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Earlier this week, my colleague Melissa Cedillo reported on a letter signed by 64 members of the faculty at St. Louis University, protesting a proposal before the Missouri legislature that would bar certain subjects, and/or approaches to subjects, from the classroom. The bill, supported by conservative Republicans, especially targets issues of race and gender.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to sign a law that bars teaching about LGBTQ issues in lower grades. The bill passed the legislature and has received widespread support from conservative Catholics. The article in the National Catholic Register was especially interesting. It turned for expert commentary to Deacon Patrick Lappert whom they identify as "a board-certified plastic surgeon."

Lappert had this to say about the bill: "It's a legislation about transparency so that the parents can understand what their children are being exposed to." It is difficult to imagine a more loaded, biased verb in this context than "exposed." I am guessing the teachers in Florida are not streaking naked through the hallways. But, hey, who can argue legal principles with a board-certified plastic surgeon?

In Alabama, abill banning "divisive concepts" is moving quickly through the legislature. How quickly? It was put to a voice vote of the House State Government Committee 20 seconds after it was introduced. Among other things, the law says no classroom instruction that induces "a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to work harder solely on the basis of his or her race or sex."

The letter from the St. Louis academics addresses many of the reasons progressive Catholics should object to these laws. I wish to point out that these laws also suffer from some common flaws that should especially alarm conservative Catholics, the largest of which is that they are politicizing education in the most outrageous way. Conservative Catholics once celebrated the traditional concern to prioritize culture over politics. Conservative Catholics used to believe a lot of things.

Americans traditionally have entrusted decisions about curricula to local school boards. Local boards seek to combine parental and community input with expertise from educators to produce curricula that are accurate and helpful, that will prepare students to be good citizens and active, thoughtful members of society. They may turn to a state or federal Department of Education for certain special needs, but the local boards make the decisions, or hire the superintendents and principals who do.

Jon Valant, of the Brookings Institution, looked at the politicization of school board elections last year and noted that the usually sleepy meetings of the local school board had sometimes erupted into fierce debates about mask mandates and curricula. He warned that the turmoil "will change who runs for local school boards and who wins those seats, in many cases for the worse. And this will be happening right as school districts are seeing a major infusion of federal funds, with board members poised to make high-stakes decisions about how schools respond to the pandemic's impacts."

Most of this fervor is the result of the cancer of Trumpism metastasizing through the body politic. Still, a local school board at least has a shot at overcoming polarization: It is harder to declare a culture war against someone whose daughter may serve on the volunteer fire department with your son, or whose son may coach your granddaughter in basketball. The desire to maintain those other unrelated relationships might, just might, serve to lower temperatures. Local control of government is very problematic when it comes to how we fund public education, but it might help to let cooler heads prevail when it comes to debating curricula.

In fact, in New Hampshire, pro-public education candidates recently won 29 of 30 open school board seats, including some parts of the state that are reliably conservative. Jennifer Berkshire, at The Nation, explains that the defenders of public education in the Granite State successfully painted their opponents as the extremists, and that was the key to success. Regrettably, the New Hampshire legislature didn't get the memo and is still pushing to enact restrictions on what teachers can say in the classroom.

In 33 states, the state legislative districts are carved out by the legislatures, and incumbents like to create safe districts, so state legislatures, like the U.S. House of Representatives, are now filled largely with incumbents who only have to worry about a primary challenge. Voters, more and more of whom are unaffiliated with either party, face no real choice in November. It is a recipe for ever more extreme government. Legislatures are the last places to debate education policy.

Conservative Catholics used to extol the virtue of subsidiarity, the idea that decisions should be at the lowest level of society possible and the highest necessary. I would stand with them to defend any parent who wished to have his or her child taken out of the classroom when something to which they object is being taught. That is far different from taking over the whole classroom. And it is far, far different from having the state legislature take over the classroom.

These laws all represent a kind of legislative heckler's veto. In his magnificentdissent inFeinerv.New York, Justice Hugo Black disagreed with the majority's decision to uphold the arrest of a speaker who was accosted by a mob of hecklers: "In my judgment, today's holding means that as a practical matter, minority speakers can be silenced in any city. Hereafter, despite the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the policeman's club can take heavy toll of a current administration's public critics.Criticism of public officials will be too dangerous for all but the most courageous."

