Mediaboss Marketing

Im a scholar of the culture wars in the US. I used to believe that universities could provide a kind of solvent for these conflicts, by clarifying different positions and suggesting compromises between them.

I dont believe that anymore. Universities have embraced the same polarised, winner-take-all spirit as the rest of American politics. And thats very bad news for anyone who cares about the future of the American academy.

Witness recent events at Princeton University, where president Christopher Eisgruber recommended that the board of trustees dismiss classics professor JoshuaKatz.In lockstep fashion, faculty divided quickly into Team Eisgruber by far the bigger group and Team Katz. And neither squad acknowledged the validity or even the humanity of the other one.

The university fired Katz on Monday, citing hisbehaviour during a sexual relationship with an undergraduate student 15 years ago.Princeton officials already knew about that affair and had punished Katz by suspending him without pay for a year.But they said that the student had come forth with new information, including claims that Katz had discouraged her from seeking mental health treatment for fear that she would disclose their affair and that he pressured her not to cooperate with an earlierinvestigation.

THE Campus resource: How to create an open atmosphere for discussing difficult subjects

To Katz defenders, all of that was window dressing to disguise the real reason he was sacked: his remarks on race.In 2020, a few weeks after the police murder of George Floyd, Katz published an online essay blasting an open letter about racism at Princeton. Signed by more than 300 faculty, staff members and students, the letter called on the university to dismantle systemic racism, incentivize anti-racist student activism and apologise to members of a student group known as the Black Justice League for repeatedly rebuffing their demand to remove President Woodrow Wilsons name from the universitys School of Public and International Affairs (three years ago, Princeton agreed to remove Wilsons name).

Katzs essay endorsed parts of the open letter, including its support for summer move-in allowances for new assistant professors. But he rejected its demand that junior faculty of colour receive an additional semester of sabbatical. He also charged that the Black Justice League had bullied dissenting students including African Americans in a struggle session, which Katz called one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed.

Most controversially, hedescribed the group as a small local terrorist organization. When that quote went viral, Katz became a campus pariah. Colleagues in the classics department posted a message calling Katz choice of words abhorrent at this moment of national reckoning. Eisgruber denounced Katzs false description of the Black Justice League. And the university featured Katz in a rogues gallery of racist Princetonians presented at the universitys first-year student orientation last August.

The presentation did not mention the handful of professors and students who have defended Katz. Instead, in bold font, it quoted two African American faculty critics. One said that Katz had engaged in race-baiting, disguised as free speech; the other said Katz seems to not regard people like me as essential features, or persons, of Princeton.

So far as I know, Katz did not receive a chance to respond to these highly derogatory charges. And I havent heard of any other university denouncing a standing faculty member in such a public venue. Absurdly, Eisgruber defended the comments about Katz as teaching material for the incoming students. But if the university was truly interested in teaching about this controversy, it would have presented supporters of Katz alongside critics of him. Anything less isnt teaching; its indoctrination.

Surely there are many faculty, at Princeton and elsewhere, who believe that flaying Katz at the first-year orientation was wrong, but theyre mostly biting their tongues because saying so would seem to place them in Katz corner. Why aid and abet the other team?

Likewise, Katz defenders have generally refrained from condemning his newly reported misbehaviour towards his ex-lover. Princeton clearly had a duty to investigate herclaims, which she detailed in a formal complaint. And if Katz indeed told her not to cooperate with the investigation or not to seek mental health treatment of course he should be held accountable for that. But you wont hear that from the people on Katz side. If they mention the new allegations at all, it is simply to dismiss the charges as a mean-spirited retaliation against an outspoken colleague.

Its all or nothing, kill or be killed, my way or the highway, heads I win and tails you lose. In other words, its a war.

We frequently cite Princeton dropout F. Scott Fitzgeralds observation that the mark of intelligence is holding two opposing ideas in mind at the same time. If we truly believed that, we could denounce both the universitys mistreatment of Katz and also his alleged mistreatment of his student. But our faith in that principle is hugely frayed, not just outside universities but within them. Indeed, theres not much of a difference between the two any longer. And that just makes me incredibly sad.

Jonathan Zimmerman is Judy and Howard Berkowitz professor in education and professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools, which will be published in a revised 20th-anniversary edition by the University of Chicago Press this autumn.

View post:
Katz case is another culture wars skirmish - Times Higher Education

Can the gaslighting on gender and sexual identitarianism from the left get any more absurd? The Washington Post last month ran a story about how a decision by the community center in McLean, Virginia to co-sponsor a Drag StoryBook Hour for children during Pride Month has, in their awkward wording, set off culture wars.

