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      Giuliani defamation trial live: election worker testifies ex-Trump lawyer’s 2020 lies ruined her life and left her ‘in a dark place’

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      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.
      It was a day of emotional testimony in a Washington courtroom, where Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani. She recounted in devastating detail the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment upended her life, destroyed her sense of security and self-worth and hurt her family.
      Under cross-examination, Moss pointedly noted that the harm caused by Giuliani continues to this day as the former mayor repeated his lies about her to reporters as recently as Monday. Giuliani’s comments to reporters drew a sharp rebuke from the judge.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today:
      New York’s top court said the state must redraw its congressional maps, in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats in the battle to win control of the narrowly divided House of Representatives.
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      US inflation ticked down again last month, with cheaper gas helping further lighten the weight of consumer price increases in the US.
      Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskiy failed to persuade congressional Republicans to rush aid to Ukraine as Russia’s war nears its third year. During a visit to Washington, Zelenskiy met with members of Congress and Joe Biden on Tuesday.
      Still to come: CNN will host a presidential town hall in Iowa with Republican White House hopeful Ron DeSantis.
      Sam reports that Shaye Moss has completed her testimony after taking the witness stand to answer questions from Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer and her own.Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, sought to undercut the idea millions of dollars in damages were required to repair her reputation. He also sought to distance Giuliani from any harm Moss suffered.John Langford, one of Moss’s attorneys, asked her to further explain why she was not looking for work.“I definitely would have to start off again at the bottom and work my way up. I am wanting to do that but I am not mentally able to do that with things are the way are now,” Moss said. “Most days I pray that God does not wake me up and I just disappear.”She also explained that she does not go out alone, except for one instance in which she did it as homework for her therapist.“I did it so terrified. I felt extremely nauseous. But thankfully there was this guy at the bar,” she said. “He was a Jewish guy. He literally talked the entire time about this movie about this family that is in the pharmaceuticals. The guy was just talking. And I did it. I was very proud of myself. But unfortunately I have not been able to do that again. But I did do it once.”Plaintiffs are now playing a videotaped deposition from Bernard Kerik.Here’s some background on the situation in New York written by our in-house expert on redistricting, Sam Levine (yes, the same one in court covering the election case).Despite outperforming expectations on election night last year, Republicans made stunning gains across New York, one of the nation’s most liberal states. They won four toss-up races and picked off congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democratic campaign chairman charged with protecting his party’s hold on Congress.That was possible under the map that will now be redrawn.Breaking from the Giuliani trial to mark a new legal development out of New York, where a court has agreed to allow the state to redraw its congressional map in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats.In an opinion issued on Tuesday afternoon, the liberal-leaning New York State Court of Appeals ordered the state’s redistricting commission to draw new maps by February 28, 2024. The court is effectively tossing out the highly competitive electoral map that gave Republicans an edge in several key House races last cycle – just enough to win the majority.The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, but the Democratic-controlled state legislature has final say over the redrawn map. Given the narrow divide in the US House, New York Democrats will be under pressure to reject any proposal that does not improve their electoral odds, particularly after Republicans aggressive gerrymanders in states like North Carolina.Giuliani’s lawyer is pressing Moss to disclose additional details about her medical health as a result of the former mayor’s lies.Here’s some more back-and-forth in what appears to be a somewhat combative round of questioning.More from our man on the ground:
      I personally cannot repair my reputation at the moment because your client is still lying on me and ruining my reputation further. How could I do that? How could you work in law everyone was saying you’re a horrible lawyer? Moss said under questioning.
      She added, per Sam: “We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers that are still there don’t have to go through this. Hopefully by hitting someone in their pockets, for someone whose whole career has been about their pockets, we will send a message.”Sam is back in the courtroom in the defamation trial in Washington DC, where Moss is being cross-examined.It’s unclear where exactly Sibley is going with his questions, Sam reports.A lot of his questions seem to be trying to get Moss to concede that there was confusion or uncertainty about what happened immediately after the 2020 election. The US district judge Beryl Howell has already found Giuliani liable for defamation, so whether or not Giuliani had grounds to make his outlandish claims is not really at issue in the trial.It cannot be easy to be the lawyer for the voluble former New York mayor. Moss is back on the stand for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley.While we await the return of the Giuliani trial in DC, we’re linking to our Israel-Hamas war blog, where Biden has said Israel is “starting to lose support” of international community over its bombardment of Gaza.Biden also said that Netanyahu needs to change his hardline government.Biden’s comments come as Netanyahu thanked the US for its support on Tuesday, but noted that the US and Israel have had disagreements about “the day after Hamas”, said Israel’s prime minister on X.It is 1.20pm in Washington DC. Here is a round-up of what’s happened today:
      Georgia election worker Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani, giving a haunting testimony of the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment ruined her life and affected her family.
