests without calling in the police or trampling on free speech rights. Just days ago, Roth wrote an article in The New York Times advising that the best college choice is one where you don’t fit in; go outside your comfort zone. Be a nonconformist.
Anand writes:
In recent weeks, the wave of antiwar protest that began at Columbia University spread across the country, as did the backlash against it.
What is right here? Should universities crack down on students who disrupt campus life, even if their cause is just? Are there steps student groups could take to more clearly separate their movements from elements of antisemitism? Can the rest of society muster enough historical memory and thick enough skin to remember that students are often telling us something that we need to hear, even if we don’t want to?
One university leader has been grappling with these questions in an especially thoughtful way, in part because, in addition to running a university, he is a scholar of universities and of education. That grounding shows. Under Michael Roth, Wesleyan University has cut a different path from many campuses, by clearly and calmly reiterating students’ right to protest peacefully, as Roth did in this letter:
The students there know that they are in violation of university rules and seem willing to accept the consequences. The protest has been non-violent and has not disrupted normal campus operations. As long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.
At the same time, Roth has been clear about the importance of keeping people’s focus on the underlying war, not elite campuses; on the very real problem of antisemitic elements in and around the protests; and about the need to sustain campuses as places where students and teachers and others expect a mix of safety and challenge.
We caught up with Roth the other day for a conversation you won’t want to miss if you’ve been following not only the war but the fight over the war and are craving, as we have been, more light and less heat.
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Your statement of Wesleyan’s position on the continuing protests is notable for its simple recognition of the rights and responsibilities of all parties.
Can you talk about the decisions that went into your statement and why such statements have been so rare?
I am happy to talk about my statement, but I really want to emphasize that we need to turn more political energy toward demanding that the U.S. force a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, a return of the hostages, and, then, negotiations toward a sustainable peace.
As for protests at Wesleyan University: We could have immediately closed down the encampment because the protesters hadn’t gotten advance permission for tents, or because they were writing messages on the adjacent buildings in chalk. But in the context of national protest movements, it seemed wrong to me to use “time and place restrictions” other schools have cited as reasons for shutting down protests.
Over the last week, I’ve gotten many notes from alumni, parents, and strangers chastising me for not making the protesters “pay a price” for breaking the rules.
So why haven’t I made them feel those consequences? Cops don’t always give people tickets for going a few miles over the speed limit. Context matters, whatever Congresswoman Elise Stefanik says.
In this case, I knew the students were part of a broad protest movement, and protest movements often put a strain on an institution’s rules. They are meant to do that. The encampment was “non-violent and has not disrupted normal campus operations,” I wrote, and “as long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.” I added that we would “not tolerate intimidation or harassment of students, staff, or faculty,” and that the protesters, as far as I could tell, were not moving in those directions. I want to emphasize that this can change and that if the protesters choose to more seriously disrupt our work as an educational institution, they will face much more significant repercussions.
Last Tuesday we saw two very different conclusions to major campus protests; at Columbia, the administration — claiming it had “no choice” — called in the NYPD, made multiple arrests and cleared the Hamilton Hall occupation and lawn encampment. (Yale, UCLA, and others did similarly.) Reportedly, Columbia has arranged for the NYPD to remain on campus through the conclusion of the term on May 17. On the other hand, student protestors at Brown finally reached an agreement with the Corporation of Brown University to dismantle their encampment in exchange for a vote on divestment from firms connected to the Israeli military campaign. Admittedly, I am asking you to speculate, but can you think through what the process behind these different decisions might have been?
At Columbia, the combination of outside participants, intimidating antisemitic chants, and — most importantly — the destructive occupation of a building necessitated a much stronger response than has been necessary elsewhere. Administrators seemed to judge that the university couldn’t safely continue to operate. If that was the case — and I know there remain significant disputes about the facts — the protesters had to be cleared, and the penalties on offenders, I suspect, will be severe.
At UCLA, early indications are that police allowed counter-protesters to engage in violence. At other schools, students and administrators have been able to decide to do something positive for the situation in Gaza without engaging in empty but symbolically satisfying gestures. Divestment is a distraction. There is little indication that it has the desired effects, even in the long run. Gazans need a ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid now.
