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Goldstones most recent book is "On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights."

Education has always been a battleground in the culture war, but the fight over what can or should be taught in schools has escalated to the point where, as in Virginia, it can determine who is elected to high public office.

Conservatives, like new Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, are convinced the only way to keep the country strong is to restrict education to positive or patriotic views of the United States, while those who consider themselves woke want to stress the nations inequalities and injustices, both past and present. In addition, conservative parents are insisting on protecting children from material they consider too sexual, too violent or otherwise distasteful, a category that has had broad application.

The two sides have quite different strategies. Those on the left seek to require teachers to assign certain books, many of which are already available in school libraries, and increase emphasis on curriculum topics already touched on in class sessions. Conservatives, on the other hand, are focused on banning subject matter they deem offensive and purging both school libraries and reading lists of books they consider inappropriate.

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As such, it is the right that is the more aggressive. Conservatives in more than 30 states have sought to pass laws or issue directives threatening fines, dismissal or even incarceration for educators who defy their edicts. Youngkins Virginia has even set up a tip line, encouraging citizens to inform on teachers or school officials who are behaving objectionably, much as Texas has attempted to reward those who inform on abortion providers.

Most of the criticism of this proposed censorship has been on moral or political grounds, likening the conservative movement to Stalins Russia or Hitlers Germany. Conservatives counter by insisting radical liberals are trying to impose decadent and destructive mores on schoolchildren too young to appreciate evil. As has become inevitable in contemporary America, the terms freedom, democracy, and liberty have been tossed about casually by both sides, neither of which has any intent to extend those principles to their opponents. Ironically, one of the most active groups trying to restrict what children can read or learn calls itself Moms for Liberty, although, unsurprisingly, their members have limited the right to liberty to those who think the way they do.

While philosophical questions should certainly be part of the debate, there are other facets of the current crusade that need to be addressed. One obvious consequence of banning just about anything is that it virtually ensures that more and more people will choose to try to experience it. Soon after the McMinn County, Tenn., school board voted to remove Art Spiegelmans more than three decades old graphic Holocaust novel Maus from the eighth-grade curriculum, it shot to the very top of the Amazon bestseller list. In addition, bookstores and others opposed to the rule offered free copies of Maus to any parent who requested one. As a result, Spiegelman will make more money from his book than he has in years and should consider sending McMinn County officials a thank you note. Other books in conservatives crosshairs, such as Toni Morrisons Beloved and Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird, are experiencing similar revivals.

While forbidden fruit is an indication of the futility of trying to forbid dissemination of controversial ideas in anything but a police state, it does not address the most important reason to be wary of censorship. Restricting teaching to acceptable material leads to an intellectual homogeneity that works to the detriment of critical thought. One of the key skills parents should want schoolchildren to acquire is the ability to sift through competing points of view and decide for themselves which have validity and where they believe there are flaws. Learning to weigh alternatives is vital not just in studying history or examining social issues but is fundamental to success in business, science, technology, intelligence work and indeed virtually any avenue of human endeavor.

But how can we expect students to learn to weigh alternatives when conclusions have been decided for them in advance? And how can we expect adults to master these skills when we have not exposed them to similar problems as children, indeed have forbidden them from tackling them? We may succeed in creating a nation of zealots, which extremists on both sides seem to favor, but we will not create a nation of critical thinkers when critical thinking is an absolute requirement in an era of almost unparalleled technological and sociological change.

While nativists would fiercely deny that American exceptionalism is on the wane, it is all too clear that foreign competition is becoming more intense. Nations such as China may have political and economic systems most Americans deplore and regularly employ tactics that most Americans consider dishonest, but the threat they pose to Americas preeminent place in world affairs is real. The best way to counter these attacks and keep pace, perhaps even survive, is with a constant stream of effective, educated thinkers. For the moment, the United States university system remains the best in the world but in this area as well, other countries are closing the gap and the easiest way to allow our universities to deteriorate is by not supplying them with superior students from American high schools.

We are already on that road. Critical thinking is often sneered at by a large number of Americans, many of them parents, who expose themselves to nothing but facile, convenient commentary by self-serving ideologues such as Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow. How else, for example, to explain why Americans would refuse to be vaccinated against a dread disease that will eventually kill more than 1 million of their countrymen because they have been told vaccination is part of a devious plot by their political opponents?

In the end, if Americans genuinely wish to maintain this nations traditions of innovation, superior problem solving and economic opportunity, they will have to learn to accept that limiting learning to ideas they agree with is not the way to do it.

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The price of censorship - The Fulcrum

Donald Trump's new social media platform, Truth Social, has already been plagued with signup issues and a long waitlist barring most people from even using the service.