      Moss told the court she was a “bubbly, outgoing, happy Shaye” before she first became aware of lies Giuliani was spreading about her – and that threats left her feeling scared for her life. She recalled how she started receiving racist text messages and threats. “I was afraid for my life. I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
      Moss also told the court how her life has been ruined and she often still feels like she is being followed. She doesn’t go out alone and has panic attacks. She had to leave her job because she says she became a “pariah” in the office. Moss told the court her ordeal has left her feeling “in a dark place”.
      Giuliani’s mental fitness was questioned by the judge after he again told lies about Moss and Ruby Freeman in response to media questions after court last night. His comments entered into the court case Tuesday when Moss brought up how he had never apologized and continued to lie about her.
      Moss will be back on the stand at 2pm in Washington for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today …
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.Though Giuliani has already been found liable for defaming Moss and Freeman, his comments last night to the media where he claimed his lies about them were true will likely factor into the trial.Already, the US district judge Beryl Howell asked about Giuliani’s mental fitness, given his comments: “everything I said about them is true.”And on the stand this afternoon, Moss brought up his remarks, saying he was still “spreading lies about us last night”. Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote on X that the judge is permitting Moss to talk about these comments, despite an objection from Giuliani’s lawyer. More

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      The Harvard and UPenn presidents walked into a trap in Congress | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      Last week in Congress, Representative Elise Stefanik proved how well she can throw a dead cat.Let me explain. During an hours-long hearing on 5 December, members of Congress grilled university presidents from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, some of the country’s most elite institutions of higher learning, about antisemitism on their campuses. But it was Stefanik’s questioning that grabbed the spotlight. She repeatedly asked the presidents essentially the same question: does calling for the genocide of Jews on your campus constitute harassment, yes or no?The question is a trap, of course, and for several reasons. The first and most important reason is that there’s no evidence anyone since 7 October, or even in recent history, has called for the genocide of Jews on any American campus, public or private. Stefanik’s question implies that such calls are commonplace, but she offered no proof.The second reason this is a trap is that the question can’t be answered with just “yes” or “no”. Public universities, as state actors, are bound by the first amendment, as are private universities which receive federal funding. And the vast majority of private universities guarantee freedom of speech and academic freedom as part of their core mission. The American university is, by tradition and design, precisely where abhorrent ideas can be uttered. So, if someone had called for the genocide of Jews, which they haven’t, that would be extremely disturbing but still protected speech.The utterance alone does not constitute harassment. In fact, the utterance should be an opportunity to debate and debunk – and not silence – the worst ideas of our day. To rise to harassment, such conduct must be targeted at an individual and, as a 2019 supreme court case decided, be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit”. Context makes the difference, or as this 2011 article, published by the American Bar Association, says: “It is the context that matters, and the context helps to make the determination about whether conduct is actionable under school policy or protected by the First Amendment.”The third reason the question is trap is that the situation is complicated by the overarching codes of conduct many universities have adopted, codes that I believe do often (wrongly) cross over into limiting speech. But here, too, Stefanik seems confused. Writing in the Wall Street Journal after the hearing, Stefanik ridiculed Harvard for requiring incoming undergraduates to take an online training session to help them identify language and behavior that could be considered hateful to others. But, while mocking Harvard’s approach, Stefanik – a rising Maga Republican – is at the same time demanding to be included in it. So, which is it?To recap: all three presidents were asked how they would hypothetically punish hypothetical students for uttering hypothetical thoughts. They answered, albeit with lawyerly detachment. Yet their responses were deemed by many, from the White House on down, as callous and insufficiently protective of Jewish students. Following the hearing, all the presidents attempted damage control, but the University of Pennsylvania president has since resigned.Meanwhile, not a word was spoken about the threats that Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim students and faculty (and their supporters) are facing. Billboard trucks drive around Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City and Washington, broadcasting the names and faces of Palestinian supporters and libelously labeling them “antisemites”. University leaders suspend campus groups such Students for Justice in Palestine in moves the ACLU has said “harken back to America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era, and in the months and years after 9/11”. Three Palestinian college students, speaking a mixture of Arabic and English, were shot in Vermont over Thanksgiving break in what was “absolutely was a hateful act”, the Burlington police chief told CNN. On 29 November, dozens of students and some faculty members at Trinity College, where one of the students is enrolled, walked out of a vigil for the injured student because they say the campus