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    Black History Month is a reflection of the political moment, so how do we revamp it?

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    It’s Black History Month in the UK, and it feels like it’s time for a rethink. Over the years, an event that started out as a celebration and reminder of history, culture and the connections between global Black communities, has taken on a corporate feel, expanding to include events where Black people are paid to talk to white audiences about “unconscious bias” and “allyship”. The 2020s Black Lives Matter protests created a surge in the business of demonstrating racial awareness. But even that moment has passed. The wave has crested, leaving a sort of hollowed out legacy of what raising awareness is for.The history of Black HistoryView image in fullscreenOriginally observed in the US and Canada, Black History Month was conceived in 1962 as “Negro History Week” by African American historian Carter G. Woodson with seven days of commemoration and observance in the second week of February. Black History Month grew out of this movement and was officially launched in 1970. Today it is observed not only in the US and Canada in February, but also in October in the UK, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands.The month has evolved since those days, focusing less on the histories of transatlantic enslavement and civil rights battles, and more on prominent Black figures in politics, culture, and activism, and broadly celebrating the contribution Black people have made to shape the country. It is in schools where Black History Month is most regularly observed, with talks and cultural events. But the way the month is celebrated is a reflection of the political moment. How it evolves is a good lesson in how co-option leads to dismantling: the reshaping of Black History Month has stymied the point of it, which is to address systemic and institutional racism.A jarring momentView image in fullscreenLittle demonstrates how important it is to rethink Black History Month more than the particular moment in which it falls this year. In the UK, a resurgent right in the shape of the Reform party is leading the polls. In the summer we witnessed the largest far-right rally in British history. Kemi Badenoch, the Black leader of the Conservative party, is a firm opponent of Black Lives Matter, and we are in a place where a member of parliament feels emboldened to say that “not seeing any white faces” in parts of a city is a cause for alarm. Meanwhile, far-right parties are surging in Europe as a whole.In the US, a colossal assault against DEI and affirmative action has been taken, often successfully, to the highest courts of the country. A campaign to scrub Black history and experience from the archives is under way. One of Donald Trump’s first executive orders targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian Institution, accusing them of a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” by portraying America “as inherently racist”.Against this backdrop, the month symbolises how little it can be impactful if it is limited to either dutiful corporate observances, or politically neutered celebrations of contributions in the past, rather than challenging the conditions of the present. It also demonstrates how its restricted time span means that it is detached from the wider consistent effort that is needed. Denise Miller, a prof at University of Greenwich, put it best when she raised concerns about the temporary “tokenism” of the month. “The problem with taking a tokenistic approach”, she wrote, “is that it often means that Black History Month becomes a fleeting performance rather than a catalyst for change.”Rethinking, but not jettisoningskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenFiguring out how to adjust, modify and expand efforts for racial equality and recognition in such moments of dejection and worry is a treacherous thing. There is a temptation to just do away with things like Black History Month altogether, thinking they are simply not fit for purpose, or are relics of an era that has not worked.But despite everything, Black History Month, and in fact the entire extended network and legacy of racial movements – grassroots Black Lives Matter organisations, diversity equity and inclusion initiatives, and yes, even those talks to businesses – constitute an infrastructure that a lot of work has gone into. It is there not just to decay as the politics moves on (and in fact, regresses), but to be a living breathing thing.So what would a new dynamic Black History Month look like? Well, first, it would be not just one concentrated month: something that is spread out through the year (as some institutions are already beginning to do), parts of its content (particularly around historic Black characters) incorporated into school curriculums. It would also be a period that does not shy away from politics, and leaves space for people, particularly young people, to air their fears and experiences. What use is mere awareness of the past when it doesn’t reckon with the present reality of far-right rallies in the street? Institutions who observe it should not be comforted with the passive language of “unconscious bias” and alertness to “microaggressions”, but confronted with the risks that face all if anti-racism is not taken seriously. In short, Black History Month should be made current, urgent, and reactive. Perhaps an entire name rebrand is in order – Black History is Now Month. More

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      The right wants Charlie Kirk memorials across the US – but is it just an attempt to capitalize on his killing?

