The Roundup Top Ten for April 21, 2023

How Fox News Helped Break the American Right by Matthew Dallek The Republican Party has long struggled to keep extremists within its ranks at bay, if partly for political reasons. But the rise of Fox News has destroyed the guardrails older generations of mainstream conservatives set up against conspiracists, hatemongers, and bigots.

 

Judge Kacsmaryk Misread the Comstock Act by Lauren MacIvor Thompson The initial draft of the 1873 anti-obscenity legislation, which banned mailing information about and devices or medicines intended to induce abortion, had an exemption for physicians, and later court precedents interpreted the act as if that exemption were part of the law. Judge Kacsmaryk has ignored this legal history in his ruling.

 

 

Why Meat and Masculinity are a New Culture War Front by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg The recent embrace of conspiracy theories around food consumption—liberals want to make us eat insects!—show how a sense of imperiled masculinity is being used to stop necessary conversations about making the food system safe, sustainable, and humane.

 

 

Teaching the History Wars by Megan Threlkeld Teaching first-year undergraduates about the recurrent conflicts over their curriculum takes them from not knowing what the "history wars" are to asking challenging questions about what counts as history.

 

 

Rutgers Strikers Ran the Table; Is This the Way out of Higher Ed's Crisis? by Jonathan David Three Rutgers unions, representing instructors in different professional positions, won by modeling the kind of solidarity that university workers need to fight back against the privatization and corporatization of public higher education.

 

 

Child Labor is Back; History Says Don't be Surprised by Beth English In an effort to attract investment from key industries, state governments in the south actively rescinded existing laws banning child labor, showing that there has been no straight line of progress on the issue.

 

 

What's Driving J.D. Vance? by Gabriel Winant J.D. Vance rose to fame through a book that was heavy on popular psychology and self-help tropes while skirting systemic analysis of poverty and social change. As the Senator now careens hard to the right, a historian decides to evaluate him on his own terms.

 

 

150 Years Ago, the Colfax Massacre Was an Attack on Black People and Democracy by Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall and Keri Leigh Merritt The horrific explosion of violence in April 1973, as white southerners refused to accept the results of the 1872 election, was the climax of years of federal abandonment of a commitment to protect the rights and lives of Black people, who were left to fight for democracy on their own.

 

 

Preserving the Public History of the Fort Pillow Massacre by Erin L. Thompson On April 12, 1864 Confederates under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest slaughtered members of the US Colored Troops after they had surrendered. Until recently, the state of Tennessee has neglected the site, making it difficult for the public to explore that history.

 

 

Beyond Quiet Quitting: The Real Crisis of Work by Erik Baker Impressionistic accounts of worker withdrawal and labor militancy both fail to capture a deeper issue: Work is failing to deliver on the promises the state has made as an avenue of meaning and fulfillment.

 

* This article was originally published here