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History hardly lacks examples of unintended consequences, but Hanoi 1902 remains especially instructive. Having caused a rat infestation by laying nine miles of sewage pipes, the colonial government of French Indochina reckoned it could fix things by paying locals to catch them: one cent per tail handed in at the local municipal office. The scheme began in April and by June the Vietnamese were producing up to 20,000 tails per day.

And yet the rat population seemed only to increase to the point where bubonic plague returned to the city. Why? Instead of killing rats, hunters simply docked their tails and set them free to breed more rats. There were even reports of rat farms popping up just outside the city.

This provides a perfect illustration of how well-intentioned incentives can misfire. When you reward people for certain outcomes, they will pursue them by methods that you never foresaw, and with side effects that you never intended.

Something very similar has happened in the UKs higher-education sector. Advance HE, a charity established in 2018 from a merger of the Equality Challenge Unit, the Higher Education Academy and Leadership for Higher Education, currently offers two incentive schemes to British universities: the Race Equality Charter and the Athena SWAN Charter. Universities apply for Bronze, Silver and (for Athena SWAN) Gold awards that demonstrate their commitment to race and gender equality. To apply, institutions have to subscribe to Advance HE and submit, among other things, an action plan for change. If an institution wins, it can get a shiny badge that it can advertise to potential students, employees and funding bodies.

Racism, sexism and other prejudices do exist, of course. And some institutions are taking serious steps to address them for instance, by introducing blind application processes for some posts, as at the University of Birmingham. But all too often these action plans are effectively blueprints for corporate virtue-signalling, censorship and indoctrination.

As part of its race-equality action plan, the University of Dundee, for instance, wants to make anti-racism training compulsory for all staff and students. Imperial College London, among many others, wants to extend the use of unconscious bias training. Never mind the glaring lack of evidence that anti-racism training helps anyone except those selling it, or the mountains of evidence that unconscious bias training is useless.

More importantly, universities attempts to win the approval of Advance HE, and thus signal their virtue, are eroding academic freedom and free speech.

Take the many ham-fisted plans to encourage the calling out, reporting, suppression and punishment of microaggressions commonplace expressions that make some people feel discomfited, even where no malice is intended.

For instance, the University of Cambridge tried to launch a new website to allow staff and students to report these micro-offences anonymously. The list of potential microagressions included the stereotyping of religion. Think of the effect this would have in the seminar room. Philosophers, for instance, have made all kinds of general and stereotypical claims about religions that are not entirely complimentary. As a teacher of philosophy, I may have to mention these claims is this a form of microaggression?

Either way, debating and thinking through potentially challenging ideas ought to be central to the academic enterprise. If anyone in charge thinks shutting down such debate is an acceptable price to pay for winning an Advance HE badge of approval then perhaps they shouldnt be running a university.

The erosion of free speech and academic freedom doesnt stop there. To win an Athena SWAN award a university must show its commitment to particular principles. These have changed since 2015. Where once they included tackling the discriminatory treatment often experienced by trans people, now an institution must also agree to fostering collective understanding that individuals have the right to determine their own gender identity.

This looks like a move from tackling discrimination to the policing of thought, and on a highly controversial topic, too. Gender identity means your personal sense of your own gender, but there are many serious thinkers who doubt that that means much at all. Are we meant to suppress these critical voices? And even if that is not Advance HEs intention, it is certainly something it appears to be incentivising. Surely, the job of a university is to facilitate open debate not to foster collective understanding on any controversial matter.

Advance HE claims that it doesnt want to compromise academic freedom. I dont think any, or at least not many, of the HE institutions which sign up to its schemes want to destroy academic freedom, either. But this will be the unintended upshot of what some of them are doing.

If Advance HE is serious about defending academic freedom, perhaps it should set up an Academic Freedom Charter. In the meantime, the rest of us will need to work hard to put freedom of speech and thought back at the heart of our universities, where they belong.

Arif Ahmed is a lecturer in philosophy at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

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Universities are sleepwalking into censorship - spiked - Spiked

In yet another ill-planned publicity stunt by a democratic elected official, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot who did not step in to help Chicago Public Library workers during the pandemic posted a photo of herself reading a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird in Houstons Brazos Bookstore.