But, perhaps that's the price users must pay for a truly "free speech" platform, right?

Well, just one day into this very soft-launch of Truth Social and even its "free speech" branding is perhaps, unsurprisingly falling apart.

Web developer Matt Ortega signed up for the Truth Social service and soon discovered an email from Truth Social telling him that his account had been banned.Ortega confirmed the authenticity of the email and ban in a private message to Mashable.

Furthermore, Ortega had never posted a single thing to Truth Social as his account was one of the many still on the waitlist to join. Ortega was banned simply because of the username he used to sign up for the platform: @DevinNunesCow.

If that username sounds familiar, it's because @DevinNunesCow is similar to the name of a Twitter parody account, @DevinCow, that gained notoriety when its creator was sued by then-Republican Rep. Devin Nunes for pretending to be a cow owned by the Congressman. Nunes claimed the account, among others, were defamatory.

The account was created in reference to a report from Esquire detailing how the former Congressman from California has ownership in a family dairy farm based in Iowa, which he had kept secret.

If you're wondering what Nunes is up to now, he left Congress to become the CEO of Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group.

"Your account @DevinNunesCow has been banned," reads the subject of the Truth Social email received by Ortega. "After careful review, we have decided to delete your account permanently due to Truth Social community guideline violations."

So, to be clear, a user was banned from Trump's new "free speech" social media platform for registering a username that Truth Social's CEO does not like.

Interestingly, Truth Social has specific rules limiting speech on the platform when it involves Trump and others who own the platform. When Truth Social was first announced last year, the site's terms of services explicitly prohibited "disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site."

And Ortega's not the only one who has already experienced the limits of Truth Social's "free speech," albeit under very different circumstances.

Right-wing personality Stew Peters is claiming he was censored on Truth Social, too. Unlike Ortega, Peters already has an account set up on Trump's platform and is already posting content. According to Peters, his post calling for the execution of those responsible for the COVID-19 vaccine, was labeled as "sensitive content" by Truth Social, requiring users to go through an extra step to view the content in the post.

The vaccines that are available in the U.S. were developed under the Trump administration, and is something Trump continues to tout as a success.

"I'm ALREADY being censored on Truth Social," wrote Peters on the chat service Telegram. "Free Speech isn't free."

While the action taken against Peters' post may seem fair, this is the very kind of platform behavior Trump's supporters are seeking to escape when they start using Truth Social. Trump's most diehard fans may soon be in for a rude awakening when they find out Truth Social's "free speech" rules are likely no different from the Big Tech companies they seek to replace, like Twitter.

In fact, in some ways, Truth Social is going to be even more restrictive on speech. (A ban on "excessive use of capital letters?" REALLY?)

UPDATE: Feb. 22, 2022, 8:00 p.m. EST According to new information provided by Matt Ortega, the exact match username @DevinCow, was blocked from being registered on Truth Social, which is why he registered @DevinNunesCow.In addition, the post has been updated to make it clear that the handle for the infamous Twitter account is @DevinCow. Ortega is not associated with that Twitter account.

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Truth Social is already censoring content and banning user who made fun of Trump Media CEO - Mashable

As the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics comes to a close, human rights activists, politicians, and scholars of authoritarian influence find themselves faced with lingering questions. Was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) successful in leveraging the Games to burnish its image and discourse power on the global stage? Did a series of diplomatic boycotts prompted by Chinese authorities human rights abuses make a difference? After a successfully executed Games, will China be further emboldened to extend its surveillance and censorship regime beyond its borders? To help bring potential answers to these questions into context, were featuring some of the most relevant reporting and analysis published by news outlets and research institutions throughout the duration of the Olympic Games.

The Winter Olympics were held, again, in an authoritarian state, raising questions for human rights groups and many American corporations. PBS NewsHours Nick Schifrin reported on what advocates said about Chinas exploitation of the Games, as it tried to project the carefully crafted image its leader wants the world to see.

The Chinese government has a history of forcing people to make all sorts of propaganda videos and covering up what they have been doing to the people. Jewher Ilham, Uyghur Activist

Fourteen years after China first hosted the Olympics, an event often described as a pivotal moment for the countrys political trajectory, Beijing hosted the Games again. This time, they occurred during a surging pandemic, a new wave of lockdowns, multiple diplomatic boycotts, and international alarm at the disappearance of one of the countrys top athletes. ChinaFile asked leading China experts, including NED senior program officer Akram Keram, what the Beijing Games meant this year and to what extent they marked a significant juncture in Chinas relations with the world.