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      Republicans and conservatives are campaigning to quickly build statues and other memorials across the United States for the slain rightwing activist Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination at a college event in Utah last month.Political leaders in states such as Florida, Michigan and Oklahoma have not only called for construction of memorials but in some cases also threatened to penalize colleges that refuse to publicly honor Kirk, who was killed on 10 September.The heavy-handed push to honor Kirk, who held views that many see as racist and sexist, follows Donald Trump’s moves to restore monuments of Confederate leaders that were removed in recent years, which appear to be part of a broad effort to impose rightwing views on the country.“The way in which you keep the culture war going – or the way that you win it – is to have religious icons like Charlie and use their face and their name and their likeness to further your cause,” said Matthew Boedy, an English professor at the University of North Georgia who has studied Christian nationalism.Kirk, who co-founded the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was killed at Utah State University during one of his signature events in which he debated students.Since then, Trump and others in his administration, such as Stephen Miller, have blamed the shooting – without producing any evidence – on a coordinated violent effort by the “radical left” and threatened to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” the left’s “terrorism and terror networks”.Kirk often criticized gay and transgender rights and made Islamophobic statements and once suggested that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “mistake”. However, at the state and local level, Republican lawmakers have described Kirk as a “modern civil rights leader” who stood for “allowing everybody to voice their opinion respectfully”.Just a week after Kirk’s murder, Ohio Republican state senators Shane Jett and Dana Prieto introduced legislation that would require all of the state’s public universities to build a “Charlie Kirk memorial plaza” with a statue “that features the conservative leader sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him” or one of Kirk “and his wife standing and holding their children in their arms”.A few weeks later, in Florida, Kevin Steele, a state house Republican, also proposed legislation that would require all of the state’s public universities to rename roads for Kirk.“The Florida State University shall redesignate Chieftain Way as Charlie James Kirk Road,” the bill states. “Pasco-Hernando State College shall redesignate Mrs Prameela Musunuru Health and Wellness Trail as Charlie James Kirk Trail.”In Florida, if the schools do not establish the memorials by stated deadline, the state would withhold funding from the institutions, and in Oklahoma, the state would fine the schools, according to the legislation.Boedy, the University of North Georgia professor, likened the lawmakers’ threats to withhold state money to Trump’s moves to cut off federal funding to universities unless they met his list of demands.“State funding for education should be based upon students’ interest in majors, in enrollment and in science, in objective criteria, and honoring a single person is not part of that,” said Boedy, who has been on Turning Point’s watchlist of “professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom”.Jett, Prieto and Steele did not respond to requests for comment.Kirk was critical of higher education and wrote a book titled The College Scam: How America’s Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth.“I find it really ironic that the state of Oklahoma is demanding that every public university have a Charlie Kirk memorial plaza,” said Erika Doss, an art historian at the University of Texas at Dallas and the author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America.While the states have not approved the legislation requiring the memorials, at least one Florida county has installed a sign for a Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway, despite some public opposition.And less than a week after the murder, New College of Florida, a liberal arts university that has been the subject of a conservative takeover, also posted on X an AI-generated image of a bronze sculpture of Kirk at a table and stated that it would build the statue on campus “to defend and fight for free speech and civil discourse in American life”.That may not be easy. After events like 9/11, the Vietnam war, and the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, public monuments were often not built for years, sometimes decades.Quickly sharing a fake image of a Kirk memorial “is a lie”, Doss said. “It matters because it doesn’t tell the truth about how complicated and necessarily complicated making public art should be.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy waiting years to build a memorial, you can see how time really changes the “emotional tenor and the perspective on the event”, said Gabriel Reich, a professor of history and social studies at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied collective memories of the US civil war and emancipation.“How people feel about [Kirk’s killing] five years from now may be different, and it may depend on what happens between now and then,” said Reich. “Does the political violence escalate and continue? Does it get tamped down?”It’s not a foregone conclusion that the schools will build the monuments.In Michigan, the Mecosta county board of commissioners wanted Ferris State University to build a statue for Kirk and offered to split the funding, but the school president declined, citing a “a longstanding practice that limits statues on campus to individuals who have made significant, direct contributions to Ferris State University itself”, according to the Detroit Free-Press.At New College, alum William Rosenberg sees the proposed statue as an attempt by the administration to distract from problems at the school, which was once a highly ranked institution considered among the most liberal in the country.“New College was a welcoming environment for people who were motivated and wanted to learn and wanted to do it on their own terms,” said Rosenberg, who graduated in 1980 with a degree in medieval studies.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has tried in recent years to transform the school by appointing political allies such as the conservative activist Christopher Rufo to its board of trustees, firing its president and revamping its curriculum.Since then, the school has seen its national ranking and graduation and retention rates plummet, while the state now spends significantly more on each student than those at its other public universities, according to Inside Higher Ed.After posting the AI image of the statue, New College’s president, Richard Corcoran, touted the public response in a weekly email.“In the first 72 hours of the announcement, New College of Florida was mentioned nearly 3 billion times (including traditional media in the graph below, and reposts on social media),” the email stated. “Normally, New College receives about 100 million impressions a month. In 72 hours, New College received about 2 1/2 years of media coverage.”A New College spokesperson, James Miller, declined an interview request.Rosenberg, a semi-retired computer engineer, doubts the school will actually build the statue because of Corcoran’s “history of promising the world and delivering nothing”.“A lot of alumni feel it was a gross PR move to capitalize on Charlie Kirk’s murder,” Rosenberg said. “New College of Florida has now become a political pawn whose real mission is about making political headlines while the on-the-ground education has nosedived.” More

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      Majority of special education staff in US education department laid off – report

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      The majority of staff in the education department handling special education has been laid off, according to multiple reports.Friday’s total of 466 layoffs across the education department also impacted the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which oversees programs that support millions of children and adults with disabilities nationwide, according to sources speaking to various outlets.“Despite extensive efforts to minimize impact on employees and programs during the ongoing government shutdown, the continued lapse in funding has made it necessary to implement the RIF (reduction in force),” according to a letter issued to workers that CNN reviewed.The Guardian has contacted the education department for comment.One department employee told NPR: “This is decimating the office responsible for safeguarding the rights of infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSimilarly, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education said that if the layoffs are true, “there is significant risk that not only will federal funding lapse, but children with disabilities will be deprived” of free and proper education, K-12 Dive reports.Chad Rummel, executive director of the Council for Exceptional Children, told the outlet: “The rumored near elimination of the Office for Special Education Programs is absolutely devastating to the education of people with disabilities.”“Eliminating federal capacity to support Idea is harmful to people with disabilities, their families, and the professionals who serve them, and it runs counter to everything our members work toward every day,” Rummel added, referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which ensures a free and appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the country.In March, the education department announced layoffs of 1,300 employees, or nearly 50% of the department’s workforce, which the education secretary Linda McMahon described as a “significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system”. More