Behind her are several other books that have seen book challenges or outright bans in the last year, including Melissa (formerly George), Lets Talk About Love, Go With the Flow, and more. Right-wing media seized this opportunity to call hypocrisy, much as they did when Californias Governor Newsom posed with a pile of banned books. Though he held Beloved, the media focused again on the carefully-placed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, noting that Lees classic has been banned in several blue states.

Both publicity stunts did a good job once again confusing the public about the difference between a book ban and a curriculum update. While To Kill a Mockingbird has indeed been challenged and banned, the qualifier that its been banned in blue states is a conscious effort by right-wing banners to suggest that a book by a white woman about racism being replaced by books by Black authors who experience the true effects of racism is revoking free speech and freedom to read. As much as there is to dig into this willful misrepresentation, the real issue worth addressing here is how many public figures in speaking out against book bans refuse to engage with the issues of sex and gender (and indeed, race as well).

Among the most banned books in the past year are those which highlight sex, sexuality, and gender. PEN Americas report on book bans in US schools shows that queer characters and topics of sexuality are two of the biggest reasons a book is banned, falling right after books with protagonists of color. These categories, of course, overlap significantly, as seen through the books the American Library Association identified as the most challenged in 2021.

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It is far too easy and clean to highlight the importance of classics like To Kill a Mockingbird in your advocacy, whether youre a public official or not. Its hard for the average person, who likely read the book in their own school years, to not be outraged about a beloved book being pulled, whether or not Lees book is actually the target of book bans.

Moreover, by focusing on a classic like Lees, were avoiding having vital and life-saving conversations about sex and sexuality. In an era where entire states seek to erase the human experience through legislation like Dont Say Gay in Florida and where educators and students are told that their rights dont exist and their jobs are on the line for simply being who they are, ignoring sex, sexuality, and gender is a major oversight.

Because its not just Critical Race Theory and Social Emotional Learning that the right sees as the enemy. Comprehensive Sex Education (CSL) is the third in their triangle of targets. By pushing for the continued removal of comprehensive sex education in schools which has led to the uptick of books like Its Perfectly Normal being splashed across censorship groups with images of an individual with a mirror looking at her vulva and anus as she seeks to understand all of the parts of her biological body the thought is there will be no discussions of sex, gender, or sexuality anywhere but in the home. This means an education that not only may have an agenda but may be factually incorrect, damaging, and create life-long harm and fear around pleasure.

CSL is the scientifically-backed alternative to combating issues that emerge with abstinence-only education. CSL has been linked to reductions in sexual activity, risky sexual activities, sexually transmitted infections, and adolescent pregnancy (this information is from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, an authority on sexual behavior and health, among other things). Three decades of research, when analyzed by professionals in the Journal of Adolescent Health, show CSL and its focus on a broad range of sexual and gender related education had major benefits for adolescents and that it should be broadly adapted in educational systems.

Grooming has been the word du jour from the right. Groups like Moms For Liberty find passages in titles like Gender Queer and pull them out of context in order to prove their ill-founded theories that public education is indoctrinating children. In the top 10 books challenged in 2021, Gender Queer was named because of a couple of brief moments where there is a dream sequence by a legal adult wherein Maia fantasizes about their first experience having queer sex. It is developmentally appropriate and it is representative of what queer individuals can experience the first time they dare allow themselves to think with desire something that is chemically created and controlled in our bodies and brains.

In Out of Darkness, there is an anal sex scene. This scene isnt about pleasure. Its about how the main character, a Mexican American, is reduced to objectification. It is embedded in the storys setting, its time frame, and its understanding of how brown bodies are seen as tools to be used by an oppressor. This happened. This happens.

Beloved? A depiction of brutal rape.

Both Out of Darkness and Beloved describe sexual crimes, both of which go uncharged in the text because they happen to marginalized bodies. Crimes that, were they to happen to white bodies, would be seen differently by these right-wing groups (debatably, of course if these crimes were done by Nice White Boys With Futures On The Line, theyd likely still be challenged).