I’m curious as to how your scholarly work might have informed your thinking on this. Several of your books speak pretty directly to what’s happening (I think in particular of Beyond the University, Safe Enough Spaces,andThe Student: A Short History). How does your work as a theorist of liberal education figure into your response to these protests?
All my scholarship is animated by a pragmatist approach, which means that I have a general suspicion of abstract principles and a commitment to working through problems so as to be in a better position to pursue one’s most important goals. My work before these education books was heavily influenced by Hegelian and Freudian models of thinking: an expectation that conflict is necessary for any important change and that unconscious motivations are always in play in crises. To put it simply: I expect conflict, and I expect acting out.
I believe that liberal education in America is always connected to civic engagement. We want our students to learn how to be better citizens while they come to understand the ideas and the contexts of whatever field they study. In Safe Enough Spaces, I argue that civic preparedness (to use Danielle Allen’s term) develops when students value free speech and political participation in contexts that prohibit violence and intimidation. Students don’t need to be protected from offensiveness, but they do need to be educated in situations in which they learn to think for themselves in the company of others. That’s what I call “practicing freedom.”
That’s why ideally we can make crisis moments like ours educational for the students. This does not mean we pander to them. On the contrary, they learn from teachers who resist their popular but dumb ideas, and who help students understand better how to pursue meaningful objectives over time.
The House Education Committee has now called three more university presidents — for the first time, three men, and two of them leading public universities: Peter Salovey, president of Yale University; Gene Block, chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles; and Santa Ono, president of the University of Michigan.
It seems quite clear that the committee’s animus towards the elite universities isn’t actually about the threat of antisemitism, protecting free-speech rights, or even ensuring student safety. What do you think the goal actually is for Foxx, Stefanik, and the other Republican members?
Despite my many years working on Freud and psychoanalysis, I don’t understand the deep motivations behind people who on some days cozy up to Replacement Theory and Christian Nationalism and on other days paint themselves as anti-antisemites.
For over a century, one has said that antisemitism is the socialism of fools. Today, anti-antisemitism has become the conservatism of knaves.
The political motivations of extreme right politicians are clear: they are riding the anti-elites train, the wave of rejecting people with expertise and credentials. By attacking so-called cultural elites, the extreme right avoids talking about economic elites. It distracts people with real grievances from the profound issues of inequality that plague this country. Rather than deal with child poverty, the so-called conservatives attack Ivy Leaguers; rather than force billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, they turn our attention to protesters on campus.
Some news coverage has described university actions against protesters as driven by these Congressional hearings. Is that the case? What about donors or boards? Are you feeling any such pressure?
No.
What do you make of the charge that the protesters are antisemitic? Do you have a sense that there are actual connections among opposition to Israeli military action, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism? Or are we seeing a toxic mixture of bad-faith political entrepreneurship and angry, less-than-fully-informed student groups?
Of course, one can be anti-Zionist and not be antisemitic. It is clear that many Jewish students have joined the protests and that one can be very much opposed to the politics of Israel’s government (I am) and not be antisemitic (I am not).
I also think it’s pretty obvious that some of the protesters use antisemitic tropes, and that some of them don’t consider it possible for a Jew to be an innocent civilian. Hamas, which some protesters applaud, is viciously antisemitic. It considers the rape of Jewish women and the killing of Jewish babies not just tactics of war but an occasion for ecstatic rejoicing. It doesn’t get more antisemitic than that.
I remain appalled (but, alas, no longer shocked) that many protesters don’t seem to be concerned about their association with this terrorist organization. They don’t care. Although only a small minority of protesters might be overtly antisemitic, it is far too easy for many to accept Jewish deaths as the price for someone to be free.
This doesn’t have to be explicit for it to be hateful, especially from people who not long ago were concerned with microaggressions against other groups. Antisemitism enables far too many to accept the cheapening of Jewish life; it’s classic scapegoating. This is a very old story on the right, and also for more than fifty years among people who want to be thought of as progressive. If Israel changed its ways, would these people still be antisemitic? Yes. The thrill of being part of a movement trumps their basic moral sense.