The May election for three open seats at the community center has attracted nine candidates, including Katharine Gorka, a former Trump administration official who has criticized the diversity, inclusion, and equity policies that resulted in the drag event. WaPo reporter Antonio Olivo observed, with editorial flourish, that this is an example of how nothing is safe from the nations raging culture wars.

A suburban community center hosts a drag queen story hour (DQSH) for elementary school students, yet its conservatives who are the ones stoking the culture war by complaining about it? A Florida school board member last year chaperoned a group of elementary school children on a field trip to a gay bar and the states community centers promote DQSH, but its conservatives who are the dangerous extremists for supporting a Florida parental rights in education bill?

Drag queens do bizarre, borderline pornographic acts in front of children, but its conservatives who are responsible for miseducating and damaging American youth? Come on.

DQSH, as Gorka recently told me, is not, as the American Library Association dishonestly describes it, an effort to combat marginalization and underrepresentation. Rather, as the DQSH website itself declares, it is drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores in order to capture the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.

That word play is a bit concerning, especially given the sexually explicit nature of DQSH, and the many allegations that this pedagogy equates to grooming. A drag performer at one DQSH event in D.C. last year sang shirtless with duct tape on her breasts, sported a thong, and pretended to have fake sperm over her mouth.

Another DQSH event in Portland, Oregon in 2019 showed photos of children lounging atop of the costumed queens on the floor, grabbing at false breasts, and burying their faces in their bodies. This is not exactly light-hearted, appropriate public entertainment, notes Gorka.

It would be more accurate to say that DQSH events bring the culture war directly to Americas children, with an ideological gameplan expressly dedicated to sexualizing our nations youth and urging children to consider themselves gender dysphoric. The first DQSH event in the United States was held in San Francisco in 2015. Since then, the events have spread across the country.

As of 2020, the official DQSH website boasted almost 50 independently operated chapters across the United States, including in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. It is also supported by the American Library Association, whose extensive resource page includes information on how libraries can resist and censure people in local communities who object to these events.

Terrifyingly, the grooming charge is reality. In 2021, the former president of an organization that served as a sponsor for the Milwaukee Drag Queen Story Hour was charged with possessing child pornography depicting the sexual abuse of underage boys, including toddlers. In 2019, the Houston Public Library admitted a registered child sex offender to read to kids in a DQSH event. Allyn Walker, a transgender former assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Virginia, sought to defend people who are attracted to minors.

As I noted in a recent Federalist article, the media and schools aggressively promoting transgenderism have created a national crisis. There has been a dramatic, unprecedented surge in people identifying with sexual identities other than heterosexual.

As Abigail Shrier documents at length in her alarming book Irreversible Damage, the consequences for those who seek hormone treatment and/or sexual reassignment surgery are lifelong. DQSH marks an attempt to push the boundaries even further, not only for children entering puberty but to early elementary school and pre-K.

This truly is a national challenge. DQSH now reportedly has chapters in 29 different states, which means there is plenty of local political work to be done. As Gorka notes, pornographic books such as All Boys Arent Blue can be found in hundreds of school libraries across the country, thanks in part to the fact that The Young Adult Library Services Association (a division of the American Library Association) put the book at the top of its Teens Top 10 book list in 2021.

This makes the lefts abusive and hyperbolic rhetoric on conservative resistance to DQSH and other grooming activities all the more insulting and infuriating. The Washington Post provocatively featured a political cartoon in April portraying Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as responsible for the deaths of trans children. Liberal media outlets are claiming that conservatives should be held responsible for the suicides of children struggling with dysphoria.

Yet who encouraged prepubescent children to think about myopic topics like gender dysphoria in the first place? I certainly never heard of such things when I was in grade school in the 1990s. Who told children that their gender and sexual identity were the most important thing about them, and that misidentifying or misgendering amounted to the worst possible offense? Who is making millions of dollars off lying to and emotionally damaging impressionable, easily-manipulated children?

The answer is those advocating DQSH and the many other ubiquitous forms of sexual and gender propaganda influencing millions of American youth. It is they who are deceiving and often permanently damaging an entire generation of Americans for the sake of their own ideological agenda, the normalizing of bizarre, pornographic behavior.

No, conservatives did not inflame the culture war over trans ideology and drag queens. But we sure would like to stop it.

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelors in history and masters in teaching from the University of Virginia and a masters in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.