Justice Black went on to invoke the words of Justice Owen Roberts inCantwellv.Connecticut:

In the realm of religious faith, and in that of political belief, sharp differences arise. In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor. To persuade others to his own point of view, the pleader, as we know, at times, resorts to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church or state, and even to false statement. But the people of this nation have ordained in the light of history, that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of a democracy.

Free speech is often attacked, and the attacks can come from any ideological side. Virtually every night on Fox News, the talking heads condemn "cancel culture," but what are these laws restricting education other than an effort to cancel arguments and ideas of which they disapprove?

The psychological desire to "cancel" is found in all sorts of unlikely places. When did we lose the willingness to aspire to the liberal, democratic vision articulated by Justice Roberts? When did we lose sight of the value of a good argument? How can conservatives or liberals extol freedom as they do, but then refuse to even make an argument about how American history should be taught? It is pathetic. Are these laws not the curricular equivalent of burning books?

We live in a strange time and illiberal gods are on the march. That should horrify both liberal and conservative Catholics.

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Keep the culture wars out of the classroom - National Catholic Reporter

Teachers are caught in the crossfire of a political and cultural conflict, and its threatening their ability to do their jobs, warns a new statement from five national groups representing tens of thousands of educators.

In their first-ever joint statement, the four professional organizations for teachers of particular subject areas, along with an anti-censorship group, condemned the widespread efforts to curtail classroom discussions about so-called divisive topics.

In their zeal, activists of the current culture wars unfortunately treat teachers as if they are enemies, says the statement from the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Science Teaching Association, and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Teachers need our support; they need our trust; they need to have the freedom to exercise their professional judgment.

Over the past year, 15 states have enacted bans or restrictions on how to teach the topics of racism and sexism in K-12 schools. Anti-censorship groups also decry what they say is an unprecedented volume of challenges to books in schools, particularly to those that focus on race, gender, and sexuality. Topics like evolution and climate change also have been threatened in the science classroom, and the way students make sense of and critique the world in math class has been challenged, the statement says.

The professional organizations for every discipline are unified in our concern about the limitations and the fissures that are being thrown upon teachers, said Emily Kirkpatrick, the executive director for NCTE, in an interview.

Teachers in every subject area have said theyve been accused of indoctrination or questioned for their curricular choices, as conservative politicians vow to root out instances of so-called critical race theory in schools. (Critical race theory is an academic framework that says racism is a systemic, societal problem. It has become a catch-all term for discussions of race, with some critics arguing that white children are being taught to feel guilty or hate themselves.)

Earlier this month, the College Board, which runs the Advanced Placement program, released a statement emphasizing the importance of AP teachers expertise. AP is animated by a deep respect for the intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike, the College Board said, adding that if instruction is censored, the AP designation would be removed from those courses, and students would lose out on potential college credit.

And the statement from the five national organizations argues that the scrutiny on teachers is creating a chilling effect in the classroom. Teachers are afraid to assign books that might be challenged, and as a result, teachers very ability to do their job is under threat, the statement says.

Yet teachers jobs have never been more important as they work to catch students up after the pandemic has stalled academic progress, Kirkpatrick said: Now is the time to give teachers as much agency as possible.

The culture clashes and uptick in censorship challenges are contributing to many teachers desire to leave the profession, she said. Teacher dissatisfaction rates are at record highs, and although its yet to be determined whether teachers will actually leave the classroom, large numbers are saying they want to quit.

The stakes are too high, the joint statement concludes. We cannot let good teachers leave the field because they no longer have the freedom to do their jobs. We cannot let the education of our children and young adults become collateral damage in partisan political machinations.

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In the Culture Wars, Teachers Are Being Treated Like 'Enemies' - Edweek.org

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by Henry Hill

Credit: Getty

The risk of delay is being overtaken by events. The Government took almost a year to publish their response to the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities (CRED), and as a result it ended up getting a little overtaken by events in Ukraine.