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      US universities must reject Trump’s ‘compact’. It is full of traps | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Sticks are bad, but sometimes corruption through carrots is worse. The Trump administration – after having brutally cut federal funding earlier this year – is now trying to make nine universities an offer that they seemingly cannot refuse. In exchange for preferential treatment in funding and bonuses like “invitations to White House events” – apparently the same logic as a fancy credit card that promises you backstage access at concerts – the universities are expected to sign a “compact” with the government. All nine institutions must reject this proposal: it is a thinly veiled attack on academic freedom; it is a test case for whether Trumpists can get away with demanding loyalty oaths; it exceeds the president’s powers to begin with; and it is bound to achieve the opposite of its stated goal of “academic excellence in higher education” (as opposed to what kind of excellence in education, one is tempted to ask).Some features of the compact might look reasonable at first sight. No one is against addressing ever-rising tuition fees (never mind that the Republican party at the same time is capping federal loan programs and shoveling money to high-cost private lenders). And some might welcome the Stephen Miller-lite version of xenophobia: capping the number of foreign students at 15% and forcing foreigners to take American “civics” (it is unclear who would decide the content of lessons “about how great our country is”).But the document also functions as a kind of rap sheet for institutions portrayed as single-mindedly focused on discriminating against white males. Formulations such as “signatories shall adopt policies prohibiting incitement to violence” would make one believe that, as of now, universities encourage terrorist agitators to run rampant on campus; the demand to “transform or abolish institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas” suggests that, as of now, anyone saying the wrong thing about abortion is beaten up by progressive vigilantes (never mind the question what it means to treat an idea as such “violently”).It is no small irony that one of the strategists of the assault on higher education, May Mailman, charges universities with having committed to a “culture of victimhood” in an interview with the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat; obviously, it is the Trumpist grievance-industrial complex which mass-produces resentment among supposed “real Americans” held down by nefarious liberal elites. For all the talk of fostering open debate, the goal appears to be the creation of safe spaces for the fragile egos of Maga students suffering from universities’ supposed culture of “negativity”.The clearest attack on academic freedom consists in the demand to ensure “a broad spectrum of viewpoints … within every field, department, school, and teaching unit”. Faculty, students “and staff at all levels” will first have to be tested for ideology; once “empirical assessments” have been completed, the diversity of viewpoints judged appropriate will have to be engineered, presumably by a bureaucracy that can also guarantee consistent viewpoints over time (for what if our new conservative colleague starts to hold different views?). In theory, the result would not just be affirmative action for the right, but forcing the economics department to employ Marxists.To be sure, some Trumpists themselves insist that the government should not be in the business of micromanaging the distribution of political attitudes. But the rejection is not a principled one centered on a proper understanding of academic freedom. It is simply the fear of setting a precedent with what they openly call “policing” and one fine day having the Democrats flood universities with leftists.As with other aspects of Donald Trump’s emerging mafia state, there is no guarantee that those bending the knee will not be bullied again. The government can always come back to universities and accuse them of having violated the agreement (still too many courses in victimhood studies; still too much “violence” – as defined by bureaucrats – vis-a-vis someone’s cherished ideas). The government will also encourage donors to claim back their cash. Since the compact’s criteria are exceedingly vague, those who take the offer will probably overdo compliance.At the risk of sounding like one of those dreadful self-styled victims: universities are fragile institutions. Many American ones are excellent precisely because people trust each other and cooperate successfully without over-regulation (some Europeans can tell you what it means to be subject to constant assessments – and how a Soviet-style bureaucracy constantly distracts from research and teaching). Of course there is always plenty of academic infighting, but what the Trumpists are doing is consciously trying to create divisions by setting potential Trump administration collaborators against those determined to resist it. As has become apparent with other autocrats’ assaults on universities, even if institutions escape (sometimes literally, as they have to relocate to other countries) the worst, much damage has been done. This is why the nine universities should not only reject the compact, but also publicly explain what is wrong with it (otherwise they will be immediately charged with wanting to protect their tuition-racket, helping foreigners and “importing radicalism” to undermine American greatness).Precisely because they have been losing court cases over free speech and visas for foreign students, Trumpists now seek to entrap universities in a deal that effectively removes the protections of federal law and gives the administration arbitrary power over them. The carrots serve to lure institutions of higher learning into a dark alley where, rather than just waiting with a big stick, the government can put a gun to their heads at any time.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University More

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      ‘Unprecedented in history’: global academic freedom group warns of dismantling in US

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      A global academic freedom group has warned that the Trump administration’s assault on universities is turning the US into a “model for how to dismantle” academic freedom.“We are witnessing an unprecedented situation – really as far as I can tell in history – where a global leader of education and research is voluntarily dismantling that which gave it an advantage,” said Robert Quinn, executive director of Scholars at Risk (SAR).In its annual Free to Think report, the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project at (SAR), an international network devoted to the promotion of academic freedom worldwide, counted some 40 attacks against academic freedom in the US in the first half of 2025, ranging from the government’s revocation of research funds to the detention and attempted deportation of foreign scholars over their political views, as well as a “torrent” of executive, legislative and other actions targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and other programs.The report noted that the data points to a continued erosion of academic freedom in the US after it counted 80 instances of pressure against universities in the prior year. While most of those came from state governments and local actors, the “nature of these attacks shifted after January 2025” to pressure from the federal government following the re-election of Donald Trump, and his administration’s efforts to control university admissions, hiring, research, teaching and disciplinary processes, the report noted.The SAR report analyzed 395 attacks on higher education leaders, faculty, staff and students in 49 countries between mid-2024 and mid-2025, including targeted killings, disappearances, arrests and prosecutions, as well as firings, travel restrictions and administrative measures. In addition to the US, the report highlights “concerning developments” in 15 other countries – including Bangladesh, where student-led anti-government protests were met with a brutal crackdown that led to the deaths of up to 1,400 people, and Serbia, where authorities threatened to defund public universities and withheld the salaries of faculty who supported a student-led movement against government corruption.Globally, the picture for academic freedom painted in the report is grim.“The space for academic freedom has shrunk at an accelerating pace over the past decade,” the report concludes. “Even in societies that have long had strong and stable democratic institutions, elected officials with autocratic impulses are using both the levers of democracy and extralegal administrative measures to undermine democratic institutions, including universities.”In the US, the war in Gaza, and widespread campus opposition to it, has offered a pretext for the targeting of universities, students and faculty whose values and views don’t align with the government’s agenda. Before 2023, SAR tallied an average of 15 to 20 attacks on academic freedom, many driven by elected officials at the state and local levels.“The pressure on the higher education space has been going on for decades,” said Quinn, noting that before the targeting of pro-Palestinian views and diversity initiatives, universities and scholars faced attacks over critical race theory and gender studies. “That being said, there’s no question that the administration is using as a bold pretext the allegations of antisemitism centered around the Palestinian issue to justify in many cases extralegal activity to crack down on the space for independent thought.”Trump’s return to power marked a “turning point”, the report notes, including more than 30 pieces of legislation related to higher education introduced during the first 75 days of his administration, executive orders eliminating diversity and gender equity programming, antisemitism investigations of more than 60 universities that flouted established processes, the freezing of billions in federal research funds and new caps on student loans and restrictions on Pell grants’ eligibility.The report also underscored the negative impact on global education of the Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of international students’ visas and new restrictions for foreign applicants, as well as cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that devastated higher education and research initiatives from Africa to Afghanistan. More

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      The students who debated with Charlie Kirk: ‘His goal was to verbally defeat us’