Read more here:
No, Conservatives Did Not Inflame Trans Ideology In The Culture War - The Federalist

Former Treasurer Josh Frydenbergs shock loss to an independent running on a climate action platform wasnt a fluke event. Teal independents have ousted five of Frydenbergs colleagues, all harvesting votes from conservative heartland and all calling for more action on climate change.

Amid the wreckage, Frydenberg was asked whether the Liberals needed to rethink their policies on climate change. His response that he didnt believe Australia had been well served by the culture wars on climate change deserves analysis.

Who started the culture war on climate change? And are we nearing its demise? Our research, published this month, provides some clues.

We found that approximately a third of Australians predominantly conservatives maintain that climate change is not caused by human activity, but rather by natural environmental fluctuations.

Crucially, however, we also found signs the conservative position against climate science has weakened over time. The election results reinforce this message, with a projection of six teal independents nationwide and two new Green seats in Queensland.

As such, this election may well be remembered as the first cracks in the dam wall of conservative-led climate scepticism.

Historically, science has been excluded from left and right political culture wars. Science, it was agreed, was best left to the scientists.

For example, shortly after definitive evidence emerged that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were eroding the ozone layer, an international treaty committed to phasing them out. The response was swift and apolitical: in the 1980s you couldnt tell how someone voted from knowing their stance on CFCs.

Unfortunately, this cant be said for climate science. In 1965, there was enough scientific buzz about the dangers of carbon emissions that US President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a message to Congress sounding the alarm.

Read more: The big teal steal: independent candidates rock the Liberal vote

But the seeds of climate culture wars were sown soon after. With the ear of senior politicians and supported by think tanks and private corporations a campaign of misinformation was started that came straight from the Big Tobacco playbook: to convince people to do nothing in the face of impending danger, you need to convince them the science is not yet in.

The campaign to scramble the science on climate change was remarkably effective: in the 2000s, 97% of climate scientists agreed about anthropogenic climate change, but people incorrectly believed scientists were divided on the issue. A scientific conclusion had been effectively positioned as a debate.

Originally, this had little to do with conservatism. In the early 1990s, educated Republicans saw more scientific consensus around climate change than Democrats. But this pattern has since dramatically reversed.

Climate mitigation became perceived by conservative elites as ideologically toxic a Big Government response designed to regulate industry and the freedoms of individuals. Among the Right, politicians, think tanks, and media all started to coach other conservatives how to think about climate change.

The consequence was that a scientific issue became a political issue. Researchers investigating the predictors of climate scepticism found political allegiance blew everything else out of the water: more important than peoples personal experience of extreme weather events, their levels of education, or even their science literacy.

Read more: The teals and Greens will turn up the heat on Labor's climate policy. Here's what to expect

In the early 2010s, the culture wars on climate science in Australia escalated dramatically.

It became routine for conservative politicians to question climate science (former Prime Minister Tony Abbott famously proclaimed climate science as absolute crap in 2009) and one-third of mainstream newspaper articles were climate sceptical.

We recently analysed 25 polls conducted by Essential Research over ten years, collecting representative data on Australians beliefs about climate change.

We found scepticism levels were staggeringly high by international standards. Over the last 10 years, about four in ten Australians either said climate change isnt driven by human activities, or that they dont know whats causing it. Most of these people were conservatives.

But scepticism has tailed down from the high-water mark in 2013, and particularly among conservatives. Our data suggest the trigger for this change was the string of record-breaking annual global temperatures since 2015.

Read more: Climate wars, carbon taxes and toppled leaders: the 30-year history of Australias climate response, in brief

As the Liberal party and conservative voters ponder what happens next, its worth remembering that rejection of climate science is not an inherently conservative position. International data suggest the link between conservatism and climate scepticism is largely an issue for the US and Australia.

In most countries there is no reliable relationship. Indeed, in the UK it was the conservatives who led the phasing out of coal in their country.

Pro-climate conservative leaders around the world such as Malcolm Turnbull, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Kasich remind us that mitigating climate change is something that dovetails with conservative values: protecting traditional ways of life, maintaining national security and independence, and catalysing green jobs and innovation.

The success of the teal independents highlights that many conservative Australians want climate action. The election result could pressure the Liberal party into deleting climate science from the culture wars.

This will not be easy. Australia is the worlds leading exporter of coal, and in the past inaction on climate change has been an effective wedge issue to harvest traditionally left-leaning, blue-collar votes.

But extracting climate policy from the culture wars would be game-changing in terms of our ability to unite in the face of the climate crisis, and conservatives are the ones most equipped to do so.

