FAIR Board of Advisors  In The New York Times, FAIR Advisor John McWhorter wrote about a recent dust-up at the University of Michigan after a music professor, Bright Sheng, showed his class a 1965 film based on the Royal National Theatre’s stage production of “Othello.” This is because the film’s lead role was played by a white actor in blackface makeup. In retaliation for showing the film, undergraduates, graduate students, and even faculty members called for Sheng's removal as the course instructor. McWhorter recalls showing his own students films depicting blackface, for historical reasons, only a decade ago, and he claimed nobody batted an eye. So, what has changed since then? McWhorter believes that, in many ways, aspects of “progressivism” have morphed into a type of performative “radicalism.”
Yet the view that blackface makeup is so uniquely revolting that a professor should be hounded from his class for showing, in a scholarly setting, decades-old scenes of an actor wearing it is a point that many find extreme. It is a position that requires some serious lifting and a vast transformation in common modes of thought… A position like that is not simply antiracist but radical.
Read the full article here.  On his Substack, The Weekly Dish, FAIR Advisor Andrew Sullivan wrote about the troubling erosion of the distinction between public life and private life, which has played out in protests across the country by activists seeking out the private homes of public figures in order to harass and intimidate them. Sullivan also notes that this behavior is not restricted to one side of the political spectrum. While showing up at people’s homes to intimidate them is perhaps the most glaring example of how the public-private distinction is being blurred, Sullivan points out that the Internet has helped eliminate the notion of “private correspondence,” since “everything you have ever put into pixels, however intimate or personal, exists somewhere; and it can be easily searched exhaustively—forever.” Sullivan believes that the way forward is to focus on our shared humanity.
But who hasn’t said or written something in their private lives they regret? We are all human, and all hypocrites to one degree or other. Ripping away every veil that conceals us at our worst is not just cruel; it’s inhuman.
Read the full article here.  For Commentary, FAIR Advisor Bari Weiss wrote about cancel-culture, censorship, cowardice, courage, and common sense. To start, Weiss outlined the tenets of a new radical and intolerant ideology that has somehow managed to take hold of our institutions, which amount to a near-complete rejection of Enlightenment values.
Ideas are replaced with identity. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Debate is replaced with de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion, with exclusion.
But how did an extreme ideology that most Americans probably reject manage to spread so quickly and seemingly without resistance? Weiss believes there are many contributing factors, but that “every moment of radical victory” relied primarily on cowardice.
All that had to change for the entire story to turn out differently was for the person in charge, the person tasked with being a steward for the newspaper or the magazine or the college or the school district or the private high school or the kindergarten, to say: No.
According to Weiss, if cowardice got us here, then it is courage that must get us out. Read her article here.  In a new report from The American Enterprise Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio discussed the rise of “social and emotional learning,” or “SEL,” in K-12 education. His report illustrates how SEL has recently become a primary focus for many educators, even though neither a “full and proper examination of its role” nor a “sufficient discussion about its practices or expectations for its effectiveness” has yet been conducted. Pondiscio argues that the term is “vague,” “bland,” and “pseudoscientific.” When deploying SEL, teachers become more than mere educators, but also take on the role of a “therapist, social worker, or member of the clergy—no less concerned with a child’s beliefs, attitudes, and values.” These are roles that teachers may be unwilling and unqualified to fill, and many parents believe this constitutes an overstep by the schools into their children's lives. Pondiscio asks, “At what point does a school’s concern for its students’ emotional health and well-being, however well intentioned, become too personal, too intrusive, and too sensitive to be a legitimate function of public school and thus the state?”
Read his report here. |