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      In the days after his killing, Charlie Kirk was remembered by his allies as a great debater. A quote taken from a widely shared video of Kirk discussing his life’s work – “when people stop talking, that’s when violence happens” – emblematized such eulogies.Kirk toured American college campuses with his rightwing non-profit Turning Point USA, where he would set up a tent, table and microphone, and debate with undergrads. The goal, he said, was to “save western civilization”, and remembrances after his death positioned him as a budding statesman – a conservative hero who strode across the political divide for the sake of open dialogue.Kirk applied basic rules of civility to his debate style, asking opponents their name and saying it was nice to meet them. He engaged young people in political discourse at a time when society has been split into bitterly antagonistic camps. But his critics are taking issue with any version of his legacy that does not account for the bigoted nature of his arguments. They are also closely examining his very style of deate.“I don’t think Charlie entered debates to come to a common consensus or to discover the truth,” said Mason, a 26-year-old graduate student who debated with Kirk on the YouTube show Surrounded last fall. “I think Charlie came to debates to verbally beat his opponents.”This made him a formidable combatant. “He knew the arguments for nearly every conservative principle and even theological concept, and he spent years to develop that ability, so he was very great at pivoting and changing the conversation when it was not going his way,” said Mason, who is based in Los Angeles.During one debate, Kirk insisted on the truthfulness of a racist hoax about Haitian immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets. In another, he falsely called the term foetus “just a word for a human being”. He goaded college students, who eagerly stepped up to query or challenge him, with leading questions that were intended to elicit strong emotions – “what is a woman?” and “what is racism?” were two of his go-tos.“At its core, debate is supposed to be an academic exercise, with the goal being to be forthright and genuine in the information you present,” said Trent Webb, a professor of writing studies and rhetoric and director of the speech and debate team at Hofstra University. “In a good faith debate, the final goal is to reach consensus. If that doesn’t happen, then a lot of academics would consider it to be an exercise in futility.”View image in fullscreenAfter a Kirk debate, clips spun out on to social media, inviting millions into the fray. In celebration of perceived wins, Turning Point USA titled its YouTube videos things like: “Charlie Kirk ANNIHILATES Smart-Aleck Student Accusing Him of Propaganda”, “Charlie Kirk wrecks DEI talking points” and “Liberal Student Can’t Answer Charlie Kirk’s Simple Question.”Dr Charles Woods, a professor of rhetoric and composition at East Texas A&M University, and the host of The Big Rhetorical Podcast, said Kirk distilled nuanced topics into stifling, good v bad arguments.“Charlie turned myriad opportunities for meaningful dialogic transactions rooted in civility and turned them into confrontational interactions by amplifying binaries in his argumentative structure,” Woods wrote in an email. “What we know is that there is a spectrum of ideologies and worldviews, not just two: Charlie’s and whoever is on the other side of the microphone.”Hasan Piker, the popular leftist Twitch streamer who was scheduled to debate with Charlie Kirk later this month, wrote in a guest essay published in the New York Times that his would-be opponent was an “expert” at “[taking] advantage of people’s resentments and [redirecting] them toward vulnerable communities”.Still, leftists lined up to debate with him. Some, like a sociology professor who appeared genuinely curious to talk about the economic prospects of young people under Donald Trump, desired a meeting of the minds. For his part, Piker told Slate that while he is “not the biggest fan of the debate format”, he finds the forum “entertaining” and “galvanizing”.Perhaps no forum fit Kirk’s shtick better than the platform given to him by Jubilee Media, a YouTube channel that produces Surrounded, a thunderdome of debate where one person is encircled by a ring of ideological opponents who attempt to undercut his stances in lightning-fast rounds of verbal sparring, governed by literal red flags.“Can 25 Liberal College Students Outsmart 1 Conservative?” asked the series’ first episode, an hour and a half of nonstop ragebait released last September. In the show, Kirk debated with his opponents such statements as: “Abortion is murder and should be illegal” (wherein Kirk said yes, he would hypothetically make his 10-year-old daughter carry a child to term if she were to get pregnant from rape); “college is a scam”; and “Kamala Harris is a DEI candidate.” (Consider these Kirk’s greatest hits; he often debated these topics on campuses.)Naima Troutt, a 22-year-old film student at the University of Southern California, said the students made $25 for their appearance on the show, which has since raked in more than 35m views on YouTube and spawned countless viral clips.A campus organizer who was involved with Black Lives Matter and Palestinian solidarity protests, Troutt did not know who Kirk was when she showed up to set that day, which helped her see him as less of a rightwing celebrity and more as a man she disagreed with.View image in fullscreenTroutt described a “camaraderie” between the students, with some of the more “chronically online” trying to explain Kirk’s significance to her before they started filming. But Kirk was not as eager to chum it up. “He was either on his phone, or outright rude. You got the sense that you were an opponent to him even when you weren’t debating.”Troutt jumped into the hot seat twice to spar with Kirk over fetal viability, Harris’s qualifications for president and affirmative action. They agreed on practically nothing, but Troutt found some merit in debating Kirk. “I think I became much better at articulating my viewpoints and defending my viewpoints, because one thing about Charlie is that as much as I disagree with – and at times hate – everything that he believed and stated in the past, the fact is he’s one of the only rightwingers who regularly puts themselves out there,” Troutt said.Troutt is not alone in this opinion. California governor Gavin Newsom, who debated with Kirk on his podcast earlier this year (and admitted his son was a fan), wrote in a statement that he “admired [Kirk’s] passion and commitment to debate”. Representatives for New College of Florida, formerly a progressive school that fell under the control of rightwing allies of Governor Ron DeSantis, announced it will commission a statue of Kirk with his table and mic on campus. The school’s social media officer told Fox News that the statue will represent “what America is all about”.Ultimately it was not rhetorical prowess but an insult that made Troutt a social media folk hero in #resistance circles: after Kirk attempted a gotcha moment by saying that “foetus” means “little human being” in Latin, Troutt called his self-satisfied smile “creepy”.