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The freedom to read isn’t just about resisting book bans. Resisting ideological conformity matters too.
For FAIR’s Substack, Catherine Simpson and Todd Kyle write about how to regain the confidence of library users and society.
To regain the confidence of our users and of society, librarians need to recognize when their own activist bias results in a reduction of access to certain viewpoints, and to reaffirm their commitment to viewpoint plurality. Moreover, librarians can use their voices (and their purchasing power) to encourage publishers and distributors to stop the practice of shadow-banning and viewpoint restriction. The freedom to read must include not only the defense of books that some seek to ban, but the return to balanced and viewpoint-neutral collections.
DEI Practitioners Have A Lot To Learn From Professor Zack DePiero’s Lawsuit Against Penn State
For Forbes, Susan Harmeling writes about Zack DePiero’s lawsuit against Penn State.
It is clear that Professor DePiero's lawsuit against Penn State University illuminates critical flaws in the implementation of commonly-accepted DEI programs, programs that are also present on other campuses today. It's a stark reminder that good intentions alone aren't sufficient to ensure fairness and equity in our institutions. We must confront these uncomfortable truths and acknowledge when programs stray into divisive or discriminatory territory. This requires a commitment to ongoing assessment, adaptation, and accountability.
We Are Too Good for DEI
For Discourse, Erec Smith writes about why diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that portray Black Americans as perpetual victims aren’t doing us any favors.
Black History Month is too good for CSJ-DEI. It is about the celebration of figures in Black history who beat seemingly insurmountable odds. It is about figures like educator Mary McLeod Bethune, lawyer Samuel J. Lee, congressman Josiah T. Walls and many others of whom most are unaware. I firmly believe that these figures would scoff at CSJ-inspired ideas such as equitable math, the demonization of debate and the violence of teaching Standard English to Black students.
Texas’s Social-Media Law Is Dangerous. Striking It Down Could Be Worse.
For The Atlantic, Zephyr Teachout writes about why we should be wary of giving Big Tech a constitutional right to avoid regulation.
States should be able to require platforms, for instance, to neutrally and fairly apply their own stated terms of service. Congress should be able to prohibit platforms from discriminating against news organizations—such as by burying their content—based on their size or point of view, a requirement embedded in proposed legislation by Senator Amy Klobuchar. The alternative is to give the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk the inalienable right to censor their political opponents, if they so choose.
I’m a foster kid who went to Yale —and I think two-parent families are more important than college
For the New York Post, Rikki Schlott interviews Rob Henderson about his new book, “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.”
Instead of looking to self proclaimed leaders of various marginalized and dispossessed groups, we need to actually ask those groups themselves.
It’s worth collecting data, looking at surveys, speaking with people — not just community leaders and activists who have their own agendas.
I saw this at Yale where someone who shares the characteristics of a historically mistreated group would claim to speak on behalf of them, but they had very little in common with them other than the way that they looked.
I want people to be a bit more skeptical of the self-proclaimed activist leaders who could be trying to push an agenda, trying to elicit sympathy, and trying to exploit people’s concerns
DEI Should Be M.I.A. in the U.S. Military
For Newsweek, Erec Smith writes about why DEI should not be a part of the United States military.
But the words "diversity," "equity," and "inclusion" have gone from obvious American virtues to vices in recent years, not because Americans have soured on racial equality, but because those words have taken on meanings that actually oppose their common interpretations. This new DEI, backed by an ideology of critical social justice, is the very opposite of the social justice values espoused by the civil rights movement.
To be clear, the ideology of critical social justice is not Martin Luther King's civil rights. King highlighted character, open-mindedness, and equality. Sadly, the critical social justice variety of DEI (Let's call it "CSJ-DEI") is about the primacy of skin color, intolerance of opposing viewpoints, and the inherent inequality between white people (fundamentally considered oppressors) and non-white people (fundamentally considered oppressed).
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