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I felt a very faint twinge of sympathy for Oliver Dowden, I have to confess, when I saw the storm of protest which greeted his request that the heads of the institutions funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport should attend a meeting to discuss how history is represented in public institutions. Keeping any sympathy in check was the governments confrontational means of publicising the meeting: it was trailed in an article in the Sunday Telegraph, announcing that its purpose was to defend our history, amid concern that a noisy minority of activists are trying to do Britain down.

Nevertheless, how museums present and interpret British history is an important, problematic issue about which it is surely totally appropriate for museum directors and the heads of the agencies looking after heritage, including the National Trust and Historic England, to meet. There would be much to be gained from an open discussion about how they are responding to views including, from its own perspective, that of the government that our approach to history should be radically reconstructed.

It has been assumed that the meeting is totally unprecedented. While I was director of the National Gallery, however, it was not so unusual for there to be meetings called by the Department for Culture to discuss issues of common concern although these were certainly not summarised in the national press before they had even taken place. I remember a meeting to discuss how we were all going to deal with the Cultural Olympiad (I remember it because Tim Knox, then director of Sir John Soanes Museum, bravely said that he had no intention of paying any attention to the Olympics). I also remember being summoned to a dingy hotel outside Kingston, just before Christmas, for a series of pep talks by Labour ministers. This was deeply resented but we had no option, because the Department for Culture provides a considerable proportion of the funding of many of these institutions and, it needs to be remembered, is answerable to parliament for public policy. So, it is not unreasonable for the government to be interested in cultural policy.

The key issue is whether the government will use the meeting to explore how institutions have responded to the current demands to reinterpret history, to listen and to share issues of common concern. Or whether it will, instead, use this as an opportunity to try to impose the governments own ideas as to how national history should be presented: in the over-simplified, ahistorical and triumphalist manner that it has pushed in the wake of Brexit. The latter strategy will almost certainly be counterproductive; it will, and should be, resisted by trustee bodies, which have statutory independence.

From my perspective, there is a marked difference in the way institutions have responded to widespread concerns about how history is presented, many of which have been brought into focus by the Black Lives Matter movement. A frank discussion of these responses, and how they have themselves been received, might make for a good use of the advertised meeting.

A new home for Hans Sloane: the bust of the British Museums founder in a display exploring the legacies of empire and slavery. Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

The British Museum, for example, has used lockdown to make a significant modification in the way its collection is presented. In particular, it has chosen to move the bust of Hans Sloane from a commemorative plinth into a display case with accompanying information about his career as a slave owner. Contrary to those newspaper pundits who were appalled by this action, probably without seeing it, I thought it was an entirely appropriate decision that the museum should document its founders actions as a slave owner and draw attention to them, but in a way which was explanatory, rather than overtly condemnatory. It leaves visitors to draw their own conclusions.

The Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum), meanwhile, has had to respond to the demands, most especially from its local community, that it remove the statue of Sir Robert Geffrye from the niche in the facade of the historic almshouses that house its collections. What it did, which was probably a good idea at the time, was to conduct an online survey. But when the great majority of respondents supported the view that the statue should be removed, the trustees, following advice from the Department for Culture, decided not to. Presumably this was partly because the statue belongs to the historic fabric and is protected by legislation (even without the current governments determination to introduce further legislation on the subject of statues).

My regret about the DCMS meeting is not that it is being held, then, but that the nature of the discussion and the conclusions which are reached will not be made public; and that, owing to the rancour of the current culture wars, we are not able to have a proper, balanced and even-handed discussion about how best to represent the British past in all its complexity.

Charles Saumarez Smith was director of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery and is author of The Art Museum in Modern Times(Thames & Hudson).

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The culture minister should take an interest in museums but he can't tell them how to interpret the past - Apollo Magazine

Britain is set to introduce new laws guaranteeing freedom of speech at universities to counteract what the government on Tuesday called unacceptable silencing and censoring on campuses.

As part of the plans, the government is considering appointing a free speech champion to investigate possible breaches of the right to expression, while academics who lose their jobs in similar disputes may be able to claim compensation.

I am deeply worried about the chilling effect on campuses of unacceptable silencing and censoring, saideducationminister Gavin Williamson.

That is why we must strengthen free speech in higher education, by bolstering the existing legal duties and ensuring strong, robust action is taken if these are breached. Prime Minister Boris Johnson later tweeted that freedom of speech is at the very core of our democracy.

It is absolutely right that our great universities the historic centres of free thinking and ideas will now have this freedom protected and bolstered with stronger legal protections, he added.

