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An academic golden boy, Ohmann raced in the early 60s from Harvards Society of Fellows to the Wesleyan faculty, advancing from tenured professor to provost and chancellor in record time. He proved equally adept at political protest, which he felt the nations intensifying involvement in Vietnam demanded. He wrote private letters to members of Congress, signed a public one to the president, withheld his income tax, turned in his draft card and organized support for draft resisters. After his name was mentioned on a CBS Evening News report about a rally at the Justice Department, he received a visit from the FBI.

His activism conflicted with his institutional role. Not reform, he said, but radical change was my agenda. Yet at work I was charged with holding things together against radicals like me, and as editor of College English, with sustaining the dignity of a profession whose structure and practices I now thought carceral. He ran articles on feminism, Marxist criticism and gay liberation.

His early uneasiness with the conventional relationship between teachers and students deepened with his political commitment. He had come to see the university as implicated in the nations imperial project. An inflexible and inequitable grading system not only determined a students likelihood of professional success but was now, when a high GPA conferred exemption from the draft, a matter of life and death. The racial and ethnic homogeneity of the faculty and student body perpetuated the class system. Every customary procedure that our professional training had naturalized now seemed laden with political relations, chiefly undemocratic, he wrote in a 1998 essay.

At the 1968 Modern Language Association convention, Ohmann raised the political consciousness of the profession. He smuggled a printing press into his hotel room and ran off fliers to publicize a series of anti-war resolutions he was proposing. Hotel security tried to stop his colleague Louis Kampf from posting the fliers in the hotel lobby. A scuffle and police arrests ensued. Despite resistance to politicizing the conference, the resolutions passed. A New York Times editorial denounced the groups activism: Anti-intellectualism is getting an energetic assist these days through the irresponsible behavior of a noisy fringe group of academics.

Ohmann wasnt cowed. If you are going to judge attempts at intellectual, professional, and educational reform by such frivolous standards, he wrote in reply, you will totally misunderstand the uneasiness now expressing itself in all academic organizations. A major part of that uneasiness is precisely about our professional gentility, our attempt to insulate our academic selves from real conflict and from serious educational and social issues.

Under Ohmanns aegis, Wesleyan was either the first or among the first universities to create departments of Womens Studies and a center for Afro-American Studies. A course he designed and oversaw in the late 70s called Towards a Socialist America became a model of student-directed education.

In 1976, a couple of years after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, Ohmann published English in America, an impassioned consideration of universities inability to resist a government that was crushing the values of human freedom and of pursuit of truth, values that are the primary allegiance of the liberal university. Selling Culture, about how magazines and magazine advertising created the American mass market at the turn of the 20th century, appeared to great acclaim in 1996, solidifying his reputation as a theorist alive to complexity and able to slice through it in a lucid, genial style.

When I had a new project, Id tell [Dick] about it, University of Oregon professor and Wesleyan graduate Daniel Rosenberg said. When I was mostly done, hed chuckle and not that gently reduce a good part of my idea to rubble. He wouldnt suggest that I was wrong about anything. What he did was to spin out the often-uncomfortable implications of my argument were it right.

As a Wesleyan student, CUNY Professor Joseph Entin walked into Ohmanns office one day, found himself working with Ohmann on a reading project, and never looked back. Entin marveled at Ohmanns profound openness. The teacher shall always be taught that was Dick, he said. He respected everyone, without pretense, and had a truly democratic approach to knowledge and culture.

By the time I got to Wesleyan, in the early 80s, the momentum that Ohmann had done so much to create seemed to have slowed. There were sit-ins over divestment from South Africa and the threat from the Reagan administration to end student loans, but the happenings had mostly happened. Nationally, an ascendant political right found multiculturalism to be a convenient target in the culture wars. The persistence of the conservative backlash testifies to the durability of Ohmanns and his colleagues legacy. In a 1996 Wall Street Journal column, Lynne Cheney characterized Ohmann as a dangerous radical.