As Beijings abuses deepen and as Xi Jinping seeks to assert the Chinese governments power and influence beyond the countrys borders, some governments have demonstrated that they recognize the Chinese Communist Party as an ambitious force aspiring to remake the world in a manner more friendly to itselfand less friendly to human rights and democracy. Maya Wang, Human Rights Watch

Why boycott the Beijing Olympics? What could boycotts look like? Would China retaliate? Lindsay Maizland considered these questions ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as human rights groups and some politicians in Western nations pressured countries to boycott the Games over the CCPs human rights abuses.

Boycotts have impacts in a variety of ways that are almost always indirect, almost always over a relatively extended period of time, and sometimes counterproductive. David Black, Dalhousie University

Over the course of a 12-month period, countries such as China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have been criticized for human rights violations, will use prestigious sports events to polish their public image on an international stage. While sportswashing has long been a popular tactic, 2022 is a particularly concerning year because both the Olympic Games in China and the World Cup in Qatarthe two most-watched sporting events in the worldare being hosted in countries with markedly oppressive regimes.

This strategy has proven to be remarkably effective in overhauling these states public images and legitimizing their regimes. Karim Zidan, the Guardian

China analyst Sarah Cook identified five types of potential restrictions before, during, and after the Olympic Games: surveillance of athletes and journalists, reprisals for political speech and independent reporting, rapid censorship of scandals, stonewalling foreign journalists, and repercussions after the closing ceremony.

Chinas leaders might feel compelled to quickly suppress any number of unfavorable news stories, such as revelations that Olympic attire was produced with Uyghur forced labor, athlete complaints about an Olympic venue, or unsportsmanlike conduct by a favored Chinese athlete. Sarah Cook, Freedom House

Bonus: Beijings expanding efforts to shape global narratives go beyond simply telling Chinas story. Sarah Cook documented how the CCP leverages propaganda, censorship, and influence over key nodes in the information flow to shape media content around the world, and how nongovernmental actors are countering this influence while protecting democratic institutions. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English or Spanish.

Automated pro-China accounts flooded Twitter with spam-like tweets using #GenocideGames. The hashtag had initially been used by activists and Western lawmakers to raise awareness about human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Researchers said the tactic, known as hashtag flooding, was used to dilute the hashtags power to galvanize criticism of the Winter Olympics host nation.

The Chinese propaganda apparatus has been very focused on defending their image regarding the treatment of the Uyghur, while also promoting the Olympics. This hashtag is at the nexus of those two things. Darren Linvill, Clemson University

During a wide-ranging Twitter Spaces conversation hosted by Politico ahead of the Opening Ceremony, a panel of experts weighed in on Beijings unprecedented, closed loop covid mitigation system, international concern over Chinas human rights record, threats to the safety and data privacy of competing athletes, and the perceived deaf ear of the International Olympic Committee and the Games corporate sponsors to these concerns.

The idea that the Games are apolitical is laughable. And yet that same justification is used to silence athletes [and] put in place rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter, which says that any political demonstration on the field of play or on the podium will be punished by the International Olympic Committee. [This] is used to facilitate the use . . . of athletes as pawns because if athletes cant speak up, theyre easier to use in whatever way you find advantageous. Noah Hoffman, Global Athlete

Bonus: For China, a Uyghur lighting the Olympic cauldron was a feel-good moment of ethnic unity. But to human rights activists and Western critics, it looked like Beijing was using an athlete (who later avoided foreign media) in a calculated, provocative fashion to whitewash its suppression of Uyghurs in the region of Xinjiang. Read more in the New York Times.

The extraordinary foreign commercial relationships that open societies have forged with authoritarian countries have enabled new channels for authoritarian control to limit expression in democratic societies. Facing pressure from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian regimes that leverage both political and economic incentives to induce censorship, private sector firms (including some sponsors of the Olympic Games) have walked back statements, altered their content, or altogether avoided topics that could be considered politically sensitive.

For foreign companies facing the prospects of official reprimand, legal troubles, consumer backlash, and financial risk, compliance with authoritarian censorship demands can sometimes outweigh the reputational benefits of enabling free speech and generating products that facilitate creative expression. Rachelle Faust, International Forum for Democratic Studies

There are many overlapping parts of Chinas security state, from media censorship and monitoring of online discussion to surveillance and control of dissident figures. China also employs methods of voice and image analysis developed by technology firms and a massive network of low-level volunteer informants on the lookout for suspicious or criminal activity. How much of Chinas surveillance apparatus would be targeted at Olympic athletes was hard to know. But the countrys intensifying domestic controls, brazen arrests of foreign nationals, and harassment of activists and journalists gave Western governments reason for concern.