Which is a shame, because Kemi Badenoch the Tory MP who has taken the lead on equality issues is doing good work.

She isnt going as far as some on the Right might wish. Specifically, she opposes repealing the Equality Act, the legislation which spawns all those advertisements for well-remunerated public-sector diversity officers which go round Twitter every so often.

But among the 66 action points included in Inclusive Britain are some worthwhile steps, such as new guidance for civil servants explicitly banning their supporting political campaigns such as BLM on their work accounts.

And during the Q&A she made arguments which hint at useful future work, such as trying to build a school curriculum which brings all students together rather than catering separately to this or that identity group.

Yet despite the strong performance, and a good response from an engaged and friendly crowd at the Royal Society of Arts, it was difficult to shake off the feeling that the Government might not end up following through.

Badenoch had already explained that few of her parliamentary colleagues were particularly engaged in the issues raised by CRED and Inclusive Britain. Im doing this more as a duty, as she diplomatically put it.

Then theres the fact that any push towards a more Conservative line on equalities risks seeing her specific approach caught between two conflicting poles: on the one hand, the Prime Ministers aversion to controversy; on the other his newfound need to throw red meat to his backbenchers in order to shore up his leadership.

Depending on which side of bed Boris Johnson gets out of, that could push him either to back away from the programme outlined in Inclusive Britain or shoulder it aside for something more radical.

And what better excuse for taking the former, non-confrontational path than current events. Dont you know theres a war in Ukraine? How can we waste time on potentially controversial domestic issues when theres a war in Ukraine!

Such a narrative might suit a Prime Minister thankful that a foreign policy crisis has driven his problems off the front pages. But it would be a short-sighted approach for the Tories.

Voters are not nearly as engaged with foreign affairs as either politicians or the media. If the Government gets so caught up in the international scene that it neglects the nitty gritty of actually governing, it will be turfed out in 2024. Not even Winston Churchill managed to win on a thanks for saving the world ticket Johnson certainly wont.

It is also past time that the Right started focusing on structural questions like this over the long term, rather than lurching opportunistically from one headline to the next. As the Left know all too well, the only way to win a culture war is to wage it even when it isnt front-page news.

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Boris can't ignore the culture wars forever - UnHerd

As an actual war continues to take a devastating human toll in Europe, the United Kingdoms cultural institutions are facing their own insidious culture war with different stakesones that could have a devastating impact on artistic expression and museum autonomy.

This January, four protesters in Bristol were acquitted for their role in toppling a controversial statue of the British slaver and philanthropist Edward Colston during a Black Lives Matter protest in the city in June 2020. Powerful images from the event drew global attention to the question of how we should deal with historic tributes in our public spaces when their present day context has drastically changed. Dubbed the statue debate it has divided the public with, on one side, those who believe the figures celebrated in our built environment should reflect contemporary values, and, on the other, a more conservative anti-woke faction that fears a slippery slope that will lead to the erasure of history.

The Colston FourSage Willoughby, Jake Skuse, Milo Ponsford and Rhian Grahamcelebrate after receiving a not guilty verdict at Bristol Crown Court, on January 5, 2022 in Bristol, England. (Photo by Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)

So far, this debate has largely unfolded in the media, but the trial of the Colston Four is not the only example of it entering a court room. A controversial lawdubbed the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Billis currently passing through parliament, which would increase sentences for monument damage and peaceful protest. On February 28, conservatives M.P.s voted in large numbers to reinstate clauses rejected by the House of Lords earlier this year, leaving the specter of harsher sentences hanging over all current cases linked to protest.

For the art world, a lot hangs in the balance.

In the last few years, protest has brought about a lot of positive change in the culture sector. Mass movements such as #metoo and Black Lives Matter have helped make the art world less white and male. Campaigners such as Nan Goldin have helped make museum funding less unethical, Farah Nayeri, journalist and author ofTakedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age,told Artnet News. If protest was to be curtailed in a Western democracy, the art and museum world would fall out of touch with society, and ultimately, become less representativeand less democratic.