“Smiling is creepy?” Kirk clapped back, to which Troutt responded: “No, your smile specifically.” The quip landed her an Interview magazine feature branding her “the college student who owned Charlie Kirk”. (Foetus in Latin actually means “a bringing forth; producing; fertile”.)In March, Kirk asked her to come to the stage for a 10-minute debate he held at USC, where they tussled over DEI again.“I was shocked by that,” Troutt said. “I literally just roasted this man, and now he wants to debate with me again. But the second time he was a lot nicer. A lot of Trump and Kirk supporters came to watch it, and it was a more hostile environment, but he was less hostile to me.”Mason, who debated with Kirk on Surrounded, describes himself as a progressive and felt it important to showcase leftist values.View image in fullscreen“They’re so often caricatured, especially for those in echo chambers of the right,” Mason said. (He asked that his last name not be shared for privacy reasons.) “As someone who feels very confident in my beliefs and convictions and my ability to communicate, I think it’s beneficial for me to go on a platform like this.”Mason and Kirk’s topic was gender and transgender rights. Mason got Kirk to admit that he did not know the bimodal theory of gender, to which Kirk called him “condescending”; Mason apologized for his tone, but said he was “trying to match” Kirk’s energy toward other debaters. Despite the testiness, the pair had a lively debate.“Having a conversation with him was very easy to do,” Mason said. “I’ve consumed so much of his content that I knew what he was going to say. I wouldn’t say that it was easy for a lot of the other [Surrounded debaters], because he understands the sport of rhetoric and debate, and is really good at controlling the conversation. I had to put in a strong effort to assert myself.”Webb, the Hofstra professor, called the unmoderated format of Surrounded where claims are not factchecked, “unnerving”.“You can’t negate that it’s very interesting to watch,” Webb said, “but those students are not armed with proper data and evidence, and a lot of times they’re speaking to things that sometimes are blatantly untrue.”After the debate, Kirk hinted that he wanted Mason to come on his radio show. That never happened, but the two kept in touch. The second time they debated – about wealth inequality at the USC event – Kirk praised his “high IQ”. But Kirk never put the debate up online. “I like to believe that’s because the conversation didn’t go the way he planned,” Mason said, “but it could have also just been because I don’t have the same online presence as someone like Naima.”The circus around Kirk’s social media did not just advance conservative causes. His work boosted young leftists like Troutt and to a lesser extent Mason. Gaining a platform as “the girl who owned Charlie Kirk” overwhelmed Troutt at first. “It did feel like getting thrown to the wolves,” she said. But she sustained her viral moment and has over half a million followers on TikTok, where she posts about politics.This small online community of Kirk debaters consider themselves an influential voice of reason against “alt-right” internet stars like Kirk, Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens.Hungry for another go, Troutt and other Surrounded debaters were scheduled to star in a reunion episode with Kirk later this month. On the morning of the day Kirk was killed, debaters in a Surrounded group chat were theorizing what topics might come up so they could start preparing. “It was surreal that in the middle of all of that, we got a news article sent by someone, saying: ‘Oh my God, this just happened,’” Mason said.After Kirk died, a range of reactions poured out on social media, with many recalling Kirk’s incendiary takes or honoring his memory. Kirk allies advocated for firing those who they said spoke against him. Meanwhile, some of the debaters were criticized by followers for their eulogies of their former opponent and the sadness they expressed about his killing.View image in fullscreenDean Withers, who appeared on the Surrounded episode and was called “the Democrats’ Bro Whisperer” by the the New York Times, mourned Kirk’s death through tears in a TikTok video. Tilly Middlehurst, a student who Kirk asked about feminism and what defines a woman at an event for Cambridge Union Society, her university’s debate club, choked up as she said the act of political violence left her “shaken and disgusted”.Withers later said that he became emotional watching the violent video of Kirk’s shooting online, because a close friend had been in the audience of the event and because he knew Kirk personally. “My tears weren’t me telling you how you should feel, but rather you happening to see me in how I felt,” he said. Middlehurst made her social media profiles private. (Neither responded to a request for comment. A representative for Cambridge Union Society wrote in an email: “Any comments made by speakers who openly debated with Mr. Kirk during our event earlier this year are expressed in a personal capacity and do not reflect the views of the Cambridge Union.”)Troutt felt “hesitant” to speak about Kirk’s death, though people looked to her for comment. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing and hurt people and lead to more violence. But I do want to help people in this moment process what this means for our country,” she said.After speaking with the Guardian, Troutt posted her own TikTok. “All acts of gun violence are horrible and must be condemned. That is my baseline,” she said in the clip. She added: “Mind your karma, watch what you put online.”Mason believes that “two things” can be true at once: “The video [of the shooting] was incredibly grotesque, this is terrible across the board, and I do grieve for his young children, but that does not make the life or the principles that the victim stood for any more palatable.”He found it hard to square the Kirk he interacted with, if briefly – a professional, nice enough man – with the hateful views he promoted.“I think that speaks to the dissociation that politics allows, where somebody can have these abstract concepts of what a group is, or speak ill of them, but it’s much more difficult to be insulting or vitriolic toward somebody who’s right in front of you,” Mason said.In the aftermath of his death, Kirk’s legacy remains as divisive as one of his debates. But there is no denying his influence on public discourse.“When we teach argumentation and debate in our classrooms, it’s not necessarily agenda-driven,” said Webb, the rhetoric professor.“Social media has taught us to believe that all opinions said online are valid and require response, and because of that, people are nowadays easily baited into these ‘debates’.” More