The national security prism is now inescapable, especially for the lengthening list of groupsUyghurs, Tibetans, rights lawyers, feminists and foreign journalists, to name a fewconsidered inherently a danger to party control. Christian Shepherd, Washington Post

Bonus: China isnt just upgrading its domestic surveillance state; its exporting the technologies it uses to monitor its populace and control society at home. Samantha Hoffman describes how the PRC leverages emerging technologies and an active role in international standards-setting bodies to undercut democracies stability and legitimacy while expanding its own influence. Read the International Forum for Democratic Studies report in English and Spanish.

MY2022 () is a multi-purpose app required to be installed by all attendees to the 2022 Olympic Games, including audience members, members of the press, and athletes. An analysis of the app conducted by the Citizen Lab found security deficits that potentially violated not only Googles Unwanted Software Policy and Apples App Store guidelines, but also Chinas own laws and national standards pertaining to privacy protection. MY2022 also included features allowing users to report politically sensitive content and a censorship keyword list that, while inactive at the time of the analysis, targeted a variety of political topics such as Xinjiang and Tibet.

The knee-jerk reactions against Chinese apps and suspicions of their censorship and surveillance capacities are to a large extent warranted as there exists extensive documentation of security flaws, privacy violations, and information controls on apps operated in China and internationally-facing apps developed by Chinese companies. Jeffrey Knockel, Citizen Lab

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Censorship, Surveillance, and Human Rights: 10 Ways These Trends Intersect with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics - NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY -...

In Born on the Water, the childrens picture book accompaniment to The 1619 Project, Smiths paintings bring the cultures of West Africans to life, showing the pre-enslavement history often omitted from classrooms.

One of the things that me and Nikole talk about is theres so much rich history, and culture, and so much joy in these tribes and these people that were stolen from their land, Smith told The 74. You really have to understand all of that to understand how heavy it was, and how tragic it was We really just wanted to show that life.

From his plant-filled Los Angeles home, Smith paired Hannah-Jones and Watsons poetry with family traditions, beautiful hair, dances, imagery that evoked death and spirits. Using a digital speed-sketch style, his illustrations began as monochrome shapes and skeletons in Photoshop, impressions of how he felt after reading and internalizing their verses.

The book hit shelves last fall amid a wave of proposed state laws aimed at preventing students from learning a mythical critical race theory and divisive concepts. In at least four states, legislation attempted to ban the 1619 Project explicitly. So far, Florida has succeeded.

While a vocal minority of lawmakers and parents believe school aged children are too young to grapple with just how violence against Black people was intrinsic to the nations founding, many more yearned for the content. Born on the Water topped bestseller lists as families headed into 2022, looking for ways to talk to children about the country theyll inherit.

Smiths artistic approach seemed a natural fit. In digital paintings, he added layer after layer of color and symbols clouds modeled after picked cotton, the shape of a person sinking underwater, or a green toy tied to a tree, the only sign of life left after colonizers stole a tribe to convey anger and fear in ways young readers could feel without being traumatized by explicit violence.

Long-inspired by Nina Simone to reflect the times, hed balanced trauma and life in childrens illustrations for years, painting Tamir Rice, Elijah McClain and others killed by police.

His second book, My Hair is Poofy and Thats Ok, explored the internalized hatred young Black children develop from racism and microaggressions.

Through his work, which he describes as art as therapy, he tries to help himself and viewers heal the broken bones of society.

For them to say, we have a book about the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, and all of these very heavy things that we as Black people in America, we think about it all the time I felt like thats one of the biggest broken bones in America, he said.

Remember that these werent slaves that were taken, these were brilliant people, and they did some amazing things They knew how to design and build cities, they built this country, and thats why they were stolen, because they were brilliant and good at what they do. We just want to remind people of that, and also how much they fought and resisted and got their freedom back.

And [for] the young folks who are not Black, theres no shame in anything were saying. We want people to grow up having an accurate understanding of what happened in this country. I feel like its really not until we address all of these things openly and honestly that were gonna really grow and move forward as a nation.Nikkolas Smith

Smith blurred linear understandings of time by using symbols across generations, to help young readers understand that [ancestors] vision of the future, their wildest dreams are now embodied in us [were] having to take that mantle and move forward.

And in faces, Smith balanced the world of feelings bound up in the Black experience: from shame, when the protagonist cannot make a family tree beyond three generations, to pride, after her grandmother recounts the rich history of tribes pre-enslavement. Her hair, in Bantu knots, and clothing give reference to past generations.

