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NPR: Who Was Jane Roe of “Roe v. Wade” Fame?

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2024 //
3

This is a fascinating story about the woman known as “Jane Roe,” the named figure in the case that established abortion rights, but for only half a century.

The woman’s real name was Norma McCorvey. She wanted an abortion, did not get it, gave birth to a third daughter, worked for an abortion clinic, eventually was recruited by an anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and joined forces with them. Ultimately, she was used by both sides.

Although she changed sides, she never changed her belief that abortion should be legal in the first trimester.

For the latest installment of the NPR Politics Podcast Book Club, we interviewed Joshua Prager, author of The Family Roe. The book traces the history of American abortion politics through McCorvey’s life story. That story is one of both genuine conviction and opportunism, of sex and drugs and politics and class and fame and religion — all of which combine to create, as Prager puts it, a “uniquely American” tale.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Danielle Kurtzleben: While a lot of people have heard the name Jane Roe, I would imagine far fewer know the name Norma McCorvey or know much about her. How would you describe her to someone who is not well acquainted?

Joshua Prager: Norma was sort of the perfect person for me to tell the larger story of abortion in America through, because her life really was defined by a lot of the very same things that I think make abortion particularly fraught in America, particularly sex and religion and what she saw as the incompatibility or irreconcilability of those two things.

When she comes out to her church [and] her parents, that is driven home in very dramatic fashion when first of all, her mother beats her. But also, Norma goes across state lines with a friend of hers from school, a young girl. They’re about 12 years old, they check into a motel, the police are called. The girl alleges, as Norma said to me, that Norma tried inappropriate things with her, and Norma’s then sent away to a school for “delinquent children.” She bounces through these schools, and she decides she’s going to have a regular life with the white picket fence and all that. She gets married at 16 and gets pregnant right away. She later alleges that her husband beat her; that’s maybe the first of many, many lies.

She often re-imagined herself as not a sinner, but a victim. And she often was telling about these sort of horrible things she suffered, which she didn’t suffer. She begs her mother to take the child and later says her mother kidnapped the child — so it’s, again, another lie — and places that child for adoption.

Then, even though she’s gay and is having affairs with women, she’s also a prostitute at this time [and] is occasionally sleeping with men. She’s selling drugs. She gets pregnant again, places that child for adoption. Then she gets pregnant a third time, and that is the child that that becomes the Roe baby…

DK: I want to wrap up to ask you quite a big question. What do you think the story of Norma McCorvey and her daughters, especially the Roe baby, who is an adult now — what does that story illuminate about the fight over abortion today? Why is this relevant, beyond the obvious historical connections?

JP: Two things. The first is very sort of pointedly, dramatically in black and white terms. It’s often it’s a story about class. Right now we are such a divided country. We already were, but now literally, I step on this side of this of this state line, I’m allowed to have an abortion. I step on that side of the state line, I’m not to have an abortion. And often it is class that is determining who can and cannot have an abortion. And that is one very important thing that I think Norma’s story and the stories of her daughters bring to light.

The other is that, man, abortion is complicated. All four of these women [McCorvey and her three daughters] in their own ways had very nuanced and sort of ambiguous feelings about abortion. All four of them, by the way, were pro-choice and are pro-choice — the daughters, even.

Even the Roe baby, whose very existence owed to the unavailability of abortion at that time, feels that abortion ought to be legal. And so I do think our country would be better served if people recognized that and did not sort of just take the approach that “if you disagree with me, you are a horrible human being.”

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Gender

Republican Judges in Texas Exclude Pregnant Women from Law Requiring Emergency Care if it Means Abortion

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2024 //
43

In 1986, Congress enacted a law that requires hospitals that receive Medicare reimbursements to provide medical care to patients having a medical emergency without regard to their ability to pay. The law is called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA).

Two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid released “guidance” reminding hospitals that they were obliged to perform abortions under the EMTALA Act, if the pregnant woman’s life was put at risk by her pregnancy. EMTALA, the guidance said, pre-empted state laws banning abortions.

The state of Texas sued to block the federal guidance and was quickly joined in the lawsuit by two medical associations comprised of anti-abortion doctors.