Nan Goldin protesting with Sackler P.A.I.N. at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2019. Photo by Lottie Maher, courtesy of Sackler P.A.I.N.

Threatening culture workers right to protest is not the only way these culture wars are impacting the museum world.

The conservative media has found a soft target in museums, and right wing pundits have levied criticism at public art commissioners, artists and curators for pursuing a woke agenda. Their ire has often been projected on projects aiming to increase access and transparency, and shed light on untold histories that were in the works long before wokeism became a buzzword.These projects include the National Gallery and UCLs investigation of their collections and patrons links to slavery, and another similar project at the National Trust that resulted in a firestorm that ended with the resignation of its chairman.In an op-ed for the New Statesman, historian David Olusoga called out the soft targeting of historians in this context: Historians should repeatedly point out that the rewriting of history is not some act of professional misconduct but literally the job of professional historians, he wrote.

While in power, the current Conservative Party government has appointed several major party donors to boards of publicly-funded museums in an effort to redress what it has interpreted as an overwhelmingly liberal politic within the arts. Six donors who have paid in a total of 3 million ($4.7 million) to party coffers have been appointed to the boards of theNational Gallery, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019.

It was in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, that the then-culture secretary Oliver Dowden sent a letter to 26 institutions stating that publicly-funded museums should not be taking actions motivated by activism or politics. The Museums Association released a statement in response, expressing its concern at the perceived interference in museum work.

Museums must be able to carry out research and inquiry into all areas of historyit is not for ministers to dictate what constitutes a legitimate subject for investigation or what the outcome of that research might be, it said, adding that the government should consult widely with the sector before producing any guidelines on contested heritage.

Installation view of Yarli Allison and Letizia Miro, This Is Not For Clients (2021. Decriminalised Futures ICA. Photo Anne Tetzlaff.

Sources at a high level within museum administration, who declined to be quoted in fear of repercussions for themselves and their institutions, told Artnet News they were taken aback by the apparent cognitive dissonance between directives from the department of culture, media, and sport to increase diversity and improve access both in their programming and infrastructure, and the blowback received from members of the government when they complied. The apparent catch-22 has created a culture of fear that they believe is threatening the cultural landscape in the U.K.

We are being told that what we need to do in order to receive money is to diversify at every level, Amal Khalaf, civic curator at the Serpentine and director of programs at Cubitt Artists confirmed to Artnet News. It goes beyond equality policy stuff to actually change governance models, [and] create more caring ways of working internally The kind of bricks and mortar day-to-day stuff related to staying open demands that you have diversity on a policy level as well.

Publicly-funded museums in the U.K. are often at least partially accessible free of charge, and are generally seen as a safe space for generating ideas and discussing differences. Many contemporary artists see discussions about the big issues of race, the climate crisis, social inequality, and health as an extension of their practice and museums reflect this by making themselves as hospitable as possible.Currently on view in London is an exhibition highlighting the rights of sex workers at the ICA, upcoming at the Serpentine is a show which looks at among social care for adults and children, health rights and body capital; and the V&A will look at the history of fashion in Africa.

Khalaf described museums as a space to listen differently, and to just be allowed to hear things differently. She added: Whether youre just walking in the Turbine Hall, and you suddenly feel like youre allowed to just be a bit freer with your day, or with your hour that youre there I think the experience everybody has when they go into an art space is this difference.

This tension in government that is impacting museums, arts workers, and academics is not taking place in a vacuum. There is currently a swathe of restrictive laws going through the U.K. Parliament including the Nationality and Borders Bill, and the Elections Bill in addition to the PCSC Bill. This host of new bills and amendments to existing laws affecting citizenship rights, access to information, voting, protest, judicial review and human rights legislation is rarely out of the press, adding to the atmosphere of fear and mistrust.

Through it is doubtful that this atmosphere will immediately result in censorship, only time will tell if the threat of withdrawn funding will result in more cautious commissioning, and whether that will have a ripple effect on the kind of work artists decide to make.

As many of the worlds other museums look to a decidedly woke, de-colonized, future, we are left wondering if the end-game of the U.K.s culture wars will not only be traumatized cultural professionals, but could also leave the U.K.s world-leading museums at an international disadvantage.