Ultimately, Smith hopes his work can help the next generation of Black youth have a sense of pride. Over the next few months, hell paint scenes of Ruby Bridges, the first young person to integrate a Southern school in 1960. And next year, hell collaborate with celebrated author Timeka Fryer Brown on a picture book about the Confederate flag.

He expects both will end up on some banned lists.

All we can do is keep putting the truth out there, Smith said, and itll get into the right hands.

All paintings are illustrated by Nikkolas Smith for Born on the Water, a publication of Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers.

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Painting Black History in the Time of Censorship for Young Readers: A Conversation with Nikkolas Smith, Illustrator of 1619 Project's Born on the...

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As the Winter Olympics kicked off in Beijing, the Chinese and Russian presidents, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, stood in unity to offer mutual support and to challenge the dominance of the U.S. and Europe. There is more at stake in their renewed close partnership than NATO expansion and the crisis in Ukraine, or the supply of natural gas to China from Russia.

The joint statement that the two countries issued in Beijing proclaimed their support for the internationalization of Internet governance and equal rights of countries to regulate the world-wide web. They pledged to deepen bilateral cooperation in international information security, declared support for an international convention on countering the use of information technologies for criminal purposes, and advocated greater participation in the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations specialized agency for information and telecommunications technologies, in addressing these issues.

The world should be alarmed by such resolutions from two nations known for censoring the internet, banning social media and messaging platforms, putting dissidents in jail over comments posted online, and launching misinformation campaigns to meddle in elections in other countries, including the U.S.

At the Beijing Winter Olympics, athletes and journalists had to make use of officially provided wi-fi at designated hotels and venues in order to access the unobstructed internet, including services like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, all banned in China. The mobile app provided by Beijing authorities to all participants My2022 was found by independent researchers to be a Trojan horse that could secretly harvest users data, which, under Chinese laws, can be passed on to the state.

Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific.

In Russia, Russian authorities successfully demanded the removal of a voting app created by prominent dissident Alexei Navalny from the app stores of both Apple and Google, alleging that it contained illegal content. The country also furthered its censorship efforts to block the use of encryption technology through the Tor browser and several other virtual private network services in 2021, a year that Human Rights Watch called the year of doubling down on Internet censorship.

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These acts of censorship and surveillance speak clearly about what kind of vision of internet governance China and Russia have in mind. Their interpretation of internet information security is about the security of their regimes, not of the security and privacy of users inside or outside of their countries. An internet governance framework with such toxic underlying values of censorship and surveillance should be extremely horrifying to anyone.

Particularly for China, however, such attempts to influence and indeed dominate global technology standards and governance are nothing new. Over the last few decades, China has invested heavily to participate in and influence global technology standard bodies. In November 2021, the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council published the National Standardization Development Outline, spelling outgoals and actions for China Standards 2035. These China standards are by all means meant to be made global.

The European Union has been on high alert about Chinas ambition, and recently outlined a more aggressive approach to setting global standards, in order to ensure its leadership in development areas such as internet technologies, artificial intelligence and green technologies. To the Europeans, it was clear that Chinas standard-setting exercises at the international level were meant to provide a competitive edge to China and its companies.

International technological standards-setting and internet governance frameworks are complex and diverse. It is also important to remember that traditionally standard settings are led by the private sector and research communities, not by state actors, for good reasons. Chinese and Russian representatives should have their seats at the table, but the world must be extremely cautious about such standard-setting processes being taken over by companies controlled by autocratic regimes, tasked with their governments political agenda. It would be even worse if such autocratic governments are to directly steer and dominate such processes.

The EU has disclosed that they would seek to cooperate with U.S. authorities to monitor emerging standards and to unify the positions from both sides of the Atlantic through regular meetings at the Trade and Technology Council. Clearly, the urgency of autocratic competition means that the two sides must coordinate at a much higher administrative level. However, the present animosity between the Western big tech firms and their governments may threaten to divert the Western governments attention from the need to cooperate on the global stage of standards and governance between the private and public sectors, and across nations.

Moreover, just bringing Europe and the U.S. together may not be enough, as players from Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world must be involved, as well as the private sector and civil societies, in setting the standards and governance that will shape the future internet and its next-generation enabling technologies. Only than can the world build a dam against the tides of censorship and surveillance from the emerging alliance of autocratic states.

We must do so to defend and ensure a free, open, secure, and trusted future internet that supports the principles of democracy and human rights by being more open and inclusive, and differentiate that vision against the governance model promoted by China and Russia, one that is designed to censor and surveil in the pretense of security.

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China and Russia Want to Rule the Global Internet - The Diplomat