No small part of Ohmann's radicalism lay in his ability to listen, the danger he posed that of higher understanding. In a splendid Greek Revival building, Ohmann ran a series of lectures historians, theorists, critics; also poets and writers. Id usually arrive too late to get one of the few dozen spindle-backed chairs, and walk around a staircase and through the scullery to a doorway with a side view of the lectern and, when my eyes strayed, of audience members in half- or quarter-profile. There, shadowy in the chandelier-lit parlor, the corner of a wide black plastic eyeglass frame, a blue button-down collar, a broad shoulder swiveled by a crossed arm there, listening hard, was Dick Ohmann, living proof, through the reach of his own work and that of his students, of the possibility of change. I couldnt see it then any better than I could see him, but I can now.

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Richard Ohmann: The Radical Professor Who Enraged the Right - POLITICO Magazine

Nikole Hannah-Jones is aNew York Timesjournalist and architect of the 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prizewinning series of articles that recontextualizes the central roles that slavery and racism played in America's founding. Those articles are now being taught in some public schools, even though numerous critics of the project have raised questions about very basic factual issues in some of the pieces.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that Hannah-Jones is uncomfortable leaving curriculum decisions to people who are not district officials and would thus be less inclined to teach her work. In a recent interview on Meet the Press, Hannah-Jones confessed that she did not "understand this idea that parents should decide what's being taught."

Her statement echoed widely panned comments made by former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, during the 2021 gubernatorial race against Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin. McAuliffe's statement denying that parents should play a paramount role in the education of their own children is rightly seen as a realigning momentone that allowed Youngkin to run (and win) on a platform of making the public education system accountable to families. But Hannah-Jones seems to believe that McAuliffe had it right, even if his comments were unpopular.

During theMeet the Pressinterview, Hannah-Jones made an attempt at consistency, taking the position that neither she nor other non-educators have the relative expertise to decide what should be taught in schools. "I'm not a professional educator," she said. This is a somewhat confusing claim coming from someone who is currently a tenured professor at Howard University's School of Communications; she is, quite literally, a professional educator.

As it turns out, the idea that parents should broadly surrender their rights to public school officials is both unpopular andmisguided. Yes, it's possible for parents to become too involved in school affairs, getting individual books removed from library shelves. But much of what parents have found objectionable in the past year is truly eyebrow-raising: As I wrote last January in "An Anti-Racist Education for Middle Schoolers":

Fairfax Public Schools in Virginia invited Ibram X. Kendi, an activist and author of the booksHow to Be an AntiracistandAntiracist Baby, to have a virtual conversation with principals, administrators, and teachers. Kendi, who was paid $20,000 to speak for one hour, believes that the Constitution should be amended to create a federal Department of Anti-Racism with the power to censor public officials who make racist statements. The district also bought $24,000 worth of his books, which argue that any arrangement producing unequal results along racial lines is racist by definition.

The National Education Association (NEA), for instance, wants schools to offer a critique of "empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society." It doesn't matter whether you define this sort of thing as critical race theorythough the NEA certainly doesit matters that activist educators are working to include it.

The best solution to the education culture wars is to give parents the best kind of choice:school choice. Instead of engaging in venomous, all-consuming battles over what schools should teach to students, families should be empowered to take their education dollars and find a schooling option that best fits their children. "The critical race theory debate wouldn't matter if we had more school choice," notedReason's J.D. Tuccille. "Guide your children's education and let your opponents teach their own kids."

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Nikole Hannah-Jones Doesn't Understand 'The Idea That Parents Should Decide' What Schools Teach - Reason

Tis the holiday season and the heroes of Fox News are valiantly arraying their forces in the War On Christmas, even as ICU beds are filling up and a new strain of COVID has arrived.

In the spirit of the season I am making a special plea to Rupert Murdoch to deliver a Christmas miracle: stop killing us.

Thats it, thats the tweet.

Wait, this is an article? I have to write more. OK then.

Republicans have been more reluctant to get vaccinated and more likely to die as a result. This trend was obfuscated initially because COVID emerged in blue states on the coasts, and because conservatives had at least some stake in dampening the pandemic when Trump was still president. As those conditions have disappeared, the partisan divide has become undeniable.