Williamson said it is important to strengthen freedom of speech in higher education by bolstering the existing legal duties and ensuring strong, robust action is taken if these are breached. Source: Lindsey Parnaby/AFP

However, the government was accused of exploiting culture wars, after itself launching a pushback against the toppling of slavery-era statues and efforts to educate Britons about their colonial past, in the wake of last years Black Lives Matter protests.

Just six events out of almost 10,000 involving an external speaker were cancelled over the speakers views in 2019-20, according to a survey in December by the group Wonkhe, which analyses highereducationpolicy.

The government has tapped into a wider push by conservatives, right-leaning libertarians and classical liberals to combat cancel culture and the supposed woke left agenda that they claim has led to a crisis of free speech in Britain, Australian historian Evan Smith wrote on the Wonkhe site.Smith, who published a book last year about campus free-speech rows,added that similar claims (are) being made in the US, Australia, Canada and France.

The government proposals were slammed by Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, which represents staff in highereducation.

It is extraordinary that in the midst of a global pandemic the government appears more interested in fighting phantom threats to free speech than taking action to contain the real and present danger which the virus poses to staff and students, she said.

But a group of senior academics welcomed the proposals in a letter to The Times.

In recent years, too many academics have been marginalised because they hold unorthodox views on issues like gender, Brexit and the legacy of empire, said the letter, organised by high-profile political commentator Matthew Goodwin.

Speakers to have been no-platformed at universities include Brexit politician Nigel Farage, Canadian academic Jordan Peterson, leading feminists Julie Bindel and Selina Todd, philosopher Roger Scruton and former interior minister Amber Rudd.

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News UK set for new laws to protect freedom of speech on campus Trending - Study International News

Violence toward Black people and protests for racial justice were rampant in Philadelphia during the 1918 flu pandemic, in much the same way they have been during the current coronavirus pandemic.

Adella Bond fired her revolver outside her window into the South Philadelphia air, hoping to attract police as a mob of Irish American people gathered around her home to tell her she wasnt welcome.

Bond, a Black woman who was a municipal court probation officer, knew that racial conflicts unfolded in neighborhoods that had once belonged to only White people but were beginning to house Black people as they migrated from the South to the North during the Great Migration, said Kenneth Finkel, a professor in the department of history at Temple University in Philadelphia, and the author of Insight Philadelphia: Historical Essays Illustrated.

Black people were seeking work, property ownership and refuge from Southern violence from 1916 to 1970, when ultimately millions of them traveled north for industrial employment available there because of the labor shortages that started during World War I even during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Southern Black people sought those same features, as well as better quality of life, through World War II and afterward (although segregation and other obstacles persisted for a while).

Bond knew that White people had welcomed a Black family to a nearby neighborhood by harassing them and burning their furniture in the street earlier that July. She was also aware that another woman of color had previously lived in the house on Ellsworth Street that Bond moved into on Wednesday, July 24, 1918 so she supposed that the area may have been safer for Black people.

The second time she walked down that street, however, she was stoned. The violence came to her front door two days later, when about 100 White men and boys surrounded her house on Friday, July 26.

I heard them talk about having guns, and I saw the guns and cartridges. At last a man came along with a baby in his arms, Bond told her attorney on July 30, 1918, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper. He handed the baby to a woman, took a rock and threw it. The rock went through my parlor window. I didnt know what the mob would do next, and I fired my revolver from my upper window to call the police. A policeman came, but he wouldnt try to cope with that mob alone, so he turned it into a riot call.

The rock thrower, who had been shot in the leg, was arrested and held without bail. Police arrested Bond for inciting to riot, and the events of that day precipitated a slew of racial conflicts and riots that constituted one of the most violent periods in Philadelphias history.

Violence instigated by White people, violent police encounters and protests for racial justice were rampant in Philadelphia during the 1918 flu pandemic. George Floyd, a Black man from Minneapolis, was killed by a White policeman in May 2020. That killing and others by police led to the Black Lives Matter movement gaining momentum over the summer, in terms of national and global reach, numbers of protests and new supporters beyond Black communities.

Despite the challenges Black Philadelphians faced in 1918, they, too, summoned the spirit needed to work toward change.

The impact of these crowded race riots on the flu case and death rates in Philadelphia is unknown. The riots took place during a lull between the first and second waves of the pandemic, said Dr. Jeremy Brown, an emergency care physician and author of Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History, via email. As such, and during the continuing fighting during the great war in Europe, attention was surely focused on other issues. The riot was not a superspreader event, because at the time there wasnt much disease to be spread. That came back in the fall.

