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The latest battle in the culture wars cleaving American society centers around diversity programs on university campuses, now restricted or banned in a growing number of U.S. states.

The debate pits those on the left, who advocate for boosting minority students victimized by deep-rooted inequality, and those on the right who say people should be judged on individual merit, not skin color.

"The idea of present discrimination being the remedy for past discrimination... is inherently wrong," said Jordan Pace, a Republican member of the House of Representatives in the state of South Carolina.

"We don't like the idea of judging people based on immutable characteristics, whether it be gender or race or height or whatever," he said, calling the United States a "hyper-meritocratic society."

Often known as "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs, many American universities had given special consideration to minority students -- particularly those who are Black, Hispanic and Native American -- as they sought to correct long-standing inequalities.

Last June, the country's conservative-majority Supreme Court put an end to affirmative action in university admissions, reversing one of the major gains of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Now, Pace is urging his state to follow the lead of Florida and about a dozen other states that have scrapped campus DEI programs.

"The primary target group across the country... are Black people," said Ricky Jones, professor of pan-African studies at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

Carlie Reeves, 19, was the first person in her family to attend college and when she arrived at the University of Louisville, it was "very obvious that my professors didn't really think I belonged. Didn't really see me as intelligent."

DEI leaders on campus "spoke life into me and told me... you have the merit."

Many minority students are at the school "100 percent because of DEI," she said, raising as an example Black students who benefitted from race-based scholarships.

But on March 15, Kentucky lawmakers advanced a proposal to restrict such programs, spurring Reeves to co-organize a protest on campus.

"It just felt like my duty to inform the students, 'Hey y'all, these people are trying to literally get rid of us from campus... we have to do something," she said.

Kentucky is following other conservative states, including Texas, Alabama and Idaho.

At the beginning of March, the University of Florida ended DEI programs and related jobs, part of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis's offensive against what he calls "woke ideology."

"I'm extremely worried," said Stephanie Anne Shelton, a professor and director of diversity at University of Alabama's College of Education.

While provisions in the state's new law allow her to teach certain diversity awareness courses to future educators, she is concerned about "the degree to which concepts like academic freedom remain in place."

In Alabama it is now prohibited to "compel a student... to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to a divisive concept" -- specifying that includes making an individual feel the need "to apologize on the basis of his or her race."

Failure to comply can result in dismissal, the law notes.

Republicans routinely rail against "critical race theory," an academic approach to studying ways in which racism infuses US legal systems and institutions in often subtle ways.

Republican White House candidate Donald Trump has called for making reforms on a federal level.

"On Day One I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content, onto our children," he told a rally in Ohio.

Jones, the Louisville professor, said the new laws are "a rolling back of the racial clock locally, statewide and nationally."

Going forward, Black scholars will avoid states like Florida and Texas, he said, predicting "a very, very dangerous forgetting that will happen here."

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Diversity programs vanishing from U.S. campuses amid culture wars - Japan Today

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Don't Let Electricity Become the New Front in the Culture Wars  Cato Institute

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Don't Let Electricity Become the New Front in the Culture Wars - Cato Institute

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New York City has never been immune to heated education fights, but in recent months those fights have taken on a new level of vitriol and aggression, and expanded to focus on a broader menu of divisive issues.

The battles reflect the nations growing political divide even in this deep blue city, as parents layer old debates how issues of race and discrimination are taught in schools, for example over newer ones, such as the role of transgender students in sports and how schools should address the Israel-Hamas war.

Parents have shouted over each other, called each other bigots and made formal complaints about behavior at meetings traditionally focused on issues like school improvements and student achievement. Some parents have filed police reports against each other for harassment. One woman said she was mailed a parcel with feces inside.

The battlegrounds have also multiplied, from a few notoriously quarrelsome parent councils to traditionally peaceful spots around the city.

In other districts around the country, changes in school board policy can transform what happens in classrooms. In New York City, the parent councils where many of the fights are occurring and which represent the public school systems 32 districts have little power, because the mayor controls the schools.

But the new battles, about issues that dont always break cleanly along party lines, have created a challenge for an administration trying to manage what is perhaps the nations most diverse school district.

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How NYC Schools Became a Battlefront in the Culture Wars - The New York Times

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Rainbow over Cheesebox Butte Highway 95, photo by Stephen Trimble

Author: Stephen Trimble

Three presidents have signed Bears Ears proclamations. Barack Obama established Bears Ears National Monument in 2016, but supporters were devastated when Donald Trump eviscerated the monument the following year, reducing its area by 85%. In 2021, President Joe Biden restored the original boundaries and then some.

Whats clear is that Bears Ears remains reviled by Republican officials and cherished by Indigenous tribes and conservationists.

The monument, 1.36 million acres in southeast Utah, lies within San Juan County. The Navajo Nation covers 25% of the county, and Native people account for more than half of the 14,200-person population. Just 8% of the county is private land while another 5% is state trust land.

The rest 62% of the county is federal land owned by the people of the United States and administered by the Departments of Agriculture and Interior. This immense commons testifies to the sublime difficulty of the place beautiful enough to warrant preservation as national parks, monuments and forests. But its also arid enough to attract only a few 19th-century settlers to what had been Indigenous homeland for millennia.