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      ‘These results are sobering’: US high school seniors’ reading and math scores plummet

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      The average reading and math scores of American high school seniors fell to their lowest levels in two decades in 2024, according to new national data released last week.The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), found that, on average, reading scores for 12th graders were 10 points lower in 2024 than they were in 1992, when the test was first administered, and that math scores fell to their lowest levels since 2005, when the math assessment began.The test, administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is part of the US Department of Education, assessed roughly 19,300 12th-graders in math, 24,300 in reading and 23,000 eighth-graders in science between January and March of last year.The report found that 35% of seniors “performed at or above” the NAEP’s “proficient” level in reading, and 22% were at or above that level in math.It also stated that 45% of 12th graders scored below the NAEP’s “basic” level in math, marking a five percentage-point increase from 2019. In reading, 32% of students scored below the basic level, which was a two-point increase from 2019.“These results are sobering,” said NCES acting commissioner Matthew Soldner. “The drop in overall scores coincides with significant declines in achievement among our lowest-performing students, continuing a downward trend that began before the Covid pandemic.“Among our nation’s high-school seniors, we’re now seeing a larger percentage of students scoring below the NAEP basic achievement level in mathematics and reading than in any previous assessment.”One lingering effect of the pandemic present in the report was chronic absenteeism. The report found that about a third of 12th-graders reported missing three or more days of school in the month before the test, up from 25% in 2019.“Students are spending less time learning,” said Thomas Kane, an education economist at Harvard. “And when they are present, instruction is less efficient because teachers are constantly reteaching material.”Robert Balfanz, a professor at John Hopkins University School of Education, said easy access to information online and the use of online assignments may also be leading some students to treat in-person school attendance as optional.“In their minds, they tell their parents, ‘Look, all my assignments are online, I can do them even if I’m not at school,’” Balfanz said.But while the Covid pandemic and school closures had major effects on learning, experts say the academic decline began before 2020.“The uncomfortable truth is that American students have been significantly losing ground for more than a decade,” Eric Hanushek, an education economist, wrote in an opinion piece last week. “The pandemic didn’t break American education – it was already broken.”Kane said the decline among lower-achieving students began some time around 2015 and has continued.“It’s clearly not just the pandemic,” Kane said. “It should be troubling to everyone, and we need to find a solution.”Experts point to a range of potential factors beyond absenteeism that could be contributing to the decline, including increased screen time and smartphone use, declining student engagement, and the rollback of test-based accountability since the expiration of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2015.Carol Jago, a longtime English teacher and literacy expert at UCLA, told the Associated Press last week that students today read fewer books and spend less time with longer texts.“To be a good reader, you have to have the stamina to stay on the page, even when the going gets tough,” Jago said. “You have to build those muscles, and we’re not building those muscles in kids.”Balfanz added that the constant exposure to short-form and visual media in students’ daily lives may be making academic focus more difficult.One potential solution, he said, could be to add more dedicated reading time into school days – and restricting smartphones in classrooms.Kane noted that academic declines are appearing in other countries as well, which suggests a broader global trend that could be linked to increased screen use.Some US states have already passed laws restricting phone use in schools. Kane believes that there needs to be a national effort to assess the impact and effectiveness of those policies to see whether they work and ought to be implemented in more areas.The role of smart phones and social media in academic performance came up this week during a Senate hearing on the NAEP results.Martin West, the vice-chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees policy for the NAEP, told lawmakers that the rise of “smartphones and social media platforms targeting youth” is one area they should investigate.“We lack direct evidence of a causal link between smartphones and learning, but I’m convinced that this technology is a key driver of youth mental health challenges, a distraction from learning, both inside and outside of schools, and a deterrent to reading,” West said.Rebecca Winthrop, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, testified that student disengagement was exacerbated by the pandemic and is being amplified by social media. She endorsed actions such as smart phone bans, higher academic expectations, and adopting more engaging teaching styles.The NAEP results also reignited the debate around the federal government’s role in education, with US education secretary Linda McMahon saying last week that the lesson from the results “is clear”.“Success isn’t about how much money we spend, but who controls the money and where that money is invested,” she said. “That’s why President Trump and I are committed to returning control of education to the states so they can innovate and meet each school and students’ unique needs.”Representative Tim Walberg, a Republican who chairs the House education committee, agreed and said that “by returning education to the states, we can empower parents and local communities and ensure every child gains the skills necessary to succeed”.But Democratic representative Bobby Scott pushed back, writing that the NAEP results “reinforce the urgent need for sustained federal investment in academic recovery and educational equity”.“Now is not the time to retreat from our responsibility to provide every child, regardless of zip code, with the opportunity to succeed,” he added.Balfanz believes that “some collective effort at the national level” is needed to support states and districts in implementing proven solutions. He emphasized the need to “set targets and goals and strategies” and help build the capacity at the local level to be able to achieve them.Kane said that he agrees that states need to take a “more aggressive role in helping to reverse these trends” but that the federal government also needs to prioritize partnering with states “in a concerted, coordinated effort to answer two questions: finding effective ways to lower absenteeism and measuring the impact of the cellphone bans”.“Something fundamental in US schools is broken,” Kane warned. “And we need to fix it.” More

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      They managed to get accepted to US universities. But they’re still stuck in Gaza