We may not be able to establish casualty scientifically or historically between the outbreak of disease and the virus of racism, but we understand all too well that when we fear for our very lives, our mortality can shred our civility, Brown said in an unpublished paper on the topic. This dread exposes a primal panic that unleashes the violent human impulse to blame and hurt others in ways inexcusable. There are many lessons weve learned from looking at the history of pandemics, but some, regrettably, we never seem to take to heart.

Philadelphia had the largest Black population of any Northern city in 1910, although African Americans were only 5% of the citys population, said Charles Hardy, a professor of history at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

The Great Migration resulted in Black newcomers in White neighborhoods and housing shortages, to which realtors responded by increasing rent prices effectively causing housing competition among Black and White people, and relocation by those who couldnt afford the new prices.

READ MORE: From the front lines, Black nurses battle twin pandemics of racism and coronavirus

Bond moved into a working class, tough Irish-American neighborhood, Hardy said. Philadelphia is historically known as the city of neighborhoods. The boundaries of ethnically specific neighborhoods werent to be crossed then.

Rather than blame the realtors, White residents harassed their new Black neighbors for their struggles and for not adhering to social codes in the segregated city. The citys a powder keg at this point in time, Hardy said.

A city tense over war, the flu pandemic and race riots erupted as what started at Bonds house that Friday night spread across about 2 square miles. Crowds of hundreds of rioters became thousands as the unrest escalated.

When things exploded, Finkel said, it went on for days. Every night was another chaotic mess.

On Saturday, a Black man named William Box was accused of thievery and chased by White men. A police bureau clerk tried to stop Box, who allegedly pulled a knife and cut the clerks arm.

Several policemen arrived on the scene, but were unable to curb the mob of whites and the negro was struck many times by persons in the crowd,' wrote Vincent P. Franklin, then an author and professor of history, in a 1975 paper on the race riots. Cries of lynch him' caused the police to send for help, and a squad of reserves arrived in time to prevent the mob doing serious injury to the negro,' Franklin continued, quoting a Philadelphia Inquirer report. They arrested Box and took him to the hospital.

The next morning, a White mob chased Jesse Butler as he walked home from a party. While running, Butler fired a shot into the mob and allegedly injured Hugh Lavery, a White man. Police who had arrived soon found that Butler was also wounded and took both men to the hospital, but Lavery died before their arrival.

Hostility spread as groups of White people attacked Black people on their regular travels throughout Philadelphia. Civilians, as the Home Defense Reserves typically used for emergencies, assisted around 250 policemen in maintaining a riot zone near Bonds neighborhood.

Black people felt tension and concern over police brutality, Hardy said. Philadelphia police forces were segregated, (and) most policemen were political appointees. Then theres this discriminatory enforcement of laws.

One of those was a type of stop-and-frisk practice. White patrolmen Roy Ramsey and John Schneider stopped a Black man, Riley Bullock, on an avenue and searched him on Monday. After finding a pocketknife Bullock legally carried, the patrolmen beat and arrested him. As they took Bullock into the station, he was fatally shot in the back, Finkel said, by a negro, who was seen making his escape. The police gave chase, but the alleged assailant managed to escape, reported many local newspapers that ran the unsubstantiated story.

The next day brought the revelation that Bullock was killed by a bullet from the gun of patrolman Ramsey who claimed that he slipped and his gun fired when he was taking Bullock into the station.

Bullock wasnt the only victim of police violence. When Ramsey and Schneider arrested a Black man named Preston Lewis that morning, they beat him so severely that Lewis had to be taken to the hospital. As Lewis laid on the operating table, Schneider reportedly began striking him before ultimately being carried out of the room by White officers.

Tuesday was calmer, but mobs tried to lynch a Black man for allegedly stealing a watermelon that day. When its all done four days later, youve had several hundred people who were injured, four people dead, Hardy said. The houses of dozens of Black families had been destroyed, forcing them to flee. And though White people had instigated most of the violence, the majority of the 60 people arrested were Black.

What you have in the early 1900s and today is rising nativism, White ethnocentrism and White supremacy, Hardy said. After World War I is when you witness the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan which, in the 1920s, becomes a major political force. The culture wars that were witnessing today are very much reminiscent of the culture wars in the 1920s. Its basically fear of a White minority.

READ MORE: Fed study: 1918 flu deaths linked to relative strength of Nazism

There are chilling parallels between what we have seen in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic with the revelation of quite brutal police killings of African Americans and what actually happened back in 1918, Brown said.

