Current Cancel Culture

[Langue_doc]

A place to post news about organizations scrubbing out anything that might be considered offensive in today's culture.
1.

Some Schools Act After Trump's D.E.I. Orders. Others Say They'll Resist.

The first few paragraphs:

Students at North Carolina's public universities can no longer be required to take classes related to diversity, equity and inclusion to graduate.

The University of Akron, citing changing state and federal guidance, will no longer host its "Rethinking Race" forum that it had held annually for more than two decades.

The University of Colorado took down its main D.E.I. webpage, and posted a new page for an Office of Collaboration.

Around the country, dozens of universities and colleges have begun to scrub websites and change programming in response to President Trump's widening crusade against diversity and inclusion. But much remains unclear about the legality and reach of President Trump's new orders.

So some schools are simply watching and waiting.

"It's meant to create chaos in higher education, and in that it's been successful," said Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, of the attempts by President Trump to end D.E.I. activity on campuses. "The responses are all over the map."

2.

U.S. Park Service Strikes Transgender References From Stonewall Website
The "T" was removed in references to L.G.B.T.Q.+ on the official site for the Greenwich Village monument, which marks a milestone in the fight for gay rights.

See below for the entire article:

The National Park Service on Thursday eliminated references to transgender people from its Stonewall National Monument web page, the latest step in the Trump administration's campaign to insist that the federal government recognize only two genders: male and female.

The move to strike the word "transgender" from the website for the first Park Service site devoted to America's gay rights movement elicited anger in the symbolic heart of New York City's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

"It is outrageous," said Erik Bottcher, the city councilman who represents the Greenwich Village neighborhood that is home to the monument. "This is the latest attempt to erase the very existence of transgender people."

He added: "The rebellion at Stonewall would not have happened without trans people. To attempt to erase their existence is utterly shameful."

On Wednesday, according to a version of the Park Service website saved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the introductory text on the monument's main page said: "Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal." By Thursday afternoon, the word "transgender" and the letter T in the abbreviation had been removed from the page.

The Park Service's public affairs department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Stonewall Inn has been considered a cradle of America's gay rights movement since a police raid there in 1969 touched off three days of protests that helped galvanize a long-marginalized population into a force for political and social change.

The 7.7-acre national monument — which includes the bar, Christopher Park across the street, and several other nearby streets and sidewalks — was established under President Barack Obama in 2016.

A Park Service ranger at the monument's visitor center said on Thursday that she had not been informed about the changes to the website and had just noticed that the "T" was missing. She declined to provide her name and would not comment further.

[Hegemony]

Weren't Republicans formerly the party of states' rights?

[nebo113]

[/quote]

Weren't Republicans formerly the party of states' rights?

Only for segregation. Gotta keep Negroes in their place.  Now we gotta erase LGBTQ.....

[ciao_yall]

We had a school board meeting where a local Supe had everyone convinced that LGBTQ support equaled boys getting to (1) ogle girls in their panties and (2l stealing their soccer scholarships after physically crushing their delicate little bodies on the playing field.

I made the point that bathrooms and sports had a long history of excuses for hemophilia, segregation, the ERA, women voting...

And that this was all about Peter Theil (gay) and Bruce/Caitlin Jenner (trans) who were whizzing these issues up to distract people from the fact that they wanted tax cuts to get rid of YOUR Dept of Ed, EPA, FDA, Social Security... the list goes on.

I got booed. LOL.

The vote went in support of LGBTQ+ anyway. Yay.

Also the point of the Constitution is NOT "majorly rule." It's about protecting everyone's rights.

[ciao_yall]

Ugh, autocorrect

We had a school board meeting where a local Supe had everyone convinced that LGBTQ support equaled boys getting to (1) ogle girls in their panties and (2) stealing their soccer scholarships after physically crushing their delicate little bodies on the playing field.

I made the point that bathrooms and sports had a long history of excuses for homophobia, segregation, the ERA, women voting...

And that this was all about Peter Theil (gay) and Bruce/Caitlin Jenner (trans) who were whizzing these issues up to distract people from the fact that they wanted tax cuts to get rid of YOUR Dept of Ed, EPA, FDA, Social Security... the list goes on.

I got booed. LOL.

The vote went in support of LGBTQ+ anyway. Yay.

Also the point of the Constitution is NOT "majority rule." It's about protecting everyone's rights.

[Langue_doc]

How Trump's Medical Research Cuts Would Hit Colleges and Hospitals in Every State
Changes to a key funding formula will reduce research grants at hospitals and universities by billions — and may discourage future research.

[Hibush]

How Trump's Medical Research Cuts Would Hit Colleges and Hospitals in Every State
Changes to a key funding formula will reduce research grants at hospitals and universities by billions — and may discourage future research.