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      Within days of 7 October 2023, much of Maryam’s world had been wiped out: her home in Gaza City, her children’s schools, and the Islamic University of Gaza, where she was a graduate student in physics, were all destroyed by airstrikes. In early December, Maryam’s mentor – Sufian Tayeh, a prominent Palestinian scientist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza – was killed along with his family in an Israeli strike.The professor has been a “father figure” to her, Maryam told the Guardian. When she learned of his death, she remembers closing the physics notebooks she had grabbed as she fled her home and thinking her studies would be over. “My entire world had collapsed,” she said.But as she repeatedly fled Israel’s bombs, Maryam sought ways to keep not only her family alive, but also her dream of becoming a physicist. While living in a tent in Rafah, with no stable access to internet or electricity, she learned of a spot near the border where she could get a faint internet signal from Egypt. Despite the risks, she started going there to research opportunities abroad, eventually managing to earn admission to a fully funded PhD program at the University of Maryland. After deferring her start date by a year, she was meant to start this month.But Maryam remains in Gaza. She is one of dozens of students from the devastated territory who have been admitted to US universities and colleges but are stuck, advocates say, after the Trump administration suspended nearly all non-immigrant visas for Palestinian passport holders.As part of its campaign against US universities, the administration has made it more difficult for international students to travel to the US, and claims it has revoked the visas of thousands of foreign students already in the US over unspecified violations.But for Palestinians in Gaza, the policy change is uniquely devastating.“I will never forget the moment I received the message confirming my acceptance into a fully funded PhD program. I rushed back to our tent to hold my children tightly and tell them the good news – that we would survive this nightmare,” said Maryam, who is using a pseudonym to protect her and her family. “Everything came crashing down again when I heard about the suspension of visa processing. It felt like my dreams had been destroyed once more.”Leila, a 22-year-old from Gaza City, was four years into a five-year engineering program when the war started. She would walk up to two hours a day to find wifi, relying on solar power to charge her phone, and managed to apply and be admitted to a university in the north-western US as a transfer student. (Leila is also a pseudonym, and she asked that the Guardian not publish the name of the university.)Then came the news that all visas were suspended. “We are just stuck in Gaza right now,” she told the Guardian in a series of voice memos.A spokesperson for the state department said in a statement that the department had suspended the processing of nonimmigrant visas for Palestinian Authority passport holders “while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to vet individuals from Gaza” and that it will “take the time necessary to conduct a full and thorough review”.“Every visa decision is a national security decision,” the spokesperson added.According to a cable viewed by the Associated Press, department officials said the new restrictions were intended “to ensure that such applications have undergone necessary, vetting, and screening protocols to ensure the applicants’ identity and eligibility for a visa under US law”. The suspension doesn’t apply to Palestinians who hold passports from other countries – unless they are found to have ties to the Palestinian Authority, or the Palestine Liberation Organization.The Student Justice Network, a US-based collective formed after Donald Trump signed orders in January targeting international students, has been supporting students from Gaza who are seeking to continue their interrupted studies abroad. But of the dozens of students the group says it has helped with university and visa applications, only a handful have made it to the US. (They declined to provide more specific numbers.)Securing a visa to travel to the US from Gaza was an arduous process even in quieter times. Before the war, Palestinians in Gaza had to secure appointments at US embassies outside the territory – usually Egypt or Israel. Obtaining a permit to travel to Israel has been impossible since the war began, while the border with Egypt has remained largely closed.International students have been targeted with a series of federal actions aimed both at Palestinian students specifically and the broader community of more than one million foreign nationals studying in the country.The state department has enlisted consulates overseas into the effort. Earlier this year, it paused all student visa appointments. They have resumed, but prospective students are now being subjected to additional vetting for, among other things, “anti-American” views.But for Palestinians the restrictions are blanket. “Every single one of them has been impacted by this,” Majid said of the students her group has been helping who were meant to start their studies this fall. “There’s no clear understanding as to when their applications will be processed, and this affects their ability to attend their universities on time – and in some cases it could actually impact whether or not they’re able to maintain their scholarships.”Looking elsewhereThomas Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, told the Guardian that Maryam was one of two physics students from Gaza admitted to the university last year. But getting them out of Gaza proved so difficult that the university ended up deferring the students’ admissions by a year as they tried to get visa appointments.Maryam was able to book an interview at the US embassy in Egypt, and Cohen offered to personally pay for her way there – but the border was shut down when Israeli forces took control of it in May 2024. She was still looking for a way out when the US announced the suspension of visas for Palestinians.Cohen said he tried all he could to help Maryam and the other student – because their academic records earned them a spot at the university but also because he understood that the opportunity could save their lives. He spoke of the Holocaust survivors in his own family, and those who “didn’t survive because they had no way to leave” Nazi-occupied Poland.Cohen is now advising the students to pursue opportunities in Europe or Canada. Even if they were to get a visa to the US, “the political climate we’re in, it’s dangerous for Palestinians”, he says.Majid, of the Student Justice Network, said the group had also been encouraging the students they support to pursue options in other countries. But even if they gain admission elsewhere, the border with Egypt remains sealed shut as Israel has intensified its military campaign.“These are students who have gone through two plus years without an educational infrastructure,” Majid said, noting that all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed.“Think about having applied to university when you were 17 or 18, and then think about applying under bombardments, and starvation, and with limited resources, and having your documents destroyed, and having lost your family members,” she added. “To yank these fully funded opportunities away from them is devastating.” More

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      ‘I had teachers crying’: the schools trying to plug million-dollar funding holes after Trump cuts