If you want to follow the evolution of these trends, health analyst Charles Gaba @charles_gaba has been tracking the partisan divide. The differences are very clear. Fewer vaccines and more deaths as a county becomes Trumpier. The most recent data complied by Gaba shows that the death rate in the reddest counties is 5.54 times that of the bluest counties.

As illustrated by Philip Bump, this pattern is not static, but has become worse over time. At one point, there were similar amounts of deaths in blue and red counties, but a very large gap has now emerged.

The partisan divide has hardened as vaccines have become more available, and even as other groups who initially showed hesitancy or faced access issues have increased vaccination rates. The gap between whites and Blacks has declined, and all but disappeared for Latinos. (The Asian-and-everyone-else gap is the only one which has grown!)

In other words, the remaining block of people who are refusing to get vaccinated are Republicans. At this point, knowing someones political identity is the best way of knowing their approach to vaccines. See this graph from NPR: Republicans are 60% of the unvaccinated population.

Why are Republicans so resistant? There is variation even within Republicans that offers insights. Unvaccinated Republicans tend to be younger (which makes sense, since they are least at risk of death), but also less educated and more conservative in their views. They are also more likely to believe that the threats are exaggerated and less likely to believe that COVID is something to worry about.

The most extraordinary difference may be that just 3% of unvaccinated Republicans believe that getting vaccinated is a collective responsibility (compared to 26% of vaxxed Republicans and 81% of vaxxed Dems). The inherent nature of COVID is that it transfers from one person to another. By definition, the choices we make as individuals affect those around us. But almost no unvaccinated Republicans agree that they have some responsibility to their community in this domain. We cant defeat a pandemic as long as so many people refuse to acknowledge their obligations to others.

Republicans are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories about vaccinations, for example, that they cause impotence, give you COVID, or include microchips. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, almost half of Republicans compared to just 14% of Democrats believe or are unsure about four or more false statements about COVID-19.

So who is to blame for this? Another way of asking this question is: Why do Republicans believe what they believe?

Maybe there is something in the conservative DNA that makes them reflexively opposed to public health measures. Indeed, if we compare attitudes toward COVID across countries we see that political ideology matters. But it matters much more in the U.S. Across other countries there is a 10-20 percentage point difference between the left and right according to one Pew poll.

In the U.S. it is 45 points.

COVID is a novel public health challenge. Therefore it represented a relatively blank slate where people did not have clear prior beliefs. This makes it more likely that people adopted their beliefs based on the cues provided by elites, such as politicians and media.

Which brings us to Fox News.

I could show you a series of screenshots of Fox News talking heads encouraging COVID complacency and vaccine hesitancy. Such content has become a central feature of their programming. Or I could point out that Fox News itself, as an organization, was one of the early adopters of a workplace vaccine mandates that its editorial policy so fiercely opposes.

Instead, I am going to show you causal evidence that Fox News has made things worse. In other words, Fox News is not just catering to its audiences taste for public health misinformation, it is actively cultivating it.

Social scientists obsess about questions of causality, how to show that X (Fox News content) caused Y (viewer public health beliefs), rather than Y caused X, or that other factors drove both X and Y. Ideally, an experimental design is used to sort out causality, identifying some sort of exogenous factor that shapes the outcome.

A standard technique at estimating the causal effect of Fox News is to look at channel positioning. The idea is that the placement of channels is random, but that people tend to watch more of channels placed earlier on the dial, all else equal. Researchers can then examine if that random source of variation is associated with changes in public health behaviors and outcomes, using indicators like local surveys, health measures like deaths, or GPS data to track whether people stayed at home. Researchers have used channel positioning to assess the effect of Fox News on other outcomes, such as estimating Republican vote share in elections, and the rise of the Tea Party.

What did researchers find when researchers used this technique to understand the relationship between Fox News and COVID?

A series of sophisticated papers confirm the causal influence of Fox on health behaviors and outcomes. Exposure to Fox News made people less likely to stay at home, more likely to travel, less likely to use hand sanitizer or masks, and more vaccine hesitant.