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Government Policy in the U.K. Is Stoking a Culture War. Will It Undermine the Countrys World-Leading Museums? - artnet News

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Photo by Dave Decker

Protesters in St. Petersburg, Florida on March 12, 2022.

Missouri has proudly taken the lead. Last week, its legislature debated a bill that would ban all abortionnot just those more than six weeks after conception, as in Texasthrough the same private enforcement scheme. But theres a twist.

While most women who were denied abortions because of Texas law ordered abortion pills or went to a neighboring state, Missouris bill would allow bounty hunters to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion anywhere.

As constitutional law scholar Michele Goodwin told Mother Jones, Texas lawand now Missouris effortrecalls the Fugitive Slave Act passed in the Compromise of 1850, which required everyone to help capture escaped enslaved people. This antiabortion campaign is meant to chill conduct and inspire fear.

Then again, the Supreme Courts conservatives havent been entirely beholden to precedent lately. And, technically, the Fugitive Slave Act was never declared unconstitutional.

Thats not Missouri lawmakers only innovation in their quest to control the uterus. Representative Brian Seitzs HB 2810 makes it a felony to traffic abortion-inducing devices or drugsand the most serious felony, with as high as a 30-year sentence, for doing so if those devices or drugs are used to abort a fetus older than 10 gestational weeks or an ectopic pregnancy.

You read that last part correctly.

Ectopic pregnancieswhen the fetus implants outside of the uterusare always nonviable and can be harmful, even fatal, to the mother. Seitz has no idea what an ectopic pregnancy is, and hes writing laws to prevent women from getting medical care to treat it.

Unsurprisingly, his bill is based on other scientific fallacies. In a hearing last week, he argued that abortion medications can actually kill a woman. When a journalist pointed out that, in real life, those meds are safer than Tylenol and 14 times safer than childbirth, Seitz responded, I'm not a doctor."

You dont say.

In this same spirit, Idaho Republicans declared transgender youth an emergency and not only made it a felony to provide minors with gender-affirming health carepuberty blockers, hormone therapy, etc.but also made it a felony for parents to take their children across state lines for treatment. Both crimes are punishable by life imprisonment.

Again, in more normal judicial times, such legislation would immediately be laughed out of federal court. But these times are not normal.

Texas was no slouch in the anti-trans department, either. At the governors direction, the states child welfare agents were investigating parents who provided their children with gender-affirming care as abusersuntil a state judge shut that down last week. The state has promised to appeal, and it seems more likely than not that the legislature will intervene if a higher court doesnt.

Across the country this year, Republicans have proposed nearly 30 bills that seek to prevent transgender children from accessing health care. Eleven states have banned transgender girls from participating in school sports. Republicans in Tennessee and Wisconsin have introduced legislation to preempt local antidiscrimination protections.

Then theres Floridas grossly homophobic Dont Say Gay bill, which seeks to eradicate any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity from the states elementary classrooms and allowing parents to sue if they believe little Johnny was forced to endure an age-inappropriate discussion about The Gays. (Here again, enforcement by bounty hunter.)

When Disneys CEO belatedly weighed in against the bill, Gov. Ron DeSantis spokeswoman dismissed the entertainment behemoth as a woke corporation. DeSantis banked $50,000 from Disney, while the state GOP brought in more than $900,000 during the 2020 cycle. (Having helped bigots take control of the state, Disney paused its political donations.)

There are a few common themes in these examples. One is the constant search for new culture-war territoryanother way to define themselves in opposition to the wokes and own the libswhich is the closest thing the post-Trump GOP has to an agenda.

The other is control: leveraging power to impose white, Christian, heteronormative values on a society whose peopleespecially young peopleare rejecting them. In that sense, the Fugitive Slave Act was little different. Southern states asserted the primacy of their beliefs over others freedoms andby threatening secessionbend the rest of the country to their will.

We havent gotten to secession. But Republicans are trying to privilege their beliefs over the rights of others.

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Culture wars and leveraging power, is the closest thing the post Trump GOP has to an agenda - Creative Loafing Tampa