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      In the time it took to read an email, the federal money vanished before Eisa Cox’s eyes: dollars that supported the Ashe county, North Carolina, school district’s after-school program, training for its teachers and salaries for some jobs.The email from the US Department of Education arrived 30 June, a day before the money – $1.1m in total – was set to materialize for the rural western district. Instead, the dollars were frozen pending a review to make sure the money was spent “in accordance with the president’s priorities”, the email said.In a community still recovering from Hurricane Helene, where more than half of students are considered economically disadvantaged, Cox said there was no way they could replace that federal funding for the school system she oversees as superintendent. “It is scary to think about it,” she said. “You’re getting ready to open school and not have a significant pot of funds.”School leaders across the country were reeling from the same news. The $1.1m was one small piece of a nearly $7bn pot of federal funding for thousands of school districts that the Trump administration froze – money approved by Congress and that schools were scheduled to receive on 1 July. For weeks, leaders in Ashe county and around the country scrambled to figure out how they could avoid layoffs and fill financial holes – until the money was freed on 25 July, after an outcry from legislators and a lawsuit joined by two dozen states.“I had teachers crying, staff members crying. They thought they were going to lose their jobs a week before school,” said Curtis Finch, superintendent of Deer Valley unified school district in Phoenix, Arizona.View image in fullscreenNow, as students are back in classrooms, their school systems can no longer count on federal dollars as they once did. They must learn to plan without a playbook under a president intent on cutting education spending. For many districts, federal money is a small but crucial sliver of their budgets, potentially touching every part of a school’s operations, from teacher salaries to textbooks. Nationally, it accounts for about 14% of public school funding; in Ashe county, it’s 17%. School administrators are examining their resources now and budgeting for losses to funding that was frozen this summer, for English learners and for after-school and other programs.So far, the Trump administration has not proposed cutting the largest pots of federal money for schools, which go to services for students with disabilities and to schools with large numbers of low-income students. But the current budget proposal from the US House of Representatives would do just that.At the same time, forthcoming cuts to other federal support for low-income families under the Republican One Big, Beautiful Bill Act – including Medicaid and Snap, previously known as food stamps – will also hammer schools that have many students living in poverty. Some school districts are also grappling with the elimination of Department of Education grants announced earlier this year, such as those designed to address teacher shortages and disability services. In politically conservative communities like this one, there’s an added tension for schools that rely on federal money to operate: how to sound the alarm while staying out of partisan politics.For Ashe county, the federal spending freeze collided with the district’s attempt at a fresh start after the devastation of Helene, which demolished roads and homes, damaged school buildings and knocked power and cell service out for weeks. Between the storm and snow days, students here missed 47 days of instruction.Cox worries this school year might bring more missed days. That first week of school, she found herself counting the number of foggy mornings: an old Appalachian wives’ tale says to put a bean in a jar for every morning of fog in August. The number of beans at the end of the month is how many snow days will come in winter.“We’ve had 21 so far,” Cox said with a nervous laugh on 21 August.A funding freeze rollercoasterFragrant evergreen trees blanket Ashe county’s hills, a region that bills itself as America’s Christmas tree capital because of the millions of Fraser firs grown for sale at the holidays. Yet this picturesque area still shows scars of Hurricane Helene’s destruction: fallen trees, damaged homes and rocky new paths cut through the mountainsides by mudslides. Nearly a year after the storm, the lone grocery store in one of its small towns is still being rebuilt. A sinkhole that formed during the flooding remains, splitting open the ground behind an elementary school.As students walked into classrooms for the first time since spring, Julie Taylor – the district’s director of federal programs – was reworking district budget spreadsheets. When federal funds were frozen, and then unfrozen, her plans and calculations from months prior became meaningless.Federal and state funding stretches far in this district of 2,700 students and six schools, where administrators do a lot with a little. Even before this summer, they worked hard to supplement that funding in any way possible – applying for state and federal grants, like one last year that provided money for a few mobile hotspots for families who don’t have internet access. Such opportunities are also narrowing: the Federal Communications Commission, for example, recently proposed ending its mobile hotspot grant program for school buses and libraries.View image in fullscreen“We’re very fiscally responsible because we have to be. We’re small and rural. We don’t have a large tax base,” Taylor said.When the money was frozen this summer, administrators’ minds went to the educators and kids who would be most affected. Some of it was meant to pay for a program through Appalachian State University that connects the district’s three dozen early career teachers with a mentor, helping them learn how to schedule their school days and manage classroom behavior.The program is part of the reason the district’s retention rate for early career teachers is 92%, Taylor said, noting the teachers have said how much the mentoring meant to them.Also frozen: free after-school care the district provides for about 250 children throughout the school year – the only after-school option in the community. Without the money, Cox said, schools would have had to cancel their after-school care or start charging families, a significant burden in a county with a median household income of about $50,000.Will assistance for immigrant students go away?The salary for Michelle Pelayo, the district’s migrant education program coordinator for nearly two decades, was also tied up in that pot of funding. Because agriculture is the county’s biggest industry, Pelayo’s work extends far beyond the students at the school. Each year, she works with the families of dozens of immigrant students who move to the county for seasonal work on farms, which generally involves tagging and bundling Christmas trees and harvesting pumpkins. Pelayo helps the families enroll their students, connects them with supplies for school and home, and serves as a Spanish translator for parent-teacher meetings – “whatever they need”, she said.Kitty Honeycutt, executive director of the Ashe county chamber of commerce, doesn’t know how the county’s agriculture industry would survive without the immigrant families Pelayo works with. “The need for guest workers is crucial for the agriculture industry. We have to have them,” she said.A couple of years ago, Pelayo had the idea to drive to Boone, North Carolina, where Appalachian State University’s campus sits, to gather unwanted appliances and supplies from students moving out of their dorm rooms at the end of the year to donate to immigrant families. She’s a “find a way or make a way” type of person, Honeycutt said.Cox is searching for how to keep Pelayo on if Ashe county loses these federal funds next year. She’s talked with county officials to see whether they could pay Pelayo’s salary, and has begun calculating how much the district would need to charge families to keep the after-school program running. Ideally, she’d know ahead of time and not the night before the district is set to receive the money.Around the nationDistricts across the country are grappling with similar questions. In Detroit, school leaders are preparing, at a minimum, to lose Title III money to teach English learners; more than 7,200 Detroit students received services funded by Title III in 2023.In Wyoming, the small, rural Sheridan county school district 3 is trying to budget without Title II, IV and V money – funding for improving teacher quality, updating technology and resources for rural and low-income schools, among other uses, the superintendent Chase Christensen said.Schools are trying to budget for cuts to other federal programs, too, such as Medicaid and food stamps. In Harrison school district 2, an urban district in Colorado Springs, schools rely on Medicaid to provide students with counseling, nursing and other services.The district projects that it could lose half the $15m it receives in Medicaid next school year.“It’s very, very stressful,” said Wendy Birhanzel, superintendent of Harrison school district 2. “For a while, it was every day you were hearing something different. And you couldn’t even keep up with: ‘What’s the latest information today?’ That’s another thing we told our staff: if you can, just don’t watch the news about education right now.”There’s another calculation for school leaders to make in conservative counties like Ashe, where 72% of the vote last year went to Donald Trump: objecting to the cuts without angering voters. When North Carolina’s attorney general, a Democrat, joined the lawsuit against the administration over the frozen funds this summer, some school administrators told state officials they couldn’t publicly sign on, fearing local backlash, said Jack Hoke, executive director of the North Carolina School Superintendents’ Association.Cox sees the effort to slash federal funds as a chance to show her community how Ashe county schools uses this money. She believes people are misguided in thinking their schools don’t need it, not malicious.“I know who our congresspeople are. I know they care about this area,” Cox said, adding that they care even if they do not fully grasp how the money is used. “It’s an opportunity for me to educate them.”If the education department is shuttered – which Trump said he plans to do in order to give more authority over education to states – she wants to be included in state-level discussions of how federal money flows to schools through North Carolina. Importantly, she also wants to know ahead of time what her schools might lose.As she made her rounds to each of the schools that first week back, Cox glanced down at her phone and looked up with a smile. “We have hot water,” she said while walking in the hall of Blue Ridge elementary school. It had lost hot water a few weeks earlier, but to Cox, this crisis was minor – one of many first-of-the-year hiccups she has come to expect.Still, it’s one worry she can put out of her mind as she looks ahead to a year of uncertainties.Marina Villeneuve contributed data analysis to this story, which was originally produced and published by the Hechinger Report. More