One paper used a slightly different causal technique to look at variation within Fox News coverage. Hard to believe, but there was a time when Tucker Carlsons messaging was reasonably responsible compared to Sean Hannity. Researchers exploited this variation through a variety of techniques. They could not use channel placement as a source of exogenous variation in this case, since they were looking at variation within the Fox News channel, so they took a different ingenious approach: using variation in sunset times (with the idea that people watch more TV when its dark, and that in places where sunset is later, people will be exogenously more exposed to more Hannity, which runs later).

The results shows that greater exposure to the less responsible version of Fox messaging was associated with more COVID cases and more deaths.

To sum up, a series of sophisticated analyses show that Fox News is leading viewers to take the COVID less seriously, to skip basic public health measures, to avoid vaccines and to greater illnesses and deaths. Fox News talking heads are not just asking questions, they are leading their viewers to their demise. And because COVID is a virus, they risks they are persuading their viewers to undertake are shared, unwillingly, with the rest of us.

The studies Ive highlighted focus on Fox, but they should make you worry about a whole domain of conservative media and politics. Other Murdoch-owned operations, like the nominally high-brow Wall St. Journal and its embarrassing-but-influential cousin, the New York Post, are beating the same COVID-skeptic drum. So is the media Fox is now competing with, like Newsmax and OANN. Such messaging is also employed by many Republican politicians who have shaped coverage and promoted quack cures.

It is not the case that Fox and Co. are wholly responsible for partisan COVID gap. But elite messaging helps us to understand why the gap between left and right is so much wider in the U.S. than in other countries.

Did we really need some fancy analytical techniques with social scientists finding ingenious sources of exogenous variation to persuade us that elite messaging matters? Maybe not. As it is, we have a lot of evidence that conservative media and Republican politicians are encouraging deaths. Its sort of like we have found them over the corpse, bloody knife in their hand. What the analyses do is to remove any reasonable doubt by providing a recording of the crime. It moves the moral culpability for death beyond plausible deniability.

Why kill your own voters or your own viewers? My speculative answer is that there are three overlapping reasons: an addiction to culture wars, conspiracism and anti-science narratives.

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The omniscience of culture war framing on the right means that even basic public health issues are framed through that prism. As soon as CDC officials recommended masks for Americans, Trumps advisers spied an opportunity: In the months that followed, Trump was only seen wearing a mask on rare occasions, instead following the advice of Stephen Miller, Johnny McEntee, Derek Lyons and other trusted aides to think of masks as a cultural wedge issue.

Similarly, a media and party that has fed its followers conspiracies seemed unable to switch modes when it came to COVID: Things are never as they seem. Some shadowy puppeteers are in cahoots with the government or foreign powers to control you! This mode of thinking is also the populist mode, and the line between conservative populism and conspiracism has become increasingly hard to discern. It is not just anti-elitism in general. If you take your cues from Trump, Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, you have no problem with elites. It is directed rage against a certain type of elite.

Finally, there is the anti-science aspect of modern conservative thought. Science is an imperfect exercise. On the whole the scientific domain has provided the tools to get us out of a deadly pandemic. However, there has been plenty to criticize during COVID regulators moving too slowly, or sending mixed messages. But the nature of human progress depends upon a willingness to modify and update scientific beliefs to reflect new findings. When errors become a basis to punish or distrust science, we are in trouble.

Ultimately, governing depends upon rationality. The use of logic, and evidence about cause and effects, are especially necessary in domains like public health, where irrationality is mercilessly punished. In some fundamental way, U.S. governance is being held hostage by those who are not just unable to fulfill the basic requirements of the job, but also dedicated to salting the earth for anyone else who tries to do better. Thus, the same media that undermined public health guidance will shamelessly blame the Biden administration for not effectively corralling the pandemic.

This article originally appeared in Can We Still Govern?. Published with permission of the author.

Original post:
Fox News is killing us: Here are the receipts - Wisconsin Examiner

The seven principles came about when Black people were fighting (and are still fighting) for their basic rights and equality. The principles were guides for how to live and become self-sufficient in an era in which most Americans, according to Gallop, thought the country was integrating too quickly and those efforts should be slowed down. In other words, White majorities still wanted to subjugate Black people, despite the passage by Congress of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.