Beyond Magenta and This Book Is Gay celebrate queer identities and allow queer voices to be seen and heard. They speak to the fact gender and sexuality are complex and are life-long processes of understanding and breaking apart socially-created norms and structures. The self-same structures, of course, that right-wing censors seek to uphold through legislation based on selective reading of the Bible.

Lawn Boy? Sex happens in the book between two kids and it happens to a young boy who grows up thinking about what that experience meant for his sense of self through adolescence and early adulthood. The main character is working class and this sexual encounter at age 10 impacts the way he looks at and approaches the world, much as it would any individual with similar life stories.

All Boys Arent Blue? Sex, gender, and sexuality. Johnsons memoir his true, lived experiences includes discussion of sexual assault, explored further in the authors followup memoir..which, interestingly, has not seen the same assault by censors.

Lees book about a white savior offers none of the above. Theres no author of color, and theres certainly not sex, sexuality, or gender to discuss. While the trail in the book is about rape, there is zero depiction of the realities of rape in the book. It is easier to accept rape conceptually as bad, but books that put it on the page and explore the long-lasting impact of an unwanted sex act, particularly as it relates to dehumanizing a non-cis, straight, white body, show why its bad.

We need to be talking about the sex parts and the gender parts of the books being challenged. Those with the platforms to do good work against book bannings need to be versed not just in the easy-to-reach-for classics but the harder books. The books that hold up a mirror and a window to readers in todays society. The books that, for young readers, offer insight into who they are and what the world around them really looks like. You can ban discussions of LGBTQ people in the classroom but that doesnt stop LGBTQ individuals from being inside those same rooms. It simply puts yet another barrier into their lives.

American culture is a prude culture. Were afraid to talk about the messy and complex stuff. We refuse to engage with accurate terminology for human anatomy and human chemistry. It is much easier to accept violence on a mass scale as just the cost of being a person in the US than it is to accept that a child might be queer and deserves to read about people like them. That indeed, they may see a picture of sex between two individuals with the same body parts depicted in a book meant to be for sexual education yet somehow, its perceived as okay to lie to children about the stork bringing a baby, rather than explain that a baby is created when an egg and a sperm meet.

Until more people are willing to talk about the sex stuff, were not going to be moving this conversation forward. Well continue to cling to puritanical ideals and fail to put an end to book bans and intellectual freedom.

Especially if when a leader does highlight a book with sex in it, theyre suddenly disappeared from their job for weeks.

For more ways to take action against censorship, use this toolkit forhow to fight book bans and challenges, as well as this guide toidentifying fake news. Then learn how and why you may want touse FOIA to uncover book challenges.

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You Need To Talk About The Sex Parts in Banned Books: Book Censorship News, May 20, 2022 - Book Riot

Dallas is more than 1,300 miles away from the nations capital, but North Texas loomed large over Congress this week. On Thursday, a local educator and a student joined others in testifying before the House Oversight Committee about the toll that recent censorship efforts have taken on education.

Some on the right are attempting to restrict what can be taught in public schools: ban lessons on racism that make white students uncomfortable, ban curricula that mention LGBTQ issues, ban books.

Appearing before the committee was Dr. James Whitfield, the former principal pushed out of Grapevine-Colleyville ISD following accusations he wanted to indoctrinate students in so-called critical race theory, a complex academic framework that isnt even taught in public schools.

Whitfield explained that when he was a teen, public education saved his life. He eventually chose a career in the field because he knows how wonderful an environment it can be for young people.

But Ive also witnessed how toxic things can get when people with nefarious agendas come to town, he said. The lies. The bigotry. The intolerance. The racism. The hearing comes just days after a white man fatally shot 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. The shooter livestreamed the racist massacre and left a manifesto echoing language spewed by other mass shooters, including a man from Allen who killed 23 in an El Paso Walmart.

New York U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney noted that censorship in schools can lead to the proliferation of hateful ideology. Hiding the truth from students increases the likelihood that homophobia, racism and other intolerance will metastasize, she said.

Lawmakers also heard how Texas' "anti-CRT" law has created confusion among educators, with one Southlake leader instructing teachers who have books on the Holocaust to include material with "opposing views."

