A wave of book bannings sweeping the country, along with conservative fury over titles like “Antiracist Baby,” seems like a backlash against the heightened racial consciousness of the post-George Floyd era. The historian and staff writer Jill Lepore sees these conflicts as the continuation of an old dynamic. She relates today’s “anti-anti-racism” movement to the anti-evolution campaign of the nineteen-twenties, which included the prosecution of a Tennessee teacher for teaching Darwin’s theory in a high-school class. Lepore tells David Remnick that what links these battles over biology and history is the argument that parents have the right to determine their children’s education in public schools.
Related - Episodes
After a nearly eighteen-month investigation, which included televised hearings and more than a thousand interviews, the January 6th Committee is set to release its final report. As indicated by the executive summary, the report will lay bare who is to…
The Washington Roundtable: In the first debate of the Republican Presidential primary, which took place in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, six of the eight potential nominees onstage raised their hands to indicate that, if Donald Trump is their party’s choice,…
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emerged as a potent and savvy communicator during the Russian invasion of his country. His emotional appeal to a recent E.U. meeting—videoconferencing from the battlefield—has been credited with spurring European leaders to impose tougher sanctions on…
