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Tufts Global Education hosted a virtual panel on Wednesday titled Black Lives Matter Around the World, moderated by Dr. H Adlai Murdoch, professor of Francophone studies and director of Africana studies at Tufts, featuring speakers from academic and activist backgrounds in the United States, Spain, Jamaica and Germany. The panel was co-sponsored by the Africana studies program, the Africana Center and the international relations program.

Charlene Carruthers, a PhD student in the department of African American studies at Northwestern University, has a background in the research of Black feminist political economies and the role of cultural work within the Black radical tradition and has spent more than 15 years community organizing.

Carruthers opened by saying that the importance of amplifying Black voices is not new.

I believe that the overall topic for our discussion today is always relevant. Its been relevant, frankly, for hundreds of years, and its absolutely relevant today, Carruthers said.

She said that this particular moment in the fight for Black lives, especially in the aftermath of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others, is part of something larger.

This is situated within ongoing local, national and transnational movements for Black liberation, Carruthers said. This is not new.

In particular, she noted that Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., with large African immigrant populations, demonstrate the interconnectedness of global demands for Black justice, and how this issue has been prominent in Black peoples lives long before the Black Lives Matter movement gained traction last summer.

People havent forgotten their people on the continent of Africa, their people in other parts of the world, Carruthers said. They are involved with struggles globally as well and making those connections and not waiting for conversations like this to help them figure out theyre talking to their cousins, theyre talking to their family members.

Dr. Esther Mayoko Ortega Arjonilla, an associate professor of critical race studies at Tufts-in-Madrid, applied Carruthers points to her experiences in Spain.

She particularly saw the George Floyd protests as an opportunity to amplify the voices of Afro-Spaniards and to examine long-standing issues in the country, saying it marked a real turning point for local Black and African activism in Spain.

In the last five, six, sevenyears in Spain, we have the creation of multiple associations and activist groups led by collectives of young people, young Black women, and queer and questioning people, and this is new leadership in a movement traditionally led by heterosexual Black men, Mayoko Ortega Arjonilla said.

She reflected specifically on the treatment of African migrants in Spain.

These African workers in agriculture live in inhuman conditions: no electricity, no clean drinking water, working 1012 hours a day, Mayoko Ortega Arjonilla said.

Beyond poor treatment, Mayoko Ortega Arjonilla noted that Spains unique position at Europes southern border has led to poor treatment of entering immigrants. She pointed to an incident from 2014 when Spanish police shot with rubber bullets and small grenades at a group of Black migrants who were swimming toward Spain. The shooting killed 14 of the migrants.

Yasmin Nasrudin, one of the panelists and the director of the Education USA Advising Center and deputy director of intercultural affairs at the German-American Institute Tbingen, noted that Germany has a lot of similarities with Spain in this realm.

Nasrudin noted that the movement for Black lives in Germany is fairly new, having been especially spurred on in 1980s with the help of Audre Lorde, who was an American writer, feminist and civil rights activist. Lorde lived in Germany in the mid-1980s as a visiting professor at the Free University of Berlin.

She gave the Black women the empowerment and emancipation of creating their own language and giving a new perspective on life in Germany as Black people, Nasrudin said.

She also delved into the question of language, and explained the recent shift from the term Afro-German to Black German.

Dr. Danielle Roper, assistant professor in Latin American literature at the University of Chicago, spoke to the way the momentum from George Floyds killing reinforced, rather than created, the need for the work of Black activists.

I think that when we talk about Black radicalism and Black activism today, we have to think about this moment as continuing the spirit of solidarity and transnationalism that characterized Black radical practices and movements of yesteryear, Roper said.

Roper also emphasized the need to recognize that Black Lives Matter is not a movement limited to the United States nor other Black-minority countries.

I think its important to note this because conversations of anti-Blackness sometimes leave out the fact that anti-Black racism is indeed a phenomenon that organizes predominantly Black countries in the Global South as well, and such is the case in countries like Jamaica, Barbados and elsewhere, Roper said.

Murdoch then turned it over to the audience for questions.

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Tufts Global Education hosts speakers from Spain, Jamaica, Germany, US in 'Black Lives Matter Around the World' panel - Tufts Daily

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, former Governor of Wisconsin and current Young Americas Foundation President Scott Walker joins Western Correspondent Tristan Justice to discuss how college campuses are the new frontier for the culture war and how conservatives can harness the opportunities presented by young people to spark change.

One of the mistakes I think conservatives have historically made is that we think and talk with our head. The left thinks and talks with their heart. We should never concede the logic, but find ways to communicate from the heart. I think thats just powerful, Walker said.

College campuses, Walker noted, are often a breeding ground for leftist ideology and conservatives should be ready to provide pushback now.

This is just an opportunity we have to address in our society for sure, but to use it to wedge in much, much bigger issues that are about really changing who controls the economy, about changing who dominates the government, and those are things that change the direction of where America is headed going forward, Walker concluded. We can continue to be a great country, and to improve. We dont need to adopt Marxist or even socialist philosophies to do that.

