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by Henry Hill

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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

Some Christians and other cultural conservatives have seen Putins Russia as an ally in our culture wars. At least Russia steadfastly opposes same-sex marriage, gay pride parades, transgenderism, and every other manifestation of the LGBT revolution.

In this view, Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church are defending their culture and Christian civilization against the decadence of the Euro-American West. (See, for example, this.)

In fairness, this view was more common before Russias invasion of Ukraine, and some of those who have articulated it, including the author of the piece I just linked to, now have more nuanced views of the war.

But Russia is most emphatically not a good role model for Americas culture warriors. Among many other reasons, for this fact:

Russia has the highest abortion rate in the world.

These statistics from Wikipedia, drawn from various official Russian sources, are not up to date, but their portrayal of a country with nearly twice as many abortions as live births should be disturbing to anyone who is pro-life:

Despite a significant reduction in the abortion to birth ratio since the mid-1990s, the countries of the formerSoviet Unionmaintain the highest rate of abortions in the world. In 2001, 1.31 million children were born in Russia, while 2.11 million abortions were performed.[33]In 2005, 1.6 million abortions were registered in Russia;[4]20% of these involved girls under the age of 18.[34]Official statistics put the number of abortions at 737,948 in 2016.[4] As of 2010, the abortion rate was 37.4 abortions per year per 1000 women aged 1544 years, the highest of any country reported in UN data.[2]

Yes, the Russian Orthodox Church is trying to limit abortions, but, in the words of an article on the subject, Putin is the pro-choice champion.

Ukraine wants to join Europe, so Russia is saying that Ukraine embodies all of those bad Western values. Well, the Western values Ukraine wants are things like freedom, individual rights, and free market prosperity. Most American conservatives are in favor of those too.

But Ukraine does not support the LGBT agenda!

Ukraine does not have same-sex marriage. Activists complain about how unaccepted homosexuality is. But homosexual behavior is not a crime, but few American conservatives want to go that far. Due to pressure from the European Union, same-sex unions can be registered. And, yes, egged on by Americans, they had a gay pride parade, to the point that, according to Rod Drehers article linked above, the American ambassador marched at the head.

As for abortion in Ukraine, its legal, but with restrictions. The rate in Ukraine is much less than in Russia, and its been declining. Sadlyand probably in hopes of joining the European UnionPresident Zelensky has said that he would like to liberalize Ukraines abortion laws.

As for Christianity, 71% of Ukrainians say they are Christian believersmostly Orthodox, but also Greek rite Catholics, and Protestants (including some Lutherans). Only 2.7% are atheists. The percentage that attend services at least once a week is 19%. In Russia, 47% say they are Christian believers, with 13% professing atheism. The percentage that goes to church once a week is 8%.

The point is, Ukraine has the same culture wars that we Americans do, though, as a whole, they are currently more resistant to the bad things than we are.

There is no country that can serve as a paragon for us, that gets all of the cultural issues right. Our struggle is with the whole world, which is in thrall to the devil (1 John 5:19), and our weapons are not worldly (2 Corinthians 10:4).

And Russia is certainly not a good role model.

Photo: President Vladimir Putin by Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Original post:
Russia and the Culture Wars | Gene Veith - Patheos

The year 2021 may become known as the year the culture wars arrived with a bang in our public schools, including at school board meetings and also at the ballot box.

The surge of new school board candidates opposed to critical race theory was followed in Ohio by successful efforts to water down a 2020 anti-racism Ohio board of education resolution that saw two governor-appointed state school board members quit -- and the electoral district contours of others targeted this year.

Now, with 27 contenders to replace the longtime Ohio superintendent of education, Paolo DeMaria, it looks increasingly as if the conflict over public education curriculum has arrived at the state superintendents office, too.

The state board of education chooses the state superintendent, who in turn has broad administrative authority over kindergarten-to-12th-grade education in Ohio, albeit not over funding amounts, spending priorities, curriculum or other educational policies set by lawmakers.

DeMaria was a former state budget director and well-known advocate of school choice when he took the job in 2016.

Among contenders to replace him, cleveland.coms Laura Hancock reports, is lawyer Kimberly M. Richey, who served in the U.S. Department of Education under Betsy DeVos and who has defended the administrative autonomy of school districts regarding school discipline.

Another applicant is former Columbus Community State College official Steve Dackin, who quit that job Dec. 1, Hancock reports, explaining in his resignation letter that, I have been asked to lead the search for our states next Superintendent of Public Instruction, which is underway as I write this letter. Its not clear how much input Dackin, who just resigned from the state school board to seek the superintendents job, had in the search.

So what should the priorities be in the quest for a new state superintendent of schools? Our Editorial Board Roundtable offers its formulations.

Leila Atassi, manager, public interest and advocacy:

Among public officials, the state superintendent of schools should be most impervious to politics. The board should seek a candidate with an innovative spirit, focused exclusively on helping our kids navigate the world beyond the trauma of the pandemic. I can pretty much guarantee that anyone who served the Trump administration is not that candidate.

Thomas Suddes, editorial writer:

The State Board of Education isnt supposed to be a cultural referee. The next superintendent of public instruction should be chosen based on her or his regard for and experience with classroom teachers -- Ohio and Americas front-line educators.

Ted Diadiun, columnist:

The biased shorthand used to describe Betsy DeVos, Kimberly Richey and other conservative administrators who try to maintain school discipline, school choice and parents right to have a say in their kids schooling is stunning. I wish DeVos were still U.S. education secretary. Id have no problem with her protg as Ohio schools superintendent.

Eric Foster, columnist:

Ideally, the first priority would be someone who views facts as different from opinions. Critical race theory is not taught in K-12 education. Its disheartening that still has to be said. Ohioans need someone who can accomplish the Herculean task of depoliticizing education. Children are the consumers, not their parents. Prioritize their wants and needs.

Lisa Garvin, editorial board member:

If the wrong person is chosen, I fear for the future of Ohio public education. More money could be taken from cash-starved school districts for private school vouchers. The new superintendent should be an educator with impeccable credentials, not an ideologue who believes that teaching kids critical thinking skills is a bad thing

Victor Ruiz, editorial board member:

Priorities include: adequate funding for districts that need it the most; standards that move Ohio forward and prepare our children for a changing world; curricula that is not censored nor whitewashed. We need a superintendent that will work towards a better future for all, versus keeping us stuck in a time that only benefits some.

Mary Cay Doherty, editorial board member:

The state superintendent should fiercely protect students from the insidious onslaught of woke ideology masquerading as incontrovertible truth. Keep schools focused on education, not indoctrination. The superintendent should also defend parents right to voice and choice in their childrens education. Moreover, intestinal fortitude would be an asset. In this climate, these tasks wont be easy.

Elizabeth Sullivan, opinion director:

Isnt it sad were even having this discussion? Education is about widening horizons, not narrowing them, and truth in all its complexity is the most precious gift we can give our kids. Once we lose sight of that, we might as well sign up for the Vladimir Putin Crash Course in Historical Distortion.

Have something to say about this topic?

* Send a letter to the editor, which will be considered for print publication.

* Email general questions about our editorial board or comments on this editorial board roundtable to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com.

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Have the culture wars arrived at search for a new Ohio superintendent of public instruction? - cleveland.com