administration is downplaying their insecurity on campus.But there is something even more ominous in Stefanik’s questions. “You understand that the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for … the genocide of Jews,” she asked the Harvard president, Claudine Gay. I’m not aware if Stefanik is an Arabic speaker, but I suspect she’s not since she’s wrong again. The term “intifada” literally means “shaking off”. It’s often translated as “uprising”, and there have been non-violent and violent periods of Palestinian uprisings against a brutal Israeli occupation. At no point, however, has the word ever stood as a call for the genocide of Jews. What a gross misrepresentation.But Stefanik’s questions are aimed at backhandedly discrediting words like “intifada” and patrolling the language we use to describe the Palestinian struggle. (We see the same thing with the phrase “from the river to the sea”, a version of which incidentally forms part of the founding charter of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.) Needless to say, demonizing the Arabic language works to demonize Palestinians, Arabs and the world’s Muslims. And handing over the definitions of our political terms to partisan politicians would spell the death of free inquiry in this country.Which brings us back to Stefanik’s dead cat. In politics, a “dead cat strategy” is used to divert attention away from one issue and on to another by metaphorically throwing a dead cat onto a dining room table in the middle of a dinner party. “People will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted,” is how Boris Johnson once described the strategy. “That is true, but irrelevant,” he continued. “The key point … is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”What Congress is not talking about is that the Israeli assault on Gaza has killed at least 17,000 people, over 7,000 of them children, and injured over 49,000. Israel has cut off regular supplies of food, water, fuel, electricity and medical supplies. Around 1.8 million Palestinians of Gaza’s 2.2 million have been displaced. More than 60% of the housing has been destroyed. Half the population is officially starving. Hospitals, historic mosques, essential libraries and the entire foundation of a society have been bombed into rubble. Meanwhile, the US was again the sole UN security council veto for a ceasefire, and the state department invoked an emergency measure to expedite weaponry to Israel that will almost certainly kill civilians. On 9 December, a group of esteemed scholars of genocide and Holocaust studies warned in a public letter “of the danger of genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza”.Elise Stefanik would have us believe that that we should be more worried about non-existent calls for genocide on American college campuses than with what many experts are warning is an actual genocide in Gaza, funded and supported by US bombs and political cover. So, all credit where credit is due. She really knows how to throw a dead cat.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US university presidents face firestorm over evasive answers on antisemitism

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      The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after they appeared to evade questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.In a contentious, hours-long debate on Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sought to address the steps they were taking to combat rising antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. But it was their careful, indirect response to a question posed by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York that drew scathing criticism.In an exchange that has now gone viral, Stefanik, a graduate of Harvard, pressed Elizabeth Magill, the president of UPenn, on Tuesday to say whether students calling for the genocide of Jews would be disciplined under the university’s code of conduct. In her line of questioning, Stefanik appeared to be conflating chants calling for “intifada” – a word that in Arabic means uprising, and has been used in reference to both peaceful and violent Palestinian protest – with hypothetical calls for genocide.“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill replied, in a reference to distinctions in first amendment law. “It is a context-dependent decision.” Stefanik pushed her to answer “yes” or “no”, which Magill did not.The backlash was swift and bipartisan.“It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. “Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting – and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”The White House was joined by several Jewish officials and leaders in condemning the university presidents’ testimony before the US House committee on education and the workforce, at a hearing called by Republicans titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said the simple response was “yes, that violates our policy.” Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Shapiro urged UPenn’s board to meet soon, as a petition calling for Magill’s resignation garnered thousands of signatures. According to CNN, Penn’s board of trustees held an “emergency meeting” on Thursday.The liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe noted that he rarely agreed with Stefanik, a far-right Trump ally, but wrote: “I’m with her here.”The Harvard president Claudine Gay’s “hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends”. Tribe added.Republican presidential candidates also seized on the episode, folding it into their broader criticism of the US’s elite institutions as too “woke” and liberal.In an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Ron DeSantis, who has led the rightwing crackdown on higher education as Florida’s governor, said the college presidents’ lack of moral clarity was a reflection of the liberal orthodoxy permeating higher education.