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Scott Walker On The New Frontier Of The Culture Wars - The Federalist

When Presbyterian pastor Walter Kim became the first person of color to lead the National Association of Evangelicals, he said he wanted to get beyond the metaphor of "culture wars" and instead build bridges.

But Kim took over the role as the country reached new heights of political polarization last year.

The father of two is tapping into his familys history as he enters his second year as the organizations leader and addresses a path forward for evangelical Christians.

Kim didnt grow up as an evangelical. He established his faith in high school and says he found comfort within evangelicalism's deep commitment to scripture, to personal transformation of Jesus.

His father, a refugee, escaped communist China by crossing a river in a barrel, he says. Kims dad eventually took the family to the U.S. with the help of a Lutheran pastor. Then for years afterward, an Irish Catholic family took Kims household under their wing, he explains.

People of faith have been deeply a part of my own family history in terms of welcoming us to America, he says.

As a pastor of color, he says he wants to summon that level of care and hospitality to reach across differences that right now seem insurmountable in a time of tremendous polarization." That means starting conversations about identity and faith.

NAE leaders, including himself, understand that having conversations about faith and identity can be complicated by what evangelicalism is often associated with whiteness, a certain political identity and a sense of hypocrisy between what the moral witness and character is of evangelicalism versus its statement, he says.

One in three American evangelicals identifies as a person of color. But a lot of emphasis has been put on white evangelicals, in part because of political divisions that were laid bare during the Trump administration.

Kim says there is a much richer history and diversity to evangelicalism than what the current narrative implies. The Assemblies of God, he points out, is 50% white congregants and 50% congregants of color.

In the past, evangelicals have engaged in issues of racial justice and reconciliation, he says. In 1912, the second conference of the NAACP was hosted at Park Street Church, a flagship evangelical church in Boston Kim says, adding he was the pastor there for 15 years. The first chartered group of the NAACP rose from that conference, he notes.

Yet, Kim acknowledges the conversations about racial justice movements are incredibly painful. Within the NAE, theres a moment of reckoning in terms of not just diversifying the people in the pews on Sundays, but how to support a diversity of culture where we engage meaningfully and in solidarity with the vastly different life experiences and expressions of faith, he says.

Thats no easy task. If it were, it would have been solved already, he says. Kim believes faith is well equipped to address these issues, even if religion hasnt always adequately addressed problems of identity and faith in the past.

Some evangelicals feel like many leaders in the movement sacrificed their credibility and moral high ground by adamantly aligning themselves with former President Donald Trump, as The Daily Beasts Matt Lewis reports.

While Kim makes it clear the NAE doesnt give political endorsements or statements, he says the organization does engage in policy that pertains to faith. Evangelicals have a wide range of political expressions, he says.

After Trumps loss, he says the wider community has been soul searching again on what is the appropriate use of power, and how would a follower of Jesus engage in this pluralistic society and constructive dialog even as it seeks to challenge and present a faith perspective?

For him, that means strengthening the political, social and cultural expressions and implications of evangelicalism in the public eye.

Right now, Kim is thinking deeply about public theology and raising the next generation of believers, he says, so evangelicals become more informed by scripture than we are informed by our social media feed.

James Perkins Mastromarinoand Ciku Theuri produced and edited this interview for broadcast withTodd Mundt. Serena McMahonadapted it for the web.

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National Association Of Evangelicals Leader Strives To Break Down Barriers, 'Build Bridges' - Here And Now

Given todays long overdue focus on systemic racism and the raging culture wars that awareness has engendered its reasonable to wonder what the future will be (and should be) for storied but politically offensive movies like Gone With the Wind, The Searchers, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Jazz Singer.

These are just a handful among the hundreds maybe thousands of old Hollywood films with scenes, themes and language ranging from highly objectionable to abhorrent. The romanticization of slavery in Gone With the Wind, one of historys most successful and beloved movies, is truly shocking when watched today but so is the less familiar image of Al Jolson falling to his knees in blackface in The Jazz Singer and the insidiously cheerful musical sexism of 1954s Seven Brides.

For years the battle over such films has been between those who want these sorts of bigoted movies retired and deplatformed, and those who dismiss such ideas as cancel culture and prefer the world to go on as it always has.

Sometimes it feels like middle ground is hard to find between these warring factions. But I was cheered recently to see that Turner Classic Movies had chosen a thoughtful third way for dealing with what it called problematic or troubling old movies in a series called Reframed, which began March 4 and has its final episode Thursday.

Rather than burying racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive films in some basement vault and pretending they never were made, TCM instead picked 18 movies including the ones above and aired them over a four-week period. In the featured films, men abduct women, Asians are mimicked, Native Americans are dehumanized and slaughtered, African Americans are ridiculed and demonized (not to mention bought and sold).

But instead of presenting them without comment or judgment, TCM added intros and after-discussions in which its film expert hosts discuss the movies through a modern lens.

Male domination as romantic fantasy is discussed in connection with Seven Brides, a musical comedy in which seven backwoods frontiersmen kidnap seven women to be their wives.