In that context, you can see how the principals spoke to the state of Black lives during that time period. Cooperative economics, for example, means to build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together. Sounds a lot like the American dream that had long been denied to people of color.

Remember, Black people were still lynched in the 1960s and killed for advocating for civil rights (so were white people). The principles were something that Black people could rally around, the ones available to White America but not them.

Along the way, Black and white people objected to Kwanzaa for various reasons. The Black Christmas trope is one of those disparaging dog whistles meant as a scare tactic to fuel the culture wars. Kwanzaa isnt a replacement for Christmas, but rather a secular celebration.

Then people criticized Kwanzaa because someone made it up. I hate to tell you folks, but historians believe the Roman Emperor Constantine created Christmas in 336 AD. He decreed it would be celebrated on December 25, but not because Jesus was born that day (theologians believe he was born in the spring). A celebration in late December would overlap and later replace other traditional solstice celebrations.

Over time, Christmas has turned into a more secular holiday, with Santa Claus, trees and mistletoe. Heck, it wasnt until 1870 that the U.S. government recognized Christmas as a federal holiday.

Thats a long way of saying: We make up lots of stuff. Kwanzaa was the brainchild of Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor and chair of Black Studies at California State University with a controversial past. That past has, unfairly, weighed on Kwanzaa.

Born Ronald McKinley Everett, he and two others were convicted in 1971 on charges of torturing and falsely imprisoning two Black women while he was a member of a Black nationalist group. While he denied the charges, he served four years in prison. His involvement with the Black Power movement led to the myth that Kwanzaa is closely tied to Black nationalism.

Embracing the principles of Kwanza does not embrace the heinous acts of one man, much like taking your kids to see Paddington doesnt embrace the awful acts of Harvey Weinstein.

So, yes, Kwanzaas message of unity and faith resonates just like the togetherness and love shared on Christmas.

The principles, while born in a different time, are applicable today. While we are doing a better job learning to live together, we still have a long way to go. The principals remind everyone not just Black people of how we can become the best versions of ourselves while improving our communities.

Kwanzaa lasts until Jan. 1 and were still in the Christmas holiday season. Whether you are among the very large majority of Americans who celebrate(d) Christmas or the very small who celebrate Kwanzaa, try to live by the values as best you can, not only this time of the year but all of 2022. Wed all be better off.

Ray Marcano is a long-time journalist whose column appears on these pages each Sunday. He can be reached at raymarcanoddn@gmail.com.

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MARCANO: The important and complicated history of Kwanzaa - Dayton Daily News

A busy, busy year for audio. As in 2020, lockdown gave all audio a boost in status, as well as listeners. The lack of gigs, theatre, art shows or cinema from January to March meant that audio (radio, podcasts, music) jumped up the cultural ladder. Podcasts were also boosted by yet more celebrities deciding to fill their lonelier hours with a talking to my famous mates show. Listeners responded, and podcasts are now the fastest growing audio medium (though live radio still makes up most of what we listen to).

2021 saw some interesting big-name radio appointments. Emma Barnett and Anita Rani joined Womans Hour to great success, though the former started contentiously (Kelechi Okafor refused to appear when she overheard Barnett discussing with producers whether Okafor was antisemitic). Amol Rajan moved to Today, where he has brought a more conversational feel (when he remembers to slow down his natural gabble). In late spring, much-loved Radio 1 stalwarts Annie MacManus and Nick Grimshaw both announced their departures, with MacManuss final link achieving a life of its own on social media (Life is short. It thunders by. If you like the music, you have got to get up and dance. Just do it). And 6 Musics afternoon dafty Shaun Keaveny also left, but sadly not of his own accord: his funky replacement, Craig Charles, is upbeat but less of a natural fit. Graham Norton quit his Radio 2 Saturday morning show to do the same on Saturdays and Sundays for Virgin Radio (no effect on Virgins Rajars thus far). On 5 live breakfast, Rick Edwards joined Rachel Burden, replacing Nicky Campbell without fuss or trouble.