“I think what this has revealed is the rot and the sickness that’s been festering inside higher education for a long time,” said DeSantis, a graduate of Harvard Law School who is running for president. He continued: “They should not be these hotbeds of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. But that’s what they’ve become.”Amid a surge in youth activism around the conflict, university leaders have struggled to balance the free speech of some pro-Palestinian activists with the fears of Jewish students who say the rhetoric crosses a line into antisemitism. In a number of cases, schools have responded by banning campus groups supportive of Palestinian rights.During their appearances, Magill, Gay and Sally Kornbluth of MIT all expressed alarm at the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses, some of which have triggered federal investigations by the Department of Education. In response, the presidents said they had taken steps to increase security measures and reporting tools while expanding mental health and counseling services. They also said it was their responsibility to ensure college campuses remain a place of free expression and free thought.In a new statement on Wednesday, Gay stated: “There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”Magill also sought to clarify her remarks to the committee in a video statement, in which she said her response to Stefanik’s question was an attempt to parse the university policies stating that speech alone is not punishable. But in doing so she said she failed to acknowledge the “irrefutable fact” that such speech represents a “call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetuate.“I want to be clear, a call for genocide of Jewish people is threatening – deeply so,” she said, adding: “In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation.”In the video, posted to X, Magill said the university’s policies “need to be clarified and evaluated” and committed to immediately convening a process to do so.Some free speech advocates expressed alarm at the possibility that universities may respond to the backlash by adopting speech-restrictive policies that depart from the protections of the first amendment, which governs government actors including public schools. But the universities at issue in Tuesday’s hearing are all private. Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called Magill’s comments on re-evaluating Penn’s policies a “deeply troubling, profoundly counterproductive response” to the anger.“Were Penn to retreat from the robust protection of expressive rights, university administrators would make inevitably political decisions about who may speak and what may be said on campus,” it said in a statement. The result of placing new limits on speech, it said, would mean “dissenting and unpopular speech – whether pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, conservative or liberal – will be silenced”. More

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      US university presidents to testify before Congress over claims of antisemitic protests on campuses

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      The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three of the country’s most prestigious universities, are set to testify before a congressional committee next week on claims that antisemitic protests have taken place on their campuses, marking the latest window into ongoing tensions sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.Next Tuesday, Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Penn’s Liz Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth will stand before the House education and workforce committee, a body chaired by Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina.“Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen countless examples of antisemitic demonstrations on college campuses. Meanwhile, college administrators have largely stood by, allowing horrific rhetoric to fester and grow,” said Foxx in a statement introducing the hearing, which is titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.Foxx said college and university presidents have a responsibility to foster and uphold a safe learning environment for both students and staff.“Now is not a time for indecision or milquetoast statements,” she added. “By holding this hearing, we are shining the spotlight on these campus leaders and demanding they take the appropriate action to stand strong against antisemitism.”Earlier this month, the US Department of Education’s office for civil rights opened investigations into possible ancestry or ethnic discrimination at several universities, including Cornell, Penn, Wellesley College, Cooper Union, Lafayette College, the University of Tampa and Columbia.Of those, at least five allege antisemitic harassment, and two allege anti-Muslim harassment. The office for civil rights said the investigations are part of “efforts to take aggressive action to address the alarming nationwide rise in reports of antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and other forms of discrimination”.But finding a line between legitimate protest and discrimination or hate speech has proven difficult for US university leaders, who are bidden to uphold academic and political speech freedoms in their charters.Harvard’s statement of rights and responsibilities, for instance, maintains that “a diverse and inclusive community depends upon freedom of expression; we are not truly inclusive if some perspectives can be voiced and heard while others cannot”.But notably, a recent poll found that more than half of Jewish US college students said they felt unsafe. Muslim students at universities across the country have said the same.Harvard has come under attack from alumni, including Mitt Romney, the Utah senator, for not doing enough to keep Jewish students safe. Some donors have also said they will stop funding the university.Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, a former student, has called university administrators to discipline protesters who violate rules because without disciplining they will take “more aggressive, disruptive and antisemitic actions”.Earlier this month Gay, Harvard’s president, wrote to alumni saying the institution rejects “all forms of hate, and we are committed to addressing them”, adding that the school had “started the process of examining how antisemitism manifests within our community”.While the House hearing is focused on antisemitism, there are also numerous claims of Islamophobia. Earlier this month, a professor at the university of Southern California allegedly walked on a list of names meant to memorialize the more than 11,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since 7 October and remarked: “Everyone should be killed, and I hope they all are.”In a statement Hussam Ayloush, CAIR-LA’s executive director, said: “Anti-Palestinian rhetoric has been at an all-time high these last few weeks – especially at schools and universities – and wrongly conflating Palestinians and those who are in solidarity with the innocent people of Gaza with Hamas is only adding fuel to the flames of hate.”University officials, he added, “must also take action to provide protective measures and resources for Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab students as well as any others who are targeted by hate and bigotry”.Earlier this month, New York’s Columbia University saw around 400 students gathered to criticize university leaders for suspending two pro-Palestinian student groups, Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), after forming a task force on antisemitism.The university said the groups had repeatedly violated policies related to holding campus events including one that “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation”. More

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      Black US journalism professor wins $1m over botched university appointment

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      A Black journalism professor who was hired by Texas A&M University before objections in some quarters over her history of promoting diversity foiled the job offer has secured a $1m settlement from the institution.Kathleen McElroy also received an apology from officials at Texas A&M, the largest public school in the US, who in a statement Thursday acknowledged “mistakes … made during the process”.In her own statement, McElroy said she would remain in a tenured teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin, and hoped the settlement would “reinforce A&M’s allegiance to excellence in higher education and its commitment to academic freedom and journalism”.“I will never forget that … students, members, former students and staff voiced support for me from many sectors,” McElroy’s statement also said.The payment and apology to McElroy all but closed an episode that unfolded as Republican lawmakers across the US eye the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at college campuses. Such programs are in conservatives’ crosshairs after the Republican supermajority on the US supreme court’s bench ruled in June that race-conscious college admissions decisions were unconstitutional.That court ruling effectively ended affirmative action in the US’s higher education system.Texas A&M announced in June that it had hired McElroy – a school alum and former New York Times editor – to refurbish its journalism department in June. Hiring McElroy away from a more liberal rival at the University of Texas won the school plaudits from some sectors.But then, in a July interview with the Texas Tribune, McElroy revealed that she had encountered pushback at Texas A&M because she had previously worked to diversify newsrooms and make them more inclusive.Documents released Thursday to media organizations including the Associated Press and the local news outlet KVUE showed that six of the school governing board’s members had expressed “concerns” about McElroy after the right-leaning website Texas Scorecard reported on her prior diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.Alums and active students had also called and emailed the university president’s office to challenge the hiring of “a DEI proponent … to serve as director of the new journalism program,” said the documents, which summarized Texas A&M’s investigation into the McElroy matter, according to the AP.Subsequently, as the professor told it, the school president Katherine Banks reduced McElroy’s job offer to a five-year position as opposed to one that was on track to be tenured, which implies certain longer-term employment protections. McElroy told the Tribune that the five-year position – from which she could be fired at any time – was then reduced to a one-year post.At that point, McElroy rejected the job and indicated that she would stay in her teaching role at the University of Texas at Austin.Banks maintained she was not involved in modifications to the contract offered to McElroy. Nonetheless, she resigned from the presidency on 21 July, and the Texas A&M board later negotiated a settlement with McElroy.McElroy was one of two reasons why Texas A&M drew national headlines in July. In a separate case, A&M professor Joy Alonzo was suspended within hours of speaking critically about Texas’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick during a lecture on the ongoing opioid crisis.Alonzo’s suspension, along with McElroy’s botched hiring, have prompted concerns among many in higher education that colleges are increasingly clamping down on free speech at campuses in the face of political pressure.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      The supreme court’s blow to US affirmative action is no coincidence | Eddie R Cole