Both the District Court in Texas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that doctors and hospitals were not required to perform abortions by EMTALA and that federal law and guidance do no supercede Texas’s rigid ban on abortion. It further ruled that the pregnant woman and her unborn fetus had equal rights and that the woman “does not have an unqualified right…to abort her child.”

Thus, even if the mother’s life is in danger and even if an abortion is necessary to save her life, the doctor decides—not the woman—whether to perform an abortion. Doctors who perform abortions in Texas are subject to harsh penalties, including loss of their medical license and steep fines.

Thom Hartmann called the judges “a handmaid’s court” and wrote that the three white male Republican men on the Fifth Circuit concluded:

To hell with the women, they essentially said: we have to do everything possible to rescue those innocent, virginal fetuses who are as-yet uncontaminated by sin.

The Republican judges even refused to refer to a fetus as a fetus, instead calling it a “child” and claimed that, as a “child,” it’s entitled to an equal level of life-saving care as is provided to the woman carrying it.

In other words, do everything possible to stabilize and thus save the fetus, even if that further endangers the life of the mother.

Their rationale was that fetuses aren’t mentioned in EMTALA, so therefore they must be children, and “children” are just as worthy saving as mom.

This decision will cause the deaths of women whose pregnancies endanger their lives. Yrs, women do die in childbirth, but not so often in civilized societies. These women may have other children who love them and depend on them, but the white guys in judicial robes concluded: Save the fetus above all.

You may recall Katie Cox, the 31-year-old pregnant mother in Dallas who sought court permission to have an abortion when she learned that her fetus had a rare condition called trisomy 18. Her doctors told her that the fetus might die in her womb or within minutes, hours or days after it was born. She might not be able to give birth in the future. The court gave her permission to obtain an abortion but State Attorney General Ken Paxton said any doctor who performed an abortion for Mrs. Cox would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Paxton didn’t need to act, however, because the Texas Supreme Court ruled that she was eligible to have an abortion. Katie Cox left Texas and had an abortion in New Mexico.

What’s clear from all this is that the provision in the Texas law that allows an abortion in dire circumstances , such as the danger to a woman’s life, is inactive, meaningless, moot.

Categories Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Health

How MacKenzie Scott Pissed Off Elon Musk

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2024 //
5

Billionaire vs. billionaire. The clash of a feminist titan with a neo-Nazi sympathizer! Get your popcorn and enjoy the tale of how Mackenzie Scott managed to infuriate super-pig Elon Musk. Granted, he’s the richest man in the world–worth $300-400 billion, while she has only $32 billion or so.

But she has made a practice of giving generously to worthwhile nonprofits while he gives away as little as possible.

Marcie Jones has the story at Wonkette, and it’s a great read.

It begins:

Billionaires are mostly despicable Montgomery-Burns type people. But then there’s MacKenzie Scott, one of the few ultra-rich who doesn’t deserve to get tarred and feathered in the coming revolution! She’s the third-wealthiest woman in the United States, 38th in the world, and has now given away $19.25 billion (with a B!) in 2,524 charitable gifts, with a focus on racial equality, LGBTQ+ equality, democracy, and climate change. 

She and her small team seek out nonprofits operating in communities facing high food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital. And then she gives away the money with no strings attached. Which is unusual in philanthropy! Also unusual, she’s pretty quiet about it. She has a web site that shows what she has donated to, but there’s no MacKenzie Scott ribbon cuttings, or buildings with her name on them when she drops a check. She donates, then she dips. And she plans to “keep at it until the safe is empty.”

Elon Musk warned that she is destroying Western civilization.

Read it and see what you think.,

Categories Billionaires, Creativity, Ethics, Joy, Musk, Elon, Philanthropy

Heather Cox Richardson: Yes, There Are Heroes

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2024 //
18

Heather Cox Richardson wrote this beautiful tribute to Dr. King. I knew I had to share it with you. Please subscribe. I read that she has a million paying subscribers. She deserves her good fortune.

You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left.

When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.

It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself, in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.

It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.

It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold print, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.

It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.

Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.

None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that, when they had to, they did what was right.

On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.

After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”

Dr. King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.

Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.

Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2024.

[Image of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., by Buddy Poland.]

Categories Civil Rights, Courage, Democracy, Ethics, History, Unions

Young Martin Luther King Jr. on the Purpose of Education

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2024 //
5

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a brilliant speaker and a deeply educated thinker. He began his quest for understanding and meaning early in life. One of his earliest writings was published in 1947 in the campus newspaper at Morehouse College, where he was a student. It appears on the website of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. Please be sure to read footnote #2. It might make you believe in divine intervention.

The editor wrote this introduction:

Writing in the campus newspaper, the Maroon Tiger, King argues that education has both a utilitarian and a moral function.1 Citing the example of Georgia’s former governor Eugene Talmadge, he asserts that reasoning ability is not enough. He insists that character and moral development are necessary to give the critical intellect humane purposes. King, Sr., later recalled that his son told him, “Talmadge has a Phi Beta Kappa key, can you believe that? What did he use all that precious knowledge for? To accomplish what?” 2

Young Martin Luther King Jr. wrote:

As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the “brethren” think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, “brethren!” Be careful, teachers!

1. In 1925, the Maroon Tiger succeeded the Athenaeum as the campus literary journal at Morehouse. In the first semester of the 1947–1948 academic year, it won a First Class Honor Rating from the Associated Collegiate Press at the University of Minnesota. The faculty adviser to the Maroon Tiger was King’s English professor, Gladstone Lewis Chandler. King’s “The Purpose of Education” was published with a companion piece, “English Majors All?” by a fellow student, William G. Pickens. Among the many prominent black academicians and journalists who served an apprenticeship on the Maroon Tiger staff were Lerone Bennett, Jr., editor of Ebony; Brailsford R. Brazeal, dean of Morehouse College; S. W. Garlington, city editor of New York’s Amsterdam News; Hugh Gloster, president of Morehouse College; Emory O. Jackson, editor of the Birmingham World; Robert E. Johnson, editor of Jet; King D. Reddick of the New York Age; Ira De A. Reid, chair of the Sociology Department at Atlanta University; and C. A. Scott, editor and general manager of the Atlanta Daily World. See The Morehouse Alumnus, July 1948, pp. 15–16; and Edward A. Jones, A Candle in the Dark: A History of Morehouse College (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1967), pp. 174, 260, 289–292.

2. Martin Luther King, Sr., with Clayton Riley, Daddy King: An Autobiography (New York: William Morrow, 1980), p. 143. In an unpublished autobiographical statement, King, Sr., remembered a meeting between Governor Eugene Talmadge and a committee of blacks concerning the imposition of the death penalty on a young black man for making improper remarks to a white woman. King, Sr., reported that Talmadge “sent us away humiliated, frustrated, insulted, and without hope of redress” (“The Autobiography of Daddy King as Told to Edward A. Jones” [n.d.], p. 40; copy in CKFC). Six months before the publication of King’s article, Georgia’s race-baiting former governor Eugene Talmadge had declared in the midst of his campaign for a new term as governor that “the only issue in this race is White Supremacy.” On 12 November, the black General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia designated his inauguration date, 9 January 1947, as a day of prayer. Talmadge died three weeks before his inauguration. See William Anderson, The Wild Man from Sugar Creek: The Political Career of Eugene Talmadge (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), pp. 226–237; Joseph L. Bernd, “White Supremacy and the Disfranchisement of Blacks in Georgia, 1946,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 66 (Winter 1982): 492–501; Clarence M. Wagner, Profiles of Black Georgia Baptists (Atlanta: Bennett Brothers, 1980), p. 104; and Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), pp. 221–223.

Source: Maroon Tiger (January-February 1947): 10.

Categories Character, Ethics

Eugene Robinson: DeSantis and Haley are Pathetic Panderers

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2024 //
23

Eugene Robinson, a columnist for the Washington Post, watched the Iowa debate between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, sparing the rest of us of that burden. He reported on their despicable dodge about the recent killing of a sixth grade student in the school cafeteria.

He wrote:

Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley did not just lose Wednesday night’s debate. They have lost their way.