Elle Caldon, a high school student in Dallas County, spoke to the committee remotely. She noted that her favorite teacher, Rachel Stonecipher, was removed from the classroom and had her contract terminated. Advocates say it was because of Stonecipher's support for the LGBTQ community.

Last year, administrators at MacArthur High School in Irving quietly removed rainbow stickers from teachers doors, which had indicated they were safe environments for queer students.

But Caldon refuses to sit by as educators like Stonecipher are driven out.

I do not believe in muzzling student inquiry or speech, and I wont be silenced, she said.

Whitfield said educators are tasked with building bridges, not walls, between the school and parents. The latest attacks on student learning are aimed at destroying public education, he argued, adding that its a way to divert public school funding to subsidize private schools "in the name of choice."

But Whitfield insists that we cant move forward that way, nor can we afford to lose public education. Students from every background, including those of different races and faiths, deserve to be empowered and celebrated, he said.

The past several months have been traumatic, Whitfield said, but young people continue to give him hope. Hes witnessed what happens when hate takes hold of a community, but hes also seen students and parents stand against such bigotry.

These concerns are real and have lasting impact on educators, students and families, he said, and I beg you to take these threats seriously and do all you can to support us.

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James Whitfield, North Texans Tell Congress Anti-LGBT Censorship on Rise in Education Amid CRT Panic - Dallas Observer

V Rising developer Stunlock Studios says improved in-game censorship tools are on the way.

The early access vampire survival game has proved a massive success for the studio, selling a whopping 500,000 copies in just three days. And while it's hard to frame that as a negative for the studio, players are reporting an alarming amount of hateful and discriminatory in-game language.

In a statement to GamesRadar, the developers admit they weren't expecting the game to be so popular and say they're working on tools to combat "harassment and discrimination." These tools will apparently include stricter filters and options for players to mute offensive language.

"As an early access title, this is one problem thats proved to be a bit of a pain point for us," a spokesperson for the studio told GamesRadar. "We did hope for success but were not prepared for this volume of players.

"Were currently stepping in as much as we can in the most egregious cases, and what we cant do by hand, were trying to make tools to allow us to handle them better. Where that fails, were hoping to put more tools in the hands of players to better allow them to mute and hide offensive language that bypasses our current filters."

Stunlock didn't specify when players can expect any of these features to arrive, but did note that "some of this can take time."

"Even if the majority of players behave well on our servers, we will do everything we can to fight harassment and discrimination," the studio adds.

In the meantime, the studio says it hopes the admins of private servers "aren't lenient with this sort of behavior" and urges players to "find communities that are able to better moderate themselves while we build these tools, and find like-minded people to face and conquer Vardoran alongside."

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V Rising devs are working on in-game censors "to fight harassment and discrimination" - Gamesradar

David Cronenberg makes movies ahead of their time and hed like to keep it that way. When a global pandemic broke out, the godfather of body horror didnt rush to make his own response.

I sort of felt Id done that already with Shivers and Rabid, the filmmaker told IndieWire during an interview at the Cannes Film Festival, while sitting on a hotel balcony at the Cannes Film Festival, referencing movies he made four decades ago. Of course, the whole body is reality thing is very real for me. Things that affect the human body are very basic, primitive and essential.

Body is reality is one of many provocative lines from Crimes of the Future, the 79-year-old auteurs first feature in eight years, which premieres in Cannes this week. Borrowing a title from his unrelated 1970 film and utilizing a screenplay he wrote two decades ago, the movie once again shows the mark of a director so immersed in his exploratory concepts that he demands the audience think through them to keep up.

Set in a near future in which people can grow new organs in their bodies, Crimes of the Future centers on a performance artist couple (Viggo Mortensen and La Seydoux) whose work involves the removal of such organs onstage before a live audience, and brings scrutiny from a team of bureaucratic investigators at the National Organ Registry (Don McKellar and Kristen Stewart). Like so much of Cronenbergs work, the scenario evades precise interpretations even as it amounts to a remarkable meditation on identity. In this case, the focus is the interplay of physicality and technology unique to the 21st century so it makes sense, of course, that Cronenberg came up with it at the end of the 20th.