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      On Thursday, in a 6-3 decision, the US supreme court ruled against affirmative action in American colleges and universities. The obvious concern now is whether the ruling will significantly reduce the number of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students enrolled at elite institutions. But a more dire reality undergirds the court’s decision: it reflects a decades-long drive to return higher education to white, elite control.That movement predates affirmative action by at least a century, because no entity impacts American life more than higher education. During the Reconstruction era following emancipation, Black people were allowed to advance in political and various other roles, but white powerbrokers drew a hard line at higher education. On 28 September 1870 the chancellor of the University of Mississippi, John Newton Waddel, declared: “The university will continue to be, what it always has been, an institution exclusively for the education of the white race.”Waddel was not alone in his appraisal. Following the civil war, many white academic leaders and faculty members believed higher education was designed solely to educate white people. Waddel and other white academics maintained that the University of Mississippi’s faculty “never, for a moment, conceived it possible or proper that a Negro should be admitted to its classes, graduated with its honors, or presented with its diplomas”.Over the past century, Black Americans’ struggles to secure equal educational opportunity have always been met with white resistance. The recent lawsuits filed by Students for Fair Admissions – an organization led by anti-affirmative-action activist Edward Blum – against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are not about academic merit or even the mistreatment of white or Asian American students; they are an extension of this movement to ensure American higher education can be used to maintain social norms.This is why, in defending affirmative action, the argument for campus diversity falls short. Rather than make wealthy, majority-white campuses more diverse, affirmative action was intended to acknowledge and address the nation’s history of racism and atone for past racial harms that disproportionately affected descendants of enslaved Black people.This was made plain in 1963 – one of the most racially tumultuous years of the civil rights movement. By summer, John F Kennedy – a Harvard University alumnus in his third year in the White House – was forced to take immediate action about racial segregation, in part because it had become a foreign policy embarrassment to the United States that belied the nation’s stated commitment to democracy.Kennedy sought assistance from many leading administrators in American higher education. “I write you personally to seek your help in solving the grave civil rights problems faced by this nation,” Kennedy wrote, on 12 July 1963, to select college presidents and chairs of trustee boards. “The leadership that you and your colleagues show in extending equal educational opportunity today will influence American life for decades to come.”Kennedy explained to academic leaders that the nation’s problems affected “both white and Negro students and their families”. He asked academic leaders to implement “special programs” to address said problems, but did not specify what the programs should be. He deferred to academic leaders to ensure initiatives were “carried out” toward that goal.Motivated by Kennedy’s appeal, Black and majority-white colleges and universities worked together to address racism. By October 1963, racial initiatives were discussed at meetings of the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities. In April 1964, presidents and faculty from Black campuses met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which hosted a two-day conference on “Programs to Assist Predominately Negro Colleges and Universities”.The leaders of wealthy majority-white campuses committing to numerous programs, most of them focused on Black colleges and universities. The programs – supported by the Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, and other foundations – included new opportunities for Black college faculty to attend summer institutes and graduate schools and created exchange programs between faculty and students on Black and white campuses. Harlan H Hatcher, president of the University of Michigan, explained that his university’s partnership with the Tuskegee Institute “can help them in the development of a strong liberal arts program. They, in turn, will advise us on the [racial] programs.”For Michigan and its peer institutions, considering race in college admissions was part of a broad range of affirmative action practices launched in the 1960s. Affirmative action was a comprehensive set of programs that sought system-wide change to expand educational opportunity. The goal was not to ensure that some Black people could attend a few dozen of the nation’s wealthiest institutions, but instead that there be widespread investment in creating a more equitable higher education system – investing in the Black colleges and universities that long served the people most disenfranchised because of the nation’s history of racism.The blowback was immediate, however. By the 1970s, white academic leaders and foundation officers mostly abandoned their support of Black colleges and universities, and the lasting remnant of that era was racial consideration in admissions on select wealthy, majority-white campuses. That changed with the supreme court’s ruling this week.The ongoing racial backlash in this country extends beyond affirmative action. We’re witnessing a battle over ideology, and higher education is at the center. The efforts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; dismantle the faculty tenure system; restrict how aspects of Black history are taught; and withhold billions from Black universities are also part of this sinister movement. The movement limits Black presence, Black thought, and even Black control of Black institutions to return all of academia to white, elitist control. Those seeking control have no desire for higher education – the environment most concerned with solving complex problems – to have any role in redressing the legacy of racism.The dismissal of race and racism dialogue in higher education should alarm all Americans, because the supreme court decision is not about restricting unfair racial advantage in college admissions – it is about maintaining the social inequality that has long restricted most Americans, regardless of their race, while a few are allowed to preserve and maintain their privileged status in society. The result is a weakened university that does not solve racial problems but instead upholds them.