That story is a very sobering one not least for which it reminds us that this kind of violence against the African American community is nothing new, sadly, he said. We know how long its been around, but when it comes to pandemics, its been around for well over a century.

Many Black Philadelphians organized to prevent experiencing further violence, destruction and death at the hands of White people, Franklin wrote.

Ministers and other prominent Black Philadelphians met and wrote a letter to the citys director of public safety. In it, they castigated the police force over the lack of protection and arrests of Black people during the violence, Franklin wrote, quoting the letter as reprinted by local newspapers.

In court, Black lawyers defended Black people who had been arrested during the riots. Black ministers and civic leaders formed the Association for the Protection of Colored People (or Colored Protective Association) in August, immediately gaining hundreds of members who worked and fundraised to represent prosecuted Black people and to support the civil rights of Black Philadelphians.

The association was responsible for the prosecution of patrolman Ramsey for killing Bullock, and patrolman Schneider for assaulting Lewis, but neither of the men were convicted partly due to fellow Black patrolmen backing down from testifying what they had really seen.

Black Philadelphians did succeed in getting the commander and all members of the police force transferred out of the 17th District, where most of the rioting had occurred. This event was hailed as a major victory for Philadelphias black community, Franklin wrote.

The association achieved mobilizing Black Philadelphians by informing them of their lawful civil rights, advising them on handling racial discrimination, giving speeches in churches and providing legal assistance for those who had been arrested or assaulted. When Black people made protests to government officials about violent White sailors, the commander of the Fourth Naval District investigated the situation, Franklin wrote.

When you look at Black Lives Matter demonstrations and the calls for police accountability and changes in police behavior, Hardy said, we can see a sort of predecessor to that in Philadelphia during the First World War.

These were the more significant and graphic results of the organized efforts of blacks to improve their situation in the City of Brotherly Love in the aftermath of the July, 1918, riot, Franklin wrote.

The similarities between the race riots of 1918 and racial conflicts today emphasize the importance of knowing the truth, Finkel said. Its really important not to just pat ourselves on the back and move on and forget the ugly chapters. Those ugly chapters are very informative and useful and real.

READ MORE: For churchgoers during the Covid-19 pandemic, a deadly lesson from the 1918 flu

The parallels also highlight that the movement toward racial equality is one step forward, two steps back, Hardy said.

Weve gotten unprecedented numbers of people of color in political office on the state level, he added. Weve got Kamala Harris as vice president. So, its a mixed bag. Its just this ongoing struggle. Clearly White supremacy and nativism are very strong movements in the United States today. On the other hand, a movement towards greater racial and gender equality I think continues.

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White violence and Black protests during the 1918 flu have a lesson for today - WTOP

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The politician who championed the bathroom bill in the Texas Legislature in 2017 is now singing The Star-Spangled Banner.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick unfurled the first of his priority bills this week, in reaction to news that the NBAs Dallas Mavericks had stopped playing the national anthem before home games.

That went on for 13 games before anyone noticed, according to The Athletic. But when they noticed, they really noticed. The news traveled all the way to the lieutenant governor, and before you could say dawns early light, he had proposed the Star Spangled Banner Protection Act.

It hasnt been filed yet, but it would require the playing of the anthem at all events that receive public funding. Presumably, that would include sessions of the House and Senate, which start with prayers, and pledges to the U.S. and Texas flags, but no anthem.

It is hard to believe this could happen in Texas, but Mark Cubans actions of yesterday made it clear that we must specify that in Texas we play the national anthem before all major events, Patrick said in a news release. In this time when so many things divide us, sports are one thing that bring us together right, left, Black, white and brown.

Cuban is the owner of the Mavericks.

We respect and always have respected the passion people have for the anthem and our country, Cuban tweeted. But we also loudly hear the voices of those who feel that the anthem does not represent them. We feel that their voices need to be respected and heard, because they have not been. Going forward, our hope is that people will take the same passion they have for this issue and apply the same amount of energy to listen to those who feel differently from them.

The problem, as far as professional basketball is concerned, has already been solved. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday that the leagues teams will be required to play the national anthem before each game.

That was after Patrick had a chance to tweet that Cubans decision was a slap in the face to every American & an embarrassment to Texas. Sell the franchise & some Texas Patriots will buy it. We ARE the land of free & the home of the brave.

The states culture wars are back, led by their most prominent warrior. In 2017, Patrick led the unsuccessful, session-dominating effort to prevent transgender Texans from using restrooms and other public facilities that match their gender. It was a divisive fight that fired up voters and activists who were variously delighted and outraged at the proposal. And it established the understated theme for the 2019 legislative session that followed: Were not messing with things like the bathroom bill this time.