At Perry High School in Iowa last week, 17-year-old Dylan Butler shot and killed a sixth-grader, wounded five other students and staff, and then killed himself. Surely, the Republican presidential candidates discussed the tragedy during their debate in Des Moines, right?

Wrong. Neither said a word about a school shooting that had happened just days earlier and barely 40 miles away.

Anyone still searching for a meaningful difference between today’s Democratic Party and the GOP need only take note of their very different reactions to this latest tragedy.

Deadly shootings, even in our schools, are an inevitable feature of our daily lives — according to the Republican Party. In comments and appearances before the debate, the leading GOP candidates all reacted to the Perry shooting by washing their hands of any duty to act. And, of course, by offering thoughts and prayers.

DeSantis, the Florida governor, said during an interview with NBC News and the Des Moines Register that while officials have a responsibility to guarantee safety at our schools, the federal government “is probably not going to be leading that effort.” As though to underscore the point, he later said, according to Reuters, that as president he would sign a bill eliminating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Haley posted her condolences on X, formerly known as Twitter, shortly after the shooting, saying in part that, “My heart aches for the victims of Perry, Iowa and the entire community.” Later that day, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor said that “we have to deal with the cancer that is mental health,” called for more security officers at schools and went ahead with her campaign schedule.

Meanwhile, former president Donald Trump — expected to trounce DeSantis, Haley and all other comers in Monday’s Iowa caucuses — addressed school violence during a campaign stop on Friday.

The callousness was breathtaking, even for Trump.
“I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa,” he said in Sioux City. “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it, we have to move forward.”

Get over it. Imagine the comfort that must have brought to the family of 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff, who was killed in the shooting.

The Republican Party’s lack of empathy after a tragedy such as this gives the country a real chance to see why that matters for our country’s leadership — and what a real difference the Democrats offer.

On Thursday, the day after Republicans’ dismal debate, Vice President Harris visited a middle school in Charlotte to join a roundtable discussion on gun violence with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. That’s where she announced the administration’s plan to invest a new round of funding ($285 million) for schools to find and train mental health professionals, per a White House official.

Harris shared her reaction to the Perry shooting on X the day it occurred, highlighting some of the proposals Democrats have been trying to pass:
“As we begin a new year, we must resolve to finally end this epidemic of gun violence that has become the leading cause of death for children in America. We know the solutions: making background checks universal, passing red flag laws, and renewing the assault weapons ban. Now, Congress and state legislators across the country must have the courage to act.”

Open the link to read the rest of the column.

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Guns, Guns in Schools, Iowa, Librarians, Trump

The Text Messages Between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2024 //
10

The text messages between Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, show how determined Ginni Thomas was to keep Trump in office. She was certain that Democrats were stealing the election. She urged Meadows to listen closely to lawyer Sidney Powell. She urged Meadows to “release the kraken,” Powell’s words. Even when Meadows told her that Powell had no evidence of voter fraud, Ginni Thomas was undeterred.

Note: Sidney Powell subsequently claimed that no reasonable person would believe what she said about the election. When indicted in Atlanta for lying about the election, she pleaded guilty. But Ginni Thomas believed her. This suggests that Ginni Thomas is not a “reasonable person.”

If you listen to the text exchanges, you are likely to conclude that Justice Thomas must recuse himself from any case brought to the Supreme Court about the 2020 election. He is not impartial.

This message was tweeted by Denver Riggleman, a former Republican Congressman from Virginia who served as a technical advisor to the January 6 Committee.

Denver Riggleman⁦‪@RepRiggleman‬⁩On the 3-year anniversary of #Jan6, I read aloud all 29 texts between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows.

It’s a reminder of the delusion that fueled the J6 attack- all the way to the top. Listen to the Bourbon texts because you’ll need a drink. youtu.be/UeDqnuSlrCA?si… via ⁦‪@YouTube‬⁩ 1/6/24, 9:12 PM

Categories Accountability, Bias, Biden, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Republicans, Trump

The Hill: Conservatives See Takedown of Two University Presidents as “Just the Beginning”

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2024 //
7

You might well wonder, as I did, why Republicans in Congress were conducting hearings about anti-Semitism in our nation’s elite private universities. That is normally the job of the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. Historically and recently, Republicans have not been known as a party that worries overmuch about anti-Semitism or other forms of bigotry.

