Illusions Revolt!

Visual artist Lorna Simpson speaks at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts Medal Gala in May 2018. Paul Rutherford/Tufts University , CC BY BY   Christina Sharpe , Tufts University Lorna Simpson, a pioneering visual and conceptual artist whose striking work on race, gender and identity has placed her among the leading artists of her generation, was recently honored by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University with the SMFA Medal, given annually in recognition of creative excellence in visual art, art history and arts advocacy. Simpson’s works have been presented in many of the world’s major art museums. Much of Simpson’s work focuses on experimenting and discovering new ways to develop imagery. Below is an excerpt from a public conversation, edited for clarity, between Simpson and York University Professor Christina Sharpe, Ph.D., at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the SMFA at Tufts honored Sim...

Getty Images Because of its “extreme hostility toward Muslims,” the website Jihadwatch.org is considered an active hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. The views of the site’s director, Robert Spencer, on Islam led the British Home Office to ban him from entering the country in 2013. But its designation as a hate site hasn’t stopped tech companies — including PayPal, Amazon and Newsmax — from maintaining partnerships with Jihad Watch that help to sustain it financially. PayPal facilitates donations to the site. Newsmax — the online news network run by President Donald Trump’s close friend Chris Ruddy — pays Jihad Watch in return for users clicking on its headlines. Until recently, Amazon allowed Jihad Watch to participate in a program that promised a cut of any book sales that the site generated. All three companies have policies that say they don’t do business with hate groups. Jihad Watch is one of many sites that monetize their ext...

What are your in-groups and out-groups? ksenia_bravo/Shutterstock.com By   Leslie Henderson , Dartmouth College Anti-immigrant policies, race-related demonstrations, Title IX disputes, affirmative action court cases, same-sex marriage litigation. These issues are continually in the headlines. But even thoughtful articles on these subjects seem always to devolve to pitting warring factions against each other: black versus white, women versus men, gay versus straight. At the most fundamental level of biology, people recognize the innate advantage of defining differences in species. But even within species, is there something in our neural circuits that leads us to find comfort in those like us and unease with those who may differ? Brain battle between distrust and reward As in all animals, human brains balance two primordial systems. One includes a brain region called the amygdala that can generate fear and distrust of things that ...

This article was co-published by ProPublica and The Washington Post Way before Jared Kushner became internationally famous by moving into the White House to work for his father-in-law Donald Trump, those of us who live in New Jersey knew the family was an amazing story of immigrant success. Jared Kushner’s paternal grandparents, Holocaust survivors Joseph and Rae Kushner, came to the United States in 1949 as impoverished Eastern European refugees and begat a family whose office buildings, apartment complexes and philanthropic efforts are important parts of the business and social landscapes in New Jersey and elsewhere. Yes, there are scandals and feuds besetting parts of the family, and Jared’s father Charles racked up some prison time. But the family’s rise from refugees to titans is an example of what can happen when people are admitted into this country, work hard and prosper. I got curious about the Kushner history after Jared invoked his immigrant forbears in his recen...

Immigrant rights advocates speak against Trump’s policies in New Mexico. AP Photo/Russell Contreras, File By   Nadia Rubaii , Binghamton University, State University of New York and Max Pensky , Binghamton University, State University of New York There are those who say that comparing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler is alarmist, unfair and counterproductive. And yet, there has been no dearth of such comparisons nearly one and a half years into his term. Many commentators have also drawn parallels between the conduct and language of Trump supporters and Holocaust-era Nazis . Recent news of ICE agents separating immigrant families and housing children in cages have generated further comparisons by world leaders, as well as Holocaust survivors and scholars. Trump’s use of the word “infest” to refer to immigrants coming to the U.S. is particularly striking. Nazis referred to infestations of Jewish vermin, ...

US Customs and Border Patrol BY   Gordon Lynch , University of Kent After weeks of mounting pressure, Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 to stop his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border of the US. Putting the policy into a wider historical context of state-sanctioned policies of child separation helps to understand why some aspects of it were remarkably distinctive – and caused such international outrage. From the closing decades of the 19th century, an array of policies emerged across the Anglophone world which challenged assumptions about parents’ inalienable rights to their children. A transnational child protection movement led to the formation of child protection societies, beginning with the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1875. New legislation followed in the UK, Canada and Australia allowing the removal of children from parents on grounds of cruelty ...

By   Elizabeth Sherman , American University School of Public Affairs Arizona Sen. John McCain – scion of Navy brass , flyboy turned Vietnam war hero and tireless defender of American global leadership – now faces terminal brain cancer . I am a scholar of American politics . And I believe that, regardless of his storied biography and personal charm, three powerful trends in American politics thwarted McCain’s lifelong ambition to be president. They were the rise of the Christian right, partisan polarization and declining public support for foreign wars. Republican McCain was a champion of bipartisan legislating , an approach that served him and the Senate well. But as political divides have grown, bipartisanship has fallen out of favor. Most recently, McCain opposed Gina Haspel as CIA director for “her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality” and her role in it. Having survived brutal torture for five years as a prisoner of war, McCain maintained a resolute...

Stormy Daniels, an adult star, at a local restaurant in downtown New Orleans.    AP Photo/Bill HaberBy By  Kelsy Burke , University of Nebraska-Lincoln Many commentators have pointed out the hypocrisy of Christian leaders who claim a moral high ground while supporting President Donald Trump. The latest scandal involving an alleged extramarital affair with pornographic film star Stormy Daniels proves no exception. The Christian right that supports Trump has found ways to justify their support of the president, for example, with analogies of how God used King David , a man with personal flaws, for the greater good of the country. All the while, however, evangelical leaders remain definitively opposed to pornography. In the words of an evangelical celebrity and outspoken opponent of pornography, Josh McDowell, it is “probably the greatest problem or threat to the Christian faith in the history of the world.” As a sociologist who stud...