Thats all behind us now. While its dealing with a pandemic, economic troubles, police behavior and funding, election and voting laws, and all the rest, the Texas Legislature is also going to discuss regulating the playing of the national anthem.

Patrick has kept his trap shut for the first month of the five-month regular session, buttoning his lip about the recount of the 2020 votes for his friend, Donald Trump, staying out of the news around the siege of the U.S. Capitol and holding his silence as Gov. Greg Abbott laid out his own priorities for the current session.

The lieutenant governor poked his head up at the beginning of the legislative session to make sure Republicans in the Senate can get things done without Democratic help when need be. But he has been uncharacteristically quiet.

Until, that is, he became aware of the absence of the sound of music. He was already working on presenting a list of legislation he wants the Senate to work on, but jumped at the prospect of a culture battle over the anthem and Cuban.

The man who brought you the bathroom bill is back, starting the game with a call for all to rise for the playing of the nations fight song.

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Analysis: A Star-Spangled culture war in Texas - The Texas Tribune

Unlike many of her predecessors, though, Gaga spoke to the LGBTQ community as one of its members. She told interviewers that her 2008 hit Poker Face was about masking her own same-sex desire, and in a 2009 Rolling Stone cover story she identified as bisexual. In clear ways, she set out to destabilize gender too. While other divas shellacked themselves into paragons of feminine glamour, Gagas grotesque fashions seemed to satirize the idea of the socialite, the model, and the doll. A rumor took hold online alleging that Gaga was actually a man in drag, or maybe a woman with a penis. Rather than seem offended by the plainly transphobic and obnoxious speculation, Gaga made sport of it. I do have a really big donkey dick, she told an interviewer when asked about the matter. Her bracing 2010 speech calling for the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell demonstrated Gaga pairing her aesthetics with activism.

Gagas 2009 EP The Fame Monster added leather-goth angst to her sparkly brew, resulting in smashes such as Bad Romance and Alejandro. But she still needed to tackle the much-feared test of longevity facing new stars: the sophomore full-length album. For this, she would go lighter, brighter, and make all her subtext into text. To record the song Born This Way, Gaga turned to producersFernando Garibay, Jeppe Laursen, DJ White Shadowwho were conversant in both disco history and the new EDM sound that was trending at the time. Lyrically, she sought to make as clear a statement as possible. I want to write my this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, but I dont want it to be hidden in poetic wizardry and metaphors, she told Billboard. I want it to be an attack, an assault on the issue, because I think, especially in todays music, everything gets kind of washy sometimes and the message gets hidden in the lyrical play.

Indeed, outside of Chistina Aguileras Beautiful, scattered Black Eyed Peas tracks, and Kanye Wests provocations, the 21st centurys first decade was not a banner time for social conscientiousness in pop music. But as the always online, famously idealistic Millennial generation came of age, the tides began to change. Barack Obamas first years in office saw Beyonc, Kesha, Katy Perry, and other peers of Gagas make feminist messages a de rigueur subject on Top 40 radio. The emergence of Kendrick Lamarwho spoke to the grievances underlying the nascent Black Lives Matter movementmarked a renewed period of forthright political engagement in commercial hip-hop. MTV created a new award, Best Video With a Message, in 2011, and Born This Way won it.

Really, though, Gagas song reached back in time as much as it looked forward. The track drew from the 1970s Motown song I Was Born This Way, which was popularized by the openly gay singer Carl Bean. Its first lines go: Im walking through life in natures disguise / You laugh at me and you criticize cause Im happy, carefree and gay / Yes, Im gay. Talk about a this-is-who-the-fuck-I-am anthem, right? In a 2016 Vice interview, Bean explained how his openness wasmaybe counterintuitively, given how much gay rights have progressed since thenof its era:

At the time, what the disc jockeys coined as message music was pretty big, and thats what I wanted to do. Message music came out in the late 60s, and it caught on with the young folk at the time. We were in the middle of the civil-rights movement, women were staging sit-ins, and there was a huge dislike for the war in Vietnam. You started to hear, little by little, messages that spoke to what people were dealing with everydaywhat people were feeling Whether youre in the club or wherever, you were hearing about the times.

Message music never fully died out; Gaga was also inspired by the early-90s period of TLC and En Vogue singing of empowerment and safe sex. Whats notable is how these obvious predecessors for Born This Way were created by Black people speaking clearly from their own individual experiences.

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The Lady Gaga Anthem That Previewed a Decade of Culture Wars - The Atlantic