I think its fair to say that San Juan Countys white residents never envisioned challenges to their political power. But in 2009, the feds came down hard on generations of casual pothunting by local white families. Then, after a century of oppressing their Indigenous neighbors, lawsuits strengthened Native voting rights. The county commission became majority Navajo from 2018 to 2022.

Native influence keeps expanding. The five tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition first envisioned a national monument and became co-stewards for these 1.36 million acres. They have a champion in Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, but such historic changes make the dominant culture uneasy.

In February, Utah Governor Spencer Cox dramatically withdrew from a Bears Ears land exchange poised for completion. This swap of state trust lands for Bureau of Land Management lands would hugely benefit the state. Details were already negotiated; each side compromised; the stakeholders were largely content.

But in 2024, Utah politics are stark, compounded by distrust and disinformation.

At statehood in 1896, Utah received four sections per township to support public schools and universities. The Utah Trust Lands Administration manages these scattered lands blue squares on ownership maps but blocking up these blue squares into manageable parcels means trading land with federal agencies.

Such trades arent rare and can be grand in scale. A 1998 negotiation between Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Utah Governor Mike Leavitt traded Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monuments 176,000 acres of school sections for BLM land elsewhere along with a hefty $50 million payment to Utah from the U.S. Treasury. Utah Trust Lands still brags about the dealon its website.

But the old guard is up in arms about the draft Bears Ears Resource Management Plan releasedfor public commenton March 8. The BLMs preferred alternative emphasizes traditional Indigenous knowledge and land health.

Any such gestures toward conservation elicit local outrage about the feds destroying the pioneer way of life. The subtext: the people long in charge dont want to lose power.

Denouncing federal overreach is always a sure win for Utah politicians. In this years Republican primary, San Juan County-based legislator Phil Lyman is challenging the incumbent governor with fierce anti-public lands rhetoric. Governor Cox will need to protect his right flank.

Meanwhile, school trust lands within Bears Ears remain at risk. The tallest structure in Utah,a 460-foot telecom towerwith blinking red lights, could rise on state land in the heart of the monument. Its been approved by county planners, and the Trust Lands Administration could add poison pills on other lands proposed for exchange.

The elected leaders of Utah have decided that the monuments integrity and the needs of the states children matter less than political gamesmanship.

The five tribes of Bears Earsknow better: It is our obligation to our ancestorsand to the American people, to protect Bears Ears. Their big hearts will win in the end.

Stephen Trimble is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Utah and will publish the 35th-anniversary edition of his bookThe Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basinnext winter.

Corrections: The 4th paragraph has been changed to reflect the monument is 1.36 million acres. Previously it read 5 million acres. The 7th paragraph read 1.3 million acres and that has been updated as well to 1.36 million acres.

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Culture Wars and an Embattled Utah Monument Sierra Nevada Ally - The Sierra Nevada Ally

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All illnesses come with the potential for lifelong disabling complications and/or consequences; thats just how illness works. Theres a lot more sick people now, getting a lot worse because the NHS cant treat anything within a timeframe that actually prevents harm.

Over a decade of Tory rule has done this. If you want there to be fewer sick and struggling people, then people need to be seen, treated and supported for their needs. Theres a lot deeply wrong with life in Britain today and people are suffering tremendously.

@sharptonguecharlie, Instagram

I hate how some of these politicians think they know more than doctors and specialists and scientists because theyre annoyed by people being unwell. This sort of language and rhetoric causes anxiety and fear and stigmatises neurodivergent people and those with mental health issues. This sort of talk gives other horrible people the permission to start harassing those they consider, in their medical ignorance, unworthy of help, care and support. Im fuming.

@Ronnydeanstanton, Instagram

These people have caused a lot of the mental health issues! Living through the Covid craziness and a cost of living crisis is enough to affect anyones mental health. Then they shame people for suffering with it. Its the highest form of gaslighting and torture.

Denise Leech, Facebook

Mental health is not a culture! Tory culture wars have gone too far.

@lallafa_jeltz, X

The social care system is privatised and, therefore too expensive for ordinary people to access. We need to reduce costs by bringing some of it back under the NHS umbrella. Currently, our government is recruiting care workers from Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe through private care companies. Social care is charged at 30 an hour on average, and the workers are paid 4 an hour. This is the reality of what vulture capitalism advocated by the Tories looks like.

@rubymoonswim, Instagram

Well done Prince William for sticking up for the homeless. It should be commended. I wish we could tackle the reasons behind it, but I guess every case is complex. I subscribed to my vendor during Covid and hopefully helped him through a bad patch.

This Homeward drive sounds good, it raises awareness around the issues and more. I wish my charity could take part in it as well, to send every one of them homeward and back to where they belong (a nice loving home).

Stuart Campbell, Facebook

I have just read Chaminda Jayanettis article about the dire effects of the governments running down of the benefit system and why it is going to cost us more in the end rather than saving money.It should be required reading for everyone, especially those in the government who are sure that most claimants are faking scroungers.

The article is concise, easily understood by anyone and should be the next governments manifesto.Well done Big Issue!

Dagna Horner, Berkhamsted

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Letters: Mel Stride's comments show Tory culture wars have gone too far - The Big Issue

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