Featured
‘America Is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade. Confessore / NYT
In late 2022, a group of conservative activists and academics set out to abolish the diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Texas’ public universities.
Long before Claudine Gay resigned Harvard’s presidency this month under intense criticism of her academic record, her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and her efforts to promote racial justice, conservative academics and politicians had begun making the case that the decades-long drive to increase racial diversity in America’s universities had corrupted higher education.
Thousands of documents obtained by The New York Times cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-D.E.I. movement — the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states. Read more
Related: Florida Bans DEI In Public Colleges As DeSantis Continues His War On ‘Woke.’ By
Related: Critics of D.E.I. Forget That It Works. Caroline Elkins, Frances Frei and
Related: When Reagan tried to undo affirmative action, corporations fought back. By Julian Mark / Wash Post
Political / Social
George Wallace Has an Heir Apparent. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
It is not hard to find, throughout American history, Trump-like demagogues with loyal followings. And these men tend to represent, most often, the popular expression of a certain will to power — the freedom to dominate.
I have to admit I have been fascinated by Wallace since I read Dan T. Carter’s excellent biography, “The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics.” A final thought: Wallace was a smart, clever and intellectually agile man. We are probably lucky that our demagogue, dangerous as he is, lacks those particular attributes. Even so, if Wallace has a legacy in national politics, it is very clearly Trump. Read more
Related: You Should Go to a Trump Rally. By McKay Coppins / The Atlantic
Related: The Unwitting Trump Enablers. By Adam Serwer / The Atlantic
Tim Scott looks to Trump as a president who will “restore law and order” in official endorsement. By Kelly McLure / Salon
The South Carolina senator’s pick is a blow to Nikki Haley, who appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012
In the video, he stands in front of Trump’s campaign plane and urges viewers to “tune in, pay attention, listen closely, and let’s talk about four more years.” And after making the announcement during a campaign event in Concord, New Hampshire hours later that he’s officially endorsing Trump as president, we know who he’s hoping to see in office for those four years. He also leaves open a pick as Trump’s VP. Read more
Here’s how Biden hopes to quiet concerns about his standing with Black voters. By Holly Otterbein and Elena Schneider / Politico
There is one state they have their eyes on, and it’s one that doesn’t matter for the general.
The Biden campaign announced on-the-ground aides in South Carolina way back in early December, before general-election battleground states had their own permanent staffers. A slew of surrogates have stumped there recently. And the campaign is investing six figures into paid advertising in South Carolina, including on television and Black radio stations. Read more
Related: William Barber on recruiting low-wage voters, Biden’s record on poverty. By
Related: Black and Jewish Activists Have Allied for Decades. What Now?
Harvard Defends Its Plagiarism Investigation of Its Former President.
In a report to a congressional committee, released on Friday, Harvard gave its most detailed account yet of its handling of the plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, who resigned this month as the university’s president.
In its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. It said an outside panel had found Dr. Gay’s papers to be “sophisticated and original,” with “virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings” that were not hers, even as it found a pattern of duplicative language in three papers. Read more
Fani Willis ally pushes for election interference case prosecutor to step aside. By Filip Timotija / The Hill
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) ally, who served as special counsel in the first impeachment of former President Trump, said that it would be a “wise thing” for prosecutor Nathan Wade to step aside in the Georgia election interference case considering the allegations that Willis hired him while they had a romantic affair.
Norm Eisen, who was the House of Representatives special counsel during Trump’s impeachment, said that the Georgia law does not require Wade to remove himself from the case, but that it would be a good thing to consider. Read more
Louisiana legislature approves new congressional map with second majority-Black district. By Maegan Vazquez / Wash Post
The Louisiana state legislature on Friday approved a new congressional map that includes two majority-Black districts after being ordered to do so by a federal court that found that the existing map illegally diminished Black voting power.
Approval by the legislature comes after a years-long court battle to give Black voters in the state adequate voting representation. Previously, Black voters in Louisiana had a majority in just one of the state’s six congressional districts,despite making up nearly a third of the statewide population. The new map is expected to give Democrats an edge in upcoming elections. Read more
Health inequities are widespread in pediatric medicine, researchers find. By Maria Godoy/ NPR
Imagine your child has broken a bone. You head to the emergency department, but the doctors won’t prescribe painkillers. This scenario is one that children of color in the U.S. are more likely to face than their white peers, according to new findings published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.