The Federal cuts hit hard and painfully on Friday at my school. We have a lot of Federal folks in various positions. They had all the recent (1-3 years) hires fired and marched out of the building. Some were in surpervisory positions. Some had key roles in keeping valuable research assets intact. There is nothing in place to keep essential things running, never mind continuing the research and other responsibilities they have.

They feel canceled. We non-Feds feel threatened and can do very little.
The message from above came through loud and clear to all the Federal employees: We hate you, we want to prevent you from doing whatever your are doing, and we want you to cower in fear of what else we might do to you. Not the message you want to get from top administration.

[nebo113]

How Trump's Medical Research Cuts Would Hit Colleges and Hospitals in Every State
Changes to a key funding formula will reduce research grants at hospitals and universities by billions — and may discourage future research.

The Federal cuts hit hard and painfully on Friday at my school. We have a lot of Federal folks in various positions. They had all the recent (1-3 years) hires fired and marched out of the building. Some were in surpervisory positions. Some had key roles in keeping valuable research assets intact. There is nothing in place to keep essential things running, never mind continuing the research and other responsibilities they have.

They feel canceled. We non-Feds feel threatened and can do very little.
The message from above came through loud and clear to all the Federal employees: We hate you, we want to prevent you from doing whatever your are doing, and we want you to cower in fear of what else we might do to you. Not the message you want to get from top administration.

Younger daughter who is not a fed will probably lose her job at research university....NIH cuts.

[Langue_doc]

Education Dept. Gives Schools Two Weeks to Eliminate Race-Based Programs
The department's Office for Civil Rights warned that it would penalize schools that consider race in scholarships, hiring and an array of other activities.

Top Social Security Official Leaves After Musk Team Seeks Data Access
The departure of the acting commissioner is the latest backlash to the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts to access sensitive data.

Hundreds fired at aviation safety agency, union says

[Langue_doc]

Trump Cuts Target Next Generation of Scientists and Public Health Leaders
A core group of so-called disease detectives, who track outbreaks, was apparently spared. But other young researchers are out of jobs.

The first few paragraphs:

The notices came all weekend, landing in the inboxes of federal scientists, doctors and public health professionals: Your work is no longer needed.

At the National Institutes of Health, the nation's premier biomedical research agency, an estimated 1,200 employees — including promising young investigators slated for larger roles — have been dismissed.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two prestigious training programs were gutted: one that embeds recent public health graduates in local health departments and another to cultivate the next generation of Ph.D. laboratory scientists. But the agency's Epidemic Intelligence Service — the "disease detectives" who track outbreaks around the world — has apparently been spared, perhaps because of an uproar among alumni after a majority of its members were told on Friday that they would be let go.

President Trump's plan to shrink the size of the federal work force dealt blows to thousands of civil servants in the past few days. But the cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services — coming on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, the worst public health crisis in a century — have been especially jarring. Experts say the firings threaten to leave the country exposed to further shortages of health workers, putting Americans at risk if another crisis erupts.

Public health officials, for instance, have been tracking a lethal strain of bird flu that they say remains a low risk to Americans. In recent weeks, however, it claimed its first victim in the United States — a patient in Louisiana who had been exposed to a backyard flock.

"It's not canceled," Elon Musk, the billionaire in charge of the downsizing, wrote on social media in response to the blowback about the purported dismantling of the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

The firings have also excised the next generation of leaders at the C.D.C., the N.I.H., the Food and Drug Administration, and other agencies that the department oversees.

"It seems like a very destructive strategy to fire the new talent at an agency, and the talent that's being promoted," said Dr. David Fleming, the chairman of an advisory committee to the C.D.C. director. He added, "A lot of energy and time has been spent in recruiting those folks, and that's now tossed out the window."

[Langue_doc]

Gov. Hochul orders CUNY remove Hunter College 'Palestinian Studies' job posting, calls for probe into 'antisemitic theories'

Haven't seen any reference to this in the NYT.

[spork]

Gov. Hochul orders CUNY remove Hunter College 'Palestinian Studies' job posting, calls for probe into 'antisemitic theories'

Haven't seen any reference to this in the NYT.

More virtue signaling, just from the opposite direction. Does this mean that Hunter College has shut down whatever programs it might have in Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Buddhist Studies, or European Studies?

[Langue_doc]

Gov. Hochul orders CUNY remove Hunter College 'Palestinian Studies' job posting, calls for probe into 'antisemitic theories'

Haven't seen any reference to this in the NYT.

More virtue signaling, just from the opposite direction. Does this mean that Hunter College has shut down whatever programs it might have in Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Buddhist Studies, or European Studies?

This is just Hochul virtue-signalling. I recall that she rushed to Israel following Biden's visit to show her support for the government. She also rushed to Cornell where a student suffering from mental health issues and who was not on campus at the time had sent anti-semetic emails to show her "support". I also recall that she minimized the attack on Salman Rushdie--at long last the attacker has been convicted of the crime.

[Langue_doc]

The MAGA War on Speech

Disclaimer: haven't read this yet.