As the Liberals reflect on the loss of a generation of future leaders in blue ribbon seats, they may just decide that now is the time.

Read more: The election showed Australia's huge appetite for stronger climate action. What levers can the new government pull?

See the original post here:
The election shows the conservative culture war on climate change could be nearing its end - The Conversation Indonesia

Igers replacement as Disney CEO, the more conservative but less diplomatic Bob Chapek, stayed silent on the bill which provoked a mutiny at Disneys more avant-garde subsidiary Pixar. There was a staff walkout, and an irate statement claiming that nearly every moment of overtly gay affection [in Pixar films had been] cut at Disneys behest.

Chapek promptly swung hard the other way, pledging $5million towards LGBTQ rights organisations, and announcing Disneys goal to repeal the contentious law. In a ping-pong game of cultural outrage, DeSantis responded by revoking Disneys control of a district the company has run almost autonomously for half a century, declaring that in Florida, our policies [have] got to be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musing of woke corporations.

That district which has been called a Vatican with mouse ears was incorporated in May 1966 to facilitate one of the strangest examples of Walt Disneys grandiose ambitions. Walt wanted to create an ideal community called Progress City, showcasing new concepts for urban living, so begged the right to effectively secede from Florida state law on planning, building codes and so on. After his death in December 1966, corporate enthusiasm for Progress City waned, and, in 1971, the site became Walt Disney World.

Today, it lies in a special tax area which covers 100 square kilometers in Orange and Osceola counties, and includes two small cities where Disney runs the fire brigade, ambulances and emergency medical services, drainage, electricity utilities, roads and so on. It pays for all this with its own municipal bonds, which come with tax advantages.

The effect of repealing the legislation is unclear. There is no obvious winner. Disney will lose huge tax benefits in Florida, but DeSantis has also taken massive donations from the corporation, which will dry up. Meanwhile, Orange Countys mayor has warned that the cost of taking over Disneys emergency services would be catastrophic.

The reason DeSantis is pushing this is because he wants to run for president in 2024 and hes out-Trumping Trump in using government power as an instrument in the culture war, one studio insider tells me. (Its a mark of the debates toxicity that Hollywood sources will only speak anonymously.) Theres not much Disney can do. They cant shift a park thats the size of San Francisco, so theyre stuck.

Looking down from Disney Heaven, Walt would be appalled by the woke corporation that bears his name. He was fervently pro-Republican and rabidly anti-Communist, testifying enthusiastically before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and tipping off the FBI about alleged communist animators.

For the 21st-century firm, he is an increasingly embarrassing memory: a member of the anti-Semitic Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, he took Hitlers cinematic protge, Leni Riefenstahl, on a tour of his studios just one month after Kristallnacht.

Go here to see the original:
Nazis at the gates: inside 'woke' Disney's culture wars - The Telegraph

Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrorysaidSunday that policymakers trying to tighten gun laws must remember that fear of crime is a prominent cultural issue and that Republicans are scared of looking weak and losing primaries.

Mr. McCrory, a Republican, lost a recent U.S. Senate primary by 34 percentage points to Rep. Ted Budd, who enjoyed former President Donald Trumps endorsement.

Mr. McCrory said that,as mayor of Charlotte,he reduced the murder rate by 50% due to some tough law enforcement and some mentoring and other programs.

Even so, I lost a primary two weeks ago to a congressman who had a gun in his front trousers in a commercial, he told NBCs Meet the Press. And that was a more powerful message to the constituency voting in that primary. He was tougher. I was weaker, and yet my record of accomplishment and fighting crime is unsurpassed.

Mr. McCrory offered the example as Congress debates stricter gun laws in the wake of the shooting that killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Mr. McCrory was at the forefront of the culture wars in 2016, when he failed to win another term as governor amid pushback over a bathroom law that ordered transgender people to use the public restroom for their sex at birth. Today, Mr. Trump and others are casting him as a timid RINO Republican in name only.

SEE ALSO: Texas state senator disgusted by police response in Uvalde shooting

In that vein, Mr. McCrory said fellow Republicans are being pushed to the right on gun laws, partly as a backlash to liberal policies that result in courts releasing dangerous people.

Weve got people who dont trust right now the criminal justice system, he said. Were letting criminals go you see the DAs in L.A., the DAs in some of these cities where theyre letting criminals go crime after crime after crime, and people are going, You know, Im gonna take this into my own hands. Im gonna protect my family. Im gonna protect my home.

Originally posted here:
Former NC Gov. Pat McCrory: GOP lawmakers are pushed to right on guns due to symbolism, culture - Washington Times