In March, the BBC announced a gradual but compulsory move to the regions. Much of this Big Shift About meant changes for radio production teams: Newsbeat journalists are off to Birmingham, technology hacks to Glasgow, and more of Radio 3 and 6 Musics output must come from outside the capital (Charless show is based in Salford). Several old-timers, including the brilliant technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, chose to retire rather than move.

In commercial radio, niche is still king, with Boom Radio, which launched in February, aiming for the sixtysomethings, and Greatest Hits for the uncool Gen X-ers (the likes of Alex Lester and Mark Goodier were joined by Simon Mayo in March). Times Radio has done well in its first year (around 640,000 weekly listeners), offering a sparky alternative to Radio 4 and 5 live.

Outside radio, big corporations are getting serious about our ears. Spotify gave us podcasts from genuine midlife superstars Barack and Bruce (Renegades), the UKs greatest YouTubers, the Sidemen (The Fellas, Whats Good With Miniminter and Randolph) and the most popular podcaster in the world (Joe Rogan). Its reward was to overtake Apple and BBC Sounds as the most popular podcast platform for younger audiences. Audible, known for audiobooks, has quietly been making some gripping UK podcasts, including investigative shows Finding Q, Death at Deepcut, and inventive dramas such as the Jed Mercurio-execd Zoetrope. Wondery, reliable banger-out of US true crime, added some UK shows this year, such as the excellent Harsh Reality.

With big corporations comes big money: in June, US-celebrities-interviewing-their-mates show Smartless was bought for a reputed $80m by Amazon Music, which also snapped up Wondery. But amid all these dollar signs, the question is whether theres enough advertising revenue to support the independent podcast sector. Some excellent shows are finding it harder to secure those all-important mattress/ bush-trimmer/ website design ads, as theyre all being hoovered up by, you guessed it, new celebrity shows. Still, there is no doubt that since lockdown 2020, audio has boomed. Expect even more next year.

1. Things Fell Apart (Radio 4)Jon Ronson traces the often surprising origin stories of todays raging culture wars.

2. Welcome to Your Fantasy (Pineapple Street Studios/Gimlet)Brilliant in-depth telling of the true crime story you never knew you wanted: the history of the Chippendales. Host Natalia Petrzela is excellent throughout.

3. Finding Q: My Journey Into QAnon (Audible)Journalist Nicky Woolf shows the wreckage that QAnon leaves in its trail, and gets a face-to-face interview with the man most likely to be Q.

4. Harsh Reality (Wondery)Wondery uses its long-established true crime techniques to examine the life of trans woman Miriam Rivera, and how a UK reality show exploited her and others.

5. Uncanny/The Battersea Poltergeist (Radio 4)Danny Robinss two brilliant Radio 4 series about the paranormal: The Battersea Poltergeist, a documentary (with drama sections) about the 12-year haunting of an ordinary family; and Uncanny, which examines 10 spooky real-life stories.

6. Coming in from the Cold (TalkSport/Unedited StoriesThis excellent six-part series traces the history of black players in English football, and includes testimony from Cyrille Regis, John Barnes and Raheem Sterling.

7. Windrush Stories (National Prison Radio) Full-length stories from the Windrush generation and their children, produced and presented by DJ Flight. NPR is nurturing some serious talent (see also Brenda Birungi, winner of best host: speech audio at this years Audio Production awards)

8. Comfort Eating (The Guardian)Famous people as varied as Scarlett Moffatt and Bernardine Evaristo discuss their past through the medium of their favourite comfort food with Guardian restaurant critic Grace Dent.

9. We Didnt Start the Fire (Crowd Network)A witty and fascinating modern history lesson from Katie Puckrik and Tom Fordyce, through the lyrics of Billy Joels hit.

10. Sweet Bobby (Tortoise)A mad tale of the immensely complicated catfishing of a bright young UK woman, which starts off brilliantly but as is often the case with true crime falls away rapidly once the baddie is revealed.

Any podcast of a celeb interviewing another celebWith a few honourable exceptions, such podcasts are always too cosy to offer anything more than dull anecdotes and mutual stanning. We know you need the attention, famous people, but you can all stop now.

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Miranda Sawyers best audio of 2021 - The Guardian