The abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass is known for many things, but perhaps among the most significant is his views on education’s relationship to slavery. Douglass himself was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818. Douglass described in his 1845 autobiography how one of his enslavers, Mrs. Auld, began teaching him to read when he was a child. Mrs. Auld’s husband ordered her to stop…
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In school districts from Pennsylvania to Illinois, Kentucky to West Virginia, state and local budget delays are putting the pinch on classrooms and costing districts tens of millions of dollars in additional borrowing fees — money going straight to Wall Street. In effect, political failures like budget delays, faulty tax software programs, or just political impasses are forcing some of the…
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It is difficult to find inspiration on this Juneteenth. We are still living in difficult times. In the last year, hundreds of thousands of African Americans have lost jobs. Some state legislatures in the South — Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi — have sought to dilute Black political power after the Supreme Court issued its Louisiana v. Callais decision. Meanwhile…
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U.S. colleges and universities across the United States are using trainings, programming, and campus rules designed to “combat antisemitism” to directly contribute to a larger Zionist, right-wing trend that normalizes racism, Islamophobia, and the silencing of radical political thought rooted in liberation. The latest example of how this works was seen on June 5, when The Guardian broke the story…
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The United States and Iran announced a framework agreement earlier this week to end the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression on Iran. Whether or not this agreement holds, the United States has lost this war of aggression in every sense — moral, legal, political, economic, reputational, and strategic. Iran held out for 39 days against the combined military force of the United States and Israel until a…
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Corporate news outlets frequently frame stories about artificial intelligence (AI) as contests. The most basic version of this frame — metaphorical “races” between rival tech companies or nations, in which speed of innovation is presumed to determine the victors — is so widely used, it’s easy to take for granted. As AI systems shift power throughout society, from health care and law…
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