When I wrote this in 1998, it was very theoretical unlike now, when everyones talking about microplastics in their bloodstream, the director said, insisting that he hadnt changed a word of his original draft when production resources finally came together last year. The human condition is the subject of my filmmaking and all art. Right now, these are things that are intriguing in terms of where people are and how theyre living.

There were some contemporary twists to the movie, which includes meme-worthy lines like surgery is the new sex, an observation Cronenberg has said was inspired by the amount of surgeries one can watch on YouTube. Theres also recurring POV footage from a ring-cam that was shot with an iPhone, which registers as Cronenbergs acknowledgement of the way personal devices have invaded our way of seeing the world. Its meant to be super-modern, Cronenberg said.

The director previously explored prospects of technological control impacting everyday life with Videodrome, and said he wanted to incorporate a similar theme this time. Crimes of the Future doesnt just revel in the interplay of art and technology; it gets inside the humanity at the core of that intersection. I personally do not have an agenda as a filmmaker, but Im interested in people who do, because that reveals many things about how they struggle with who they are and who they should be, he said. My filmmaking isnt political in the literal sense.

screenshot/NEON

In a separate interview at Cannes, Seydoux said that she was struck by Cronenbergs sensitivity. Hes very romantic, extremely romantic, and its not something you would think of him, she said.Hes very sentimental and very alive, very young, inside. Its inspiring. Theres something about him that I felt and its great when you admire people and you meet them in reality and they are even better than what you imagined.

Still, she wasnt able to get many answers out of the director about the nature of her surgical artist character. He didnt like to talk about it, she said. But we had very interesting conversations about life and about love.

Cronenberg delighted in the ambiguity around his work. Most of my movies are quite open-ended, he said. Things arent tied up in a nice little bow.

Though he has speculated in other interviews ahead of Cannes that audiences might walk out of the movie during its opening minutes, he was now radiating a Zen-like energy about the potential reception of his work. You know, Im from the 60s, he said, referencing the era when he made his first feature. I just want to be here now and chill. I never know how people will react.

Plus, no matter what happens, he already has a new project in the works that he expects to shoot in Toronto next spring: The Shrouds, which imagines a world in which people can witness their dead relatives decaying in real time. The movie has been seeking financing at the Cannes market.

Originally, Cronenberg was paid by Netflix to develop the concept as a series, and said he wrote two episodes before the streaming service backed off. I think theyre very conservative and for whatever reason, they didnt go ahead with my project, he said. I still thanked them because I wrote a script and I wouldnt have done that if it hadnt been for their enthusiasm. I was interested in a streaming series as an alternative form of cinema, because suddenly youre making eight or 10 hours of film.

As for Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg said he researched COVID protocols for the production through TV acting gigs he took on over the past year ahead of the shoot. I wanted to see if it was possible to make a movie with those protocols, he said. How awkward does it make things, how much more expensive does it make things, does it affect your acting, your directing, your acting? I saw that it was perfectly possible to do. It was more expensive, it was more awkward, but it was very doable and you got used to it. You got used to wearing the mask. When it came time for the Crimes of the Future shoot in Athens, among our crew of 150, nobody got COVID, so it worked, he said.

In the years since his last effort, 2014s Maps to the Stars, Cronenberg has written a horror novel, produced a VR experience, and acted in both the Shudder series Slasher and Star Trek: Discovery. But the world has been deprived of his filmmaking during critical moments of societal upheaval, including new sensitives about onscreen representation that he said gave him pause. A lot of artists are worried about saying the wrong phrase on Twitter or getting canceled, he said. Its kind of Stalinist in a bizarre way. Its not the same politics but its about the results the inflexibility and the lack of understanding of what art is.

It didnt take much prodding for Cronenberg to offer some specifics. Of course there are power trips as soon as people feel they have some power through this stuff, he said. You take something like the MeToo movement, which is totally legitimate, but obviously it can be politicized, weaponized by people who want to take it to an absurd extreme, and that has happened. So how do you deal with that? I guess that always happens. Something that has value is misused and used as a weapon. It can be for personal vengeance. Right now, there are a lot of people running scared.