The swaggering, macho, anti-Native American vigilante played by John Wayne in The Searchers was debated by the experts: Was he a hero or antihero? Gone With the Wind was flatly (and rightly) characterized as supporting a white supremacist point of view. Mickey Rooneys appalling comic portrayal of the Japanese photographer who lives upstairs from Audrey Hepburns character in Breakfast at Tiffanys was discussed as a vile relic of World War II animosity.

Discussion. Analysis. Reconsideration of the prejudices, stereotypes and bigotry that suffuse these films. A review of the historical context in which they were made. These strike me as a healthy way to approach troubling old movies (as well as troubling books, statues and school names). Suppression, by contrast, is a form of denial, of erasing the reality of past attitudes.

Not that TCM did it perfectly. The Reframed discussions are heavy on white presenters, even though audiences might prefer to hear from more of the Native Americans, Asians, Latinos and others who were so often the targets of anger or ridicule. There is an annoyingly measured quality in the discussions even of the most egregiously racist films. (Perhaps that was unavoidable from a group of avowed cinephiles speaking on a network whose core business, after all, is showing old movies.)

One of the big questions that went undiscussed in the segments I saw was how we should feel about these films. What if we fall for the romance of Rhett and Scarlett in Gone With the Wind, despite knowing all the reasons we shouldnt? What if we root for cowboys over Indians in a western? Are these things unavoidable or are they moral failings?

Still, I thought TCM made a serious good-faith effort toward a better, broader understanding of the nuance and complexity of our American past. According to Charlie Tabesh, TCMs senior vice president for programming, Reframed has received some criticism from both the right and the left, but more of the objections have come from the right, with people complaining: Dont lecture me. I just want to watch the movie.

Reframed comes in the wake, among other things, of a Los Angeles Times op-ed article written in June 2020 by John Ridley, the African American director, screenwriter and novelist, who called for HBO Max to remove Gone With the Wind from its rotation of films and then after a period to return it to the air, presented with more context. HBO Max did exactly that.

After the summers racial justice protests and a concerted push in recent years from within the industry Hollywood is rethinking what gets made, who gets to make it and what from the past should still be shown. According to a recent article in the Hollywood Reporter, for instance, Disney holds a monthly meeting with a committee of outside advisors to discuss inclusivity, diversity, stereotypes and insensitivity in programming. Some studios and streaming services are using content warnings or disclaimers about negative depictions in old films.

There are lots of ways of addressing these issues. But sweeping history under the rug or pretending that those old wounds werent inflicted is the wrong way to go.

@Nick_Goldberg

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What should happen to racist and sexist old Hollywood movies? - Los Angeles Times

Indeed he is. Morrison doesnt do culture, philosophy, or ideology. In 2017 he notoriously said freedom of speech doesnt create one job. (To which the reply could be made nor does the presumption of innocence.)

What the recent media attention on the behaviour of MPs and their staff in Parliament House has not done is derail the Morrison governments policy reform agenda because there isnt one.

Presumably the reason the Prime Minister has been silent about the handcuffing and arrest in her home by the Victoria Police of a pregnant mother following her social media protest supporting an anti-lockdown protest, is because he regards the maintenance of the rule of law in the country as falling into the culture wars category.

A few weeks ago Morrison was asked on Melbourne radio [whether] we are too woke and thats affecting democracy and debate, do you think we are too woke?.

Morrison replied: I think theres a lot of talk about all this. But you know what? Right now, what people care about, and what I care about is their health and their jobs.

The challenges the Coalition faces cant be overcome by the application of the Prime Ministers pragmatism.

Morrison has a tendency to personalise policy and draw on his personal and family experiences when talking about the government. All politicians do it, but Morrison does it more than most. For example, when he announced the royal commission into the disability sector he talked about his family.

Using empathy to frame questions of policy can be very powerful indeed, but it does mean that when empathy appears to be lacking the result is particularly stark, such as when in response to a question about the federal governments management of bushfires, Morrison answered: I dont hold a hose, mate. Thats a true statement, but not one thats empathetic.

Whether to select a person to represent the Liberal Party not on the basis of their ability, but according to their gender or ethnicity or some other aspect of their identity is a question of principle, not practicality.

Contrary to what might have been expected, the pandemic hasnt paused the culture wars, it has accelerated them. For at least some people the suffering they endured during the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown of their lives has prompted a search for non-material outcomes that are different from what went before.

From the migration of the Black Lives Matter from the United States to Australia, to the toppling of statues associated with slavery or colonialism, to the debate about the date of Australia Day, the culture wars show no signs of abating.

The empathy and understanding the public demand of their leaders in the current political climate isnt a product of practicalities or pragmatism.

Avoiding any talk about the countrys culture is a strategy that might have worked for Morrison at the last election. He is probably the only conservative politician who could have won the 2019 federal election, albeit narrowly. The persona of a daggy dad focused obsessively on the hip-pocket nerve suited the times of two years ago perfectly. Plus, Morrison wasnt Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten.

But the zeitgeist of 2021 is different from 2019.

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Woke warriors are after the PM - The Australian Financial Review