Researchers reviewed dozens of recent studies looking at the quality of care children receive across a wide spectrum of pediatric specialties. The inequities are widespread, says Nia Heard-Garris, a researcher at Northwestern University and a pediatrician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, who oversaw the review. Read more
Spelman College $100 million donation from Ronda Stryker is largest ever. By Ahjané Forbes / USA Today
Spelman College, the nation’s oldest historically Black college for women, has received its largest donation of $100 million from businesswoman and philanthropist Ronda Stryker and her husband, William Johnston, the chairman of Greenleaf Trust.
The college says the gift will help attract the best and brightest students by eliminating potential barriers during the admission process. Spelman ranked No. 1 HBCU for 17 consecutive years. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Most white evangelicals continue to support Donald Trump, maybe more than ever. By Sarah McCammon / NPR
First Church of God Pastor Charles Hundley sings a hymn during the morning service, Sunday, Jan. 7, in Des Moines, Iowa. Former President Donald Trump and his rivals for the GOP nomination have pushed for endorsements from pastors and faith communities. Evangelicals and religious Christian groups are traditionally critical to the Republican Party.
White evangelical Christians show no signs of backing away from Donald Trump. That appears to be one takeaway from Iowa’s Republican caucuses, where the former president won a decisive victory over several challengers. In 2016, there was a lot of head-scratching about evangelical support for Trump – given his divorces, allegations of both extramarital affairs and sexual assault, and his insults toward women, immigrants, and others. Read more
MLK summit for Gaza highlighted historic ties between civil rights and Palestinian liberation. By
U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, speaks druing the Emergency Summit for Gaza at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition national headquarters in Chicago. (Photo courtesy of Ben Norquist)
On Friday and Saturday (Jan. 12 and 13), nearly 2,000 faith leaders, politicians, activists and operatives — heirs of the Civil Rights Movement — convened for an Emergency Summit for Gaza hosted at the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition in partnership with the Arab American Institute. Read more
Related: EXPLAINER: The ICJ and South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel. By Trevor Bach / US News
Historical / Cultural
Emory plans twin monuments to honor slaves who helped build campuses. By Michael Addison / Fox 5 Atlanta
Emory University is connected by two sprawling and picturesque campuses in Atlanta and Oxford, where students from all walks of life represent a bright future. A memorial project is underway to embrace how the university began and reckon with its historical connection to a painful part of America’s past – slavery.
Even though there are no records that the school owned slaves, some of its professors and at least one president did, and a lot of the labor to build the school was done by rented slaves. Williams now works with other descendants to help establish twin memorials at both campuses to tell the under-told story of those enslaved people. Read more
Related: Loyola University Maryland says it had ties to an 1838 sale of slaves. By Susan Svrluga / Wash Post
Video artwork captures the sweep of Frederick Douglass’s oratory. By Mark Jenkins / Wash Post
‘Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass’ re-creates the abolitionist’s rhetoric and life across five screens
When Frederick Douglass traveled to Britain in 1845, he was well known as an abolitionist writer and orator. But his celebrity didn’t alter his legal status: escaped slave. So while Douglass was in Britain, some of his supporters there raised the funds to buy his liberty. He returned to the United States in 1847 as a free man. The anti-slavery activist’s manumission is one of several episodes obliquely recounted in “Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass,” a five-screen version of a video installation originally designed for 10 screens. The video, which plays in a continuous loop, is itself an act of transatlantic affinity. This tribute to a great American was made by Isaac Julien, a filmmaker and artist born in London to Afro-Caribbean parents. Read more
Haley sparks a 2024 debate: Whether the U.S. is (or ever was) a racist country. By Mariana Alfaro and Maegan Vazquez / Wash Post
With one answer in a TV interview, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley again ignited a campaign trail debate about racism and its role in America, putting the precarious politics of race front and center as the GOP nominating contests get underway.