Cronenberg said he navigated pushback to his own work on the institutional level back in 1979, when the Ontario Censor Board cut scenes out of The Brood without his permission (they were later restored). Ive had moments where things were forbidden, things were bad, things were taboo, he said. I havent paid any attention to it in terms of altering my approach.

The gap between his last feature and this one has also meant that the filmmaker didnt join the fray of artists who addressed the Trump years, though the exploding head in Scanners was also ahead of its time in terms of capturing the nature of public discourse these days. I wouldnt dignified my art with Donald Trump, I have to tell you, Cronenberg said. He didnt deserve it. As a destructive force, he was to ludicrous to me. It was so obvious I cant believe anyone would vote for him.

And no matter what his work says about the manipulation of physicality, Cronenberg made one thing clear: He abhorred anti-vaxxers. When I was a kid, we were all terrified of polio, he said. The vaccine was the savior. I just cant believe the attitude toward vaccines right now. Its an amazing thing to be able to have a vaccine right now. If youre refusing a vaccine, I just think youre a ridiculous person.

The filmmaker is often asked about the commercial opportunities that have come his way over the years, including Top Gun and Flashdance. He was adamant that he never seriously entertained these offers. People ask me about this all the time and there could be some misunderstandings, he said. Im flattered because theyre trying to put a huge enterprise into your hands. With Top Gun, he added, he was put off by one ingredient above all. I like machines. I like those jets, he said. Its just all about American military stuff and that wasnt something I wouldve wanted to do. Asked if he found anything fascistic about the plot, he added: I would say that mightve been an issue for me, he said. There was a bit of that in there.

Cronenbergs thematic consistency has inspired a new generation of filmmakers that includes his own son, Brandon Cronenberg. The younger Cronenbergs unsettling and imaginative thrillers Antiviral and Possessor are undeniable spiritual successors to his fathers work, though he has been coy about discussing such comparisons in interviews.

I think thats for obvious reasons, David said. But we love each other and talk about it all the time. As it turns out, both Cronenbergs were shooting new movies produced by U.S. distributor Neon at the same time, and Brandon decided not to rush the completion of his upcoming Alexander Skarsgard effort Infinity Pool to make the Cannes deadline to clear the way for his dad. It was really quite sweet, David said. To be shooting at the same time is delicious for a father. I was really very proud.

And then theres Julia Ducournau, the rising star who nabbed the Palme dOr last year for Titane, the Cronenbergian tale of a serial killer woman who has sex with a car. It ended up as the countrys Oscar submission. While Mortensen recently compared the movie unfavorably to Cronenbergs Crash, the director himself who participated in a conversation with Ducournau in Paris last week felt differently. I liked the film a lot, he said. Shes got a really strong visual sense. I know shes said how much of an influence my filmmaking has been, but its basically in the sense of unlocking her own sensibility, which is unique. Shes got a really strong visual sense and a sense of the absurd, the extreme. Her films are totally not like my films.

Neon

And then there were the accolades. I was delighted that she won the Palme, and I thought it was a real breakthrough for the festival, he said. More than that, the fact that it was chosen to represent France as the official Oscar selection was pretty bold. That also tends to be a conservative choice. In this case, they went the distance with that.

Still, Cronenberg expressed indifference about awards when it came to his own work (he has never been nominated for an Oscar, though A History of Violence scored nominations for William Hurt and screenwriter Josh Olson). I forget which awards Ive won, he said, without a hint of irony. I have to look at my shelf to see what they are. Im not being arrogant. Its the truth. You often know that the awards-givers are doing it more for themselves than for you. They need somebody to be a figurehead for the festival or whatever. Its a little bit transactional in a way. Its just not the reason Im making movies.

So what is that reason? He answered the question so quickly it was almost like a mantra. To be an artist, to create, and connect with human beings, he said. But even as he approached his eighth decade, he wasnt committed to filmmaking at all costs. Cinema is not my life, he said. I have three kids, four grandchildren. Thats life.

Crimes of the Futurepremiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Neon will release it in the U.S. on Friday, June 3.

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David Cronenberg on Body Horror, Titane, and Stalinist Censorship as Crimes of the Future Hits Cannes - IndieWire