The Roundup Top Ten for April 28, 2023

DeSantis's Real Campus Attack is on Labor by Dan Royles "I’m exhausted because I teach U.S. history, including African American and LGBTQ+ history, at a public university in Florida." This places the author at the intersection of DeSantis's public attacks on verboten ideas and his quieter steps to gut tenure protections for the state's faculty and union representation for all educators in Florida.

 

U. of Michigan Faculty Shouldn't Flatter New President while the Administration Busts Unions and Politicians Trash Higher Ed by Silke-Maria Weineck Top administrators increasingly share with conservative politicians a "desire to refashion universities in the image of the American workplace, where at-will employees do what they’re told by feudal overlords who have poems commissioned in their praise."

 

 

A Hunt Through the Queer Past for the Anonymous "HHC" Ended in an Unexpected Place by Aaron Lecklider The repression of the past has meant that few early LGBTQ activists have kept detailed records of their work or their communities. But sometimes the present community of historians can collectively find those ghosts of the past.

 

 

Black Mothers Bet on Themselves and Changed Las Vegas—Can Their Ideas Change America? by Annelise Orleck A courageous and politically imaginative group of women challenged the most powerful interests in Las Vegas to win better public aid and build an organization for community service and empowerment. A historian explains who they were, how she came to tell their story, and what it means today.

 

 

Will the Battle of the Suburbs Play Out Differently This Time? by Lily Geismer One of the most important failures of the civil rights era was allowing affluent suburbs to block requirements to build affordable housing in their jurisdictions. As housing costs climb higher, is there the political will among Democrats to risk angering suburban voters?

 

 

Humanists Must Take Back Teaching from the Reformers and their "Learning Objectives" by Johann N. Neem Rejecting standardized, quantifiable, mechanistic objectives and assessments is the key to making education an exchange of understanding between human beings, and to reversing the tendency to see each other as bundles of human capital or useful skills.

 

 

Honoring the Confederacy, Tennessee GOP Stands for Insurrection by Daniel Feller Amid the recent furor over the expulsion of two Black Democrats from the state House, Tennessee lawmakers made another shameful move: affirming acclaim for the Confederacy while disregarding the work of historians who have demonstrated that the CSA was founded to protect slavery and white supremacy.

 

 

The United States Colored Troops Killed at Olustee, Florida are Still Owed a Proper Burial by Barbara A. Gannon Why are the remains of members of the United States Colored Troop still interred in unmarked graves at the Civil War battlefield of Olustee, Florida, when the defenders of a treasonous rebellion on behalf of slavery are buried with honors?

 

 

How to End the War in Ukraine and Build Peace by Michael Brenes "The foundation of a progressive foreign policy, in my view, entails providing material support to countries suffering from deprivation and aggression in multiple forms—with such assistance reflecting the security and democratic interests of the United States and its people."

 

 

Why the GOP Can't Balance the Budget—and Why they Don't Care by Monica Prasad An ideological commitment to tax cuts and political unwillingness to cut entitlements (or defense spending) means post-Reagan Republicans can't balance the federal budget. Their solution has been to stop pretending to care about it.

 

* This article was originally published here