As a matter of fact, as this article in The Hill shows, the Republicans’ real concern is to stamp out DEI programs (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in higher education. Two of the three elite university presidents who were grilled by Rep. Elise Stefanik resigned, and she crowed about her victory. The conservative media treated Harvard University President Claudine Gay as an unqualified diversity hire. Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania also resigned after the hearing.

From the article:

Republicans say their departures are just the beginning of needed reforms at the schools.

“This is only among the very first steps on a very long road to recovering or returning to higher education its true and original purposes, which is truth-seeking,” said Jay Greene, senior research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.

Conservatives cheered the departures, which came after the two, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sally Kornbluth, faced questions on campus antisemitism before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Neither Elise Stefanik nor Jay Greene has shown interest in anti-Semitism in the past, to my knowledge. Neither issued statements to denounce the young fascists who marched with tiki torches in Charlottesville and chanted “The Jews will not replace us.” If they reacted to the slaughter of Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, I am not aware of it.

An even bigger joke is for anyone at the Heritage Foundation to celebrate “truth-seeking,” when Heritage oversaw planning for the next term of Donald Trump, who has a well-documented record of telling thousands of lies. Heritage Foundation, clean your own house. Before you lecture others about “truth-seeking,” look in the mirror.

“Two down. One to go,” tweeted committee member Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). “Accountability is coming.”

“The long overdue forced resignations of former Presidents Claudine Gay and Liz Magill are just the beginning of the tectonic consequences from their historic morally bankrupt testimony to my questions,” Stefanik added in a statement to The Hill, mentioning an official probe into the schools that the panel has announced.

“The investigation will address all aspects of a fundamentally broken and corrupt higher education system — antisemitism on campus, taxpayer funded aid, foreign aid, DEI, accreditation, academic integrity, and governance,” she said, using an acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion programs…

But their biggest target recently has been DEI programs, making the case that they have been more harmful than helpful to students…

Greene said he is hopeful “additional people are going to have to be removed, both leaders of universities and their underlings, because they’re also significant actors in this. It’s not just at the top, but it’s kind of throughout these institutions.”

He also specifically called for the dismantling of DEI efforts on campus and disciplines such as gender studies, another popular GOP target.

Such efforts have been in motion long before the shake-ups at UPenn and Harvard.

In Texas, a law banning diversity programs at public universities took effect in the new year. And last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) also signed a bill to defund DEI programs at public universities. …

A tracker by the Chronicle of Higher Education last year found 40 bills had been introduced in states across the country to try to restrict DEI programs, diversity statements and mandatory diversity training at schools.

It’s disgusting to see a feigned concern about anti-Semitism used as a stalking horse to dismantle DEI programs and as a pretext for inserting Big government into the policy making process in private higher education.

As long as Republicans control either House of Congress, we can anticipate the rise of a new McCarthyism, purging the curriculum and professors.

At last, Rep. Stefanik, have you no shame?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Higher Education, Race, Racism, Religion

Arthur Camins: The Lies That Protect the 1%

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2024 //
28

Arthur Camins is a retired educator. This post appeared in The Daily Kos.

Open the link to read the article in full.

He writes:

Liar, Liar. Pants on Fire. The lies from the powerful, especially Republicans, have risen to stunningly Orwellian 2 + 2 = 5 levels. The lies that protect their wealth and power have been quite successful at gaining wide acceptance. They keep at it because they know most of us reject a grossly inequitable society in which only some people enjoy a stable secure life. Inevitably, the truth seeps through the cracks in their wall of deceptions. Most Americans want fairness and access to decisions that affect our lives. The purveyors of self-protecting fabrications are afraid of the truth. Increasingly, they resort to authoritarianism, outlawing truth-telling, spreading misinformation, and blocking democratic processes.

The well-trod lies are designed to sound like common sense but are demonstrably false. They include:

Providing parents with choices through school vouchers and charter schools improves achievement and equity.

No, they support the privileged, starve and undermine public education, and get the rest of us to fight amongst ourselves for scraps.