Speaking of Trump, of course this will help him. If his people were smart enough to instigate the protests to divide the left and to whip up anger at kids on campus, they couldn’t have done a better job. My hope is that the civic preparedness that may be enhanced by young folks’ involvement in this movement will energize them to protect democracy in the fall.
What are the protesters’ specific demands at Wesleyan? What’s your sense of their actual overall motivations?
Also, what do you make of the common media framing of the protesters as “pro-Palestinian” versus counterprotestors who are “pro-Israel?” If we’re making the 1968 comparison, why not “antiwar” instead, since in a practical context they are mainly pushing for a ceasefire at this point?
The demands at Wesleyan resemble the BDS demands of some years ago. Very little to do with Gaza in particular; the demands have to do with isolating Israel economically and culturally. I would hope that students will turn their attention to having an impact on U.S. foreign policy and not the “cancellation” of a complicated country with a complex history.
As for being antiwar, I wish there was more of that idealism across the country. I prefer that good old naivete to what one hears from many in today’s movement. Many in today’s movement seem to think war (violence) is justified as long as you are “on the right side of history,” which today for them means the “anti-colonial” side. This is insipid, lazy thinking, and it leads to some of the self-righteous, close-minded rhetoric of people who in other moods might be defending free speech, democracy, and the development of the rule of law. It also leads to the same vicious moral callousness that the U.S. displayed in, say, Iraq and that Israel displays today in Gaza. People who had “God on their side” have done lots of damage, as will people who think they have “history on their side” today.
One thing I’ve been wondering is whether everyone is making a mistake by thinking of this movement in light of 1968. Is there built-in hyperbole here — on the left, seeing a protest movement as a looming problem for the Democratic convention, as a threat to a second Biden term; on the right, the useful specter of 60s-style counterculture opposition — that works against peaceful resolution of the conflict, regardless of how the students might see themselves? I don’t see as much media comparison to the actions against apartheid of the 1980s, which seems more useful (and in many cases then, university administrators either ignored or came to terms with the student movement).
Some of the opposition to the students is based on procedures. They are in the wrong space at the wrong time. Other opposition is based on the clear indications from many protesters that Israel should not exist as a state. These protesters have yet to opine as far as I know about the legitimacy of other states in the region.
Yes, I think the protests are a problem for politics in the fall unless young people take the political energies they’ve experienced and turn those energies toward building coalitions at home to win the next round of elections and to pass legislation that might facilitate the creation of a more just and peaceful world.
But at a time when we should be putting our full attention on getting a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, we are instead talking about fancy college campuses. At some schools, protesters seem more interested in investment policies or in campus disruption than in doing anything meaningful for Gazans. The media finds it easier to cover Columbia than Rafah. Let’s instead pay attention to the right things: We need a ceasefire and a return of the hostages now, and we need to get aid to Gaza.
It’s disappointing to watch an increasing number of Republicans fall in line behind former president Donald Trump. This includes some of his fiercest detractors, such as U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, who raised eyebrows during a recent interview by vowing to support the “Republican ticket.”
This mentality is dead wrong.
Yes, elections are a binary choice. Yes, serious questions linger about President Biden’s ability to serve until the age of 86. His progressive policies aren’t to conservatives’ liking.
But the GOP will never rebuild until we move on from the Trump era, leaving conservative (but not angry) Republicans like me no choice but to pull the lever for Biden. At the same time, we should work to elect GOP congressional majorities to block his second-term legislative agenda and provide a check and balance.
The alternative is another term of Trump, a man who has disqualified himself through his conduct and his character. The headlines are ablaze with his hush-money trial over allegations of improper record-keeping for payments to conceal an affair with an adult-film star.
Most important, Trump fanned the flames of unfounded conspiracy theories that led to the horrific events of Jan. 6, 2021. He refuses to admit he lost the last election and has hinted he might do so again after the next one….
The healing of the Republican Party cannot begin with Trump as president (and that’s aside from the untold damage that potentially awaits our country). A forthcoming Time magazine cover story lays out in stark terms “the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.”
Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.
Diane Ravitch's blog 