The former U.N. ambassador’s response was sparked by a viral moment from MSNBC host Joy Reid, who on Monday said Haley is “still a Brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant. … I don’t see how she becomes the nominee of that party.” Read more
The suppressed history of the civil rights movement that could help defeat Donald Trump. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Journalist Thomas Ricks on why Americans have been “given a flat narrow story” of the fight for democracy in the US
Across the United States, members of the “conservative” movement are engaging in an Orwellian assault on freedom of thought and the truth. Their tactics and strategies include banning books, targeting librarians and other educators for harassment and violence, and forcing both private and public schools (including universities and colleges) to change their curriculum to conform with “patriotic education,” meaning a literal white-washing of American history in service to a right-wing and neofascist agenda. Read more
Related: Jan. 6 Cannot Go Down the Memory Hole. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Black Music Sunday: When tapping feet make magical music, Part 1.
Gregory Hines hugs his older brother Maurice, January 1982
When memorializing the passing of Maurice Hines, who died on Dec. 29, I commented that “he made music with his tap shoes.” Though often associated with jazz, modern tap is also linked to hip-hop and other musical forms. Tap dance has a long history here in the country of its birth, and a symbiotic relationship to Black music, especially to jazz. Join us for this and next week’s “Black Music Sunday” as we explore it. Read more and listen here
Sports
Few can outrun Lamar Jackson. Even fewer can out-think him. By Adam Kilgore / Wash Post
“He’s a savant,” Martin said. “That’s the only way I can say it. If you’re a teacher at a high school or college and you realize you have this genius student and they’re just a little different than everyone, cultivate an atmosphere for him. Don’t try to bring that person down to everyone else’s level. Make everyone go up to his level. And Lamar is like that kind of student. He is different.”
It is nearly impossible to watch Jackson play and see past the physical miracles he performs, to look beyond a body that radiates fluidity and force. But that is where the heart and the durability of his excellence lie. The level of virtuosity Jackson reached this season flowed from how he wields his mind. Read more
‘Now I Know Who I Am’: Giannis Antetokounmpo Makes An Epic First Trip Home To Nigeria In Moving Doc, ‘Ugo.’ By Victoria Uwumarogie / Essence
As an NBA champion, the game of basketball has taken Giannis Antetokounmpo all around the globe, not only in terms of physical presence but also in regards to influence. But out of all the places that the superstar athlete has touched down in, there was one locale that was calling him, a country that he’d never been: Nigeria.
While the world knows Antetokounmpo for his Greek nationality, popularly touted as the “Greek Freak,” a nickname he’s embraced, those closest to him call him “Ugo.” It’s the star’s Nigerian name, as he’s the son of parents Charles and Veronica Adetokunbo. They immigrated from Lagos to Athens, having to change their surname to Antetokounmpo in the process, and there, the star and three of his four brothers were born. Read more
Buckley: Jerod Mayo unafraid to discuss race as Patriots’ first Black head coach. By Steve Buckley / The Athletic
Mayo, who turns 37 next month, was introduced as the 15th head coach of the Patriots.
“I appreciate ‘Thunder’ and the organization selecting me to be a Black head coach,” said Mayo, using his nickname for Kraft that nobody knew existed before noontime on Wednesday. Mayo then went here: “What I will say, though, is I do see color because I believe if you don’t see color, you can’t see racism.” Read more
Related: He climbed the NFL coaching ranks, sued the league – and kept climbing. By Michael Lee / Wash Post
Related: Raiders hire Antonio Pierce as their coach, removing the interim tag. By Mark Maske / Wash Post
Gary Sheffield, one of baseball’s great offensive forces, is still defending himself. By Cody Stavenhagen / The Athletic
However you perceive Gary Sheffield — icon or problem child, steroid user or public-opinion victim — one image almost certainly springs to mind. It’s that waggling bat, the pulsating motion that for 22 seasons radiated so much swagger.
Through eight teams, nine All-Star nods, steroid allegations and a list of other microcontroversies too long to count, Sheffield’s signature stance served as an active reminder of just who his opponents — and everyone else — were dealing with. Talk with Sheffield now, in the days before Hall of Fame voting is revealed in his final year on the ballot, and there are moments when one can practically feel that bat waving through the phone. Read more
This Program Is Bringing Youth Of Color Into A Sport Dominated By White Men. By
Much of the media narrative around teenagers in the nation’s capital is shaped by crime. The National Links Trust wants to help tell a different story.
The National Links Trust — a nonprofit whose mission is to make the largely white male sport of golf more accessible and affordable — wants to provide Washington’s youths with another option: finding themselves on the links. Read more
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