The competitive free market will reduce costs and provide choices to consumers to improve education, healthcare, and housing.

No, the free market never reduced the cost of any of these or made these necessities affordable to everyone. Instead, the free market continues to make profits for a few, provides higher quality for those with money to spare, and leaves the rest of us with lower quality or nothing at all.

People are poor because they are lazy or stupid, so social support is a waste of money.

No, our economic and social systems ensure that there are haves and have-nots, haves pass on unearned wealth to their children, that taxes on the rich remain unfair, while trying to convince the rest of us that our struggles are our fault.

Taxing wealth reduces the incentive to innovate and slows economic growth.

No, the United States taxed wealth at far higher rates in the past without stopping us from becoming the world’s largest and most innovative economy. Increasing inequity disincentivizes and slows innovation by keeping too many of us struggling to make ends meet.

These are the lies that the powerful repeat again-and-again, wherever and whenever they can. They assume we are gullible, will fall back, and accept our fate. Our lives do not need to be this way if we organize and if we vote.

The 2024 election is a critical test for voters. Will we accept our inequitable, powerless fate or fight back? Report after report tells us that so many people will, in disgust, stay home that the authoritarian, wealth-protecting, anti-democratic liars will win control of Congress and the presidency. Life’s necessities still cost too damn much, so hearing from Democrats that the inflation, employment, and average wages are getting better falls on deaf ears. Voters–especially the young adults and people of color who Democrats need to win– see that in 2023, our country once again finds money for war but too little to help people. The enduring perception is that no one is on their side.

If Democrats want to win elections, they need to tell the unvarnished truth: The biggest, most enduring lie is that inequity is inevitable. Democrats: Don’t tell people to trust you. Tell them to organize! Tell them:

Do you want to know what Democrats should say? Open the link.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Cruelty, Economy, Equity, Ethics, Inequality

PEN America: Escambia County, Florida, Banned More than 1,600 Books,Including 5 Dictionaries!

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2024 //
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Governor Ron DeSantis claims that Florida isn’t banning books, which may be technically true, yet demonstrably false. Librarians and school district officials are removing books from school and classroom libraries to comply with state law, until the books have been screened for any offensive sexual or racial language.

PEN America reported that more than 1,600 books have been removed from circulation until they have received approval from school officials. The big joke in Escambia County is that a dictionary is in the Escambia list of books that possibly violate the law. Actually, five dictionaries!

But many other books are on Escambia’s list that have been read by generations of students.

Is it fair to say that such lists are censorship or banning? I say yes. What do you think?

PEN America posted this statement:

It has come to this: Escambia County, Florida, schools have banned the dictionary.

Five dictionaries are on the district’s list of more than 1,600 books banned pending investigation in December 2023, along with eight different encyclopedias, The Guinness Book of World Records, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not – all due to fears they violate the state’s new laws banning materials with “sexual conduct” from schools.

Biographies of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Nicki Minaj, and Thurgood Marshallare on the list, alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Black Panther comics by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Feminism Book was banned along with The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion.

The list obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project also includes Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. The Princess Diaries and 14 other books by Meg Cabot have been taken from libraries, alongside books by David Baldacci, Lee Child, Michael Crichton, Carl Hiassen, Jonathan Franzen, John Green, John Grisham, Stephen King (23 of them), Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy, Celeste Ng, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult,and Nicholas Sparks. Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly’s two books, Killing Jesus and Killing Reagan, were also banned pending investigation.

PEN America, Penguin Random House, and a diverse group of authors joined with parents and students in Escambia County for a first of its kind federal lawsuit alleging that an earlier set of book bans and restrictions violate their rights to free speech and equal protection under the law. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 10.

If you open the link, you can see the list of banned books in Escambia County.

Here are a few that caught my eye:

Books of Greek and Roman myths

Baroque and Rococo Art

Five books by Maya Angelou

James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Sixteen books by Meg Cabot

Albert Camus, The Stranger

Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile

Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

Multiple books about sexually transmitted diseases

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield -Adapted for Young Readers

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Five novels by William Faulkner

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

I’m stopping here. You get the drift. Scan the rest of the list and see what you think.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Literacy, Literature
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