Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens with a shot of the bard Demodocus — played by rapper Travis Scott — hitting a staff on a table for a beat. The movie then cuts to Sinon, an Achaean soldier in front of the Trojan Horse, who is played by transgender actor Elliot Page. Later, the hero, Odysseus (a somber Matt Damon) confesses that he is a war criminal. The blood on his hands stopped him from…
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Racial justice organizers in the legal profession are gearing up for an American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates meeting this August that will decide whether the ABA will officially drop its commitment to promoting diversity in law schools — and reversing the longstanding exclusion of women and people of color from the legal profession. “We’re trying to put pressure on the House of…
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Instead of the state determining what will be taught in university classrooms, students must be free to hear and consider even officially disfavored ideas presented to them by professors, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. More than two years after oral arguments in a case challenging the 2022 law dubbed the Stop WOKE Act, two out of three judges on a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th…
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Black farmers like Sharon Mallory can finally get some relief after a judge ruled to restore millions of dollars in grants. Earlier this year, the Trump administration yanked the money away from organizations led by and in support of Black farmers. Mallory’s organization, the 2020 Farmers Cooperative, promised to purchase equipment and land and provide food for their communities.
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Narratives of American “greatness” abound surrounding July 4, but by whom and for whom are they created? As we observe the U.S.’s 250th birthday, I am reminded of the words of James Baldwin, who wrote that, in the true pursuit of justice, one does not lend an ear to those who are invested in maintaining power, but instead, “one goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s…
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“On July 4th, 1776 … the United States became the greatest force for freedom, justice, equality, and prosperity in the history of the world,” President Donald Trump declared in a promotional video for the Freedom 250 campaign, the administration’s flagship initiative commemorating the U.S.’s semiquincentennial. Among the centerpiece events planned for the nation’s 250th birthday celebration was an…
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