      Eddie R Cole is an associate professor of education and history at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of The Campus Color Line: College Presidents and the Struggle for Black Freedom More

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      Trans people, students and teachers are besieged by DeSantis’s crusade. But he’s not done yet

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      No public school teacher or college professor in Florida has been more outspoken in his criticism of Governor Ron DeSantis than Don Falls. In the spring of 2022, the 62-year-old social studies high school teacher became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the governor to block enforcement of the recently approved Stop Woke (Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees) Act.The DeSantis-backed legislation banned the supposed teaching of critical race theory – a scholarly examination of how social conceptions of race influence laws, political movements and history – in the Sunshine state’s public schools and universities. When Falls heard that a Jacksonville law firm was drafting litigation to stop the new law from taking effect, the grandfather of five decided to raise his head above the proverbial parapet.“One thing I’ve taught my students is that there are certain fundamental values associated with a democracy, and if they’re going to work, you’ve got to stand up for them,” recalled Falls, who has taught for 38 years. “I couldn’t have taught that to my students and then, when the ball was in my court, pass it on to somebody else.”In his first year as Florida’s chief executive, DeSantis raised public school teachers’ salaries and paid tribute to the mostly gay, lesbian and transgender victims of one of the country’s most deadly mass shootings in recent times. But as he built his national profile, attracting attention for his controversial views on masks and vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic, he took a sharp swing to the right and stepped up his courtship of the party’s Trump-loving base.Now, with rumors he is close to launching his presidential bid, DeSantis is highlighting his crusade to “reform” public education in Florida and restrict the rights and freedoms of the state’s transgender population as centerpieces of a nationwide agenda for what he calls “America’s revival”.Last year, DeSantis and his Republican allies went further and rammed house bill 1467 through the state legislature, requiring all reading material used in public schools to be reviewed by a “trained media specialist” to ensure that the material be “free of pornography” and “appropriate for the age level and group”. Critics say it empowers conservative groups to ban books whose contents they disagree with, even if they are age appropriate.Falls continued to resist. Confronted with a choice of either removing the estimated 250 to 300 books in his classroom or submitting them to the vetting process, he and other colleagues at the school opted to conceal their covers by enveloping them in plain brown paper, thereby shielding themselves from possible criminal prosecution or civil liability.He posted a wryly written sign inside his classroom that read: “closed by order of the governor”.Book bans, pronoun bansOn 23 February hundreds of college students walked out of their classrooms at six public universities to protest against DeSantis’s decision to abolish diversity, education and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies that had been mandated in 2020 in all of Florida’s dozen institutions of higher education by other political appointees, including the former governor Rick Scott.Demonstrations were also held in early March to denounce HB 999, legislation that would eliminate college majors and minors in “critical race theory, gender studies or intersectionality”, render a professor’s tenure subject to review at any time, and require colleges to offer general education courses that “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization and include studies of this nation’s historical documents”. It would also formally outlaw spending on DEI programs, which seek to promote the participation and fair treatment of people from all walks of life.“We’re seeing more and more students who, emboldened by some faculty members, shout people down and shut down viewpoints they don’t agree with,” the chief sponsor of the legislation, state representative Alex Andrade, told the Guardian. “People are forgetting that public universities are a component of a state government’s executive branch, and when we’re trying to encourage and enforce discrimination in the name of diversity and equity, we’re getting it wrong.”The sweeping scope of that legislation, coupled with three other education bills that would, among other things, forbid school staff and students from using “pronouns that do not correspond with a person’s sex”, has left educators in Florida feeling incensed and dumbfounded.“There aren’t actually any majors in critical race theory or intersectionality,” noted Andrew Gothard, an English instructor at Florida Atlantic University and president of United Faculty of Florida, the union that represents more than 25,000 faculty members in the Sunshine state’s dozen public universities and 16 state and community colleges. “The goal is to eliminate all thought that diverges from the governor’s political platform, and it’s absolutely terrifying.“Any time you’re telling people they can only teach history in a way that praises the motherland, you’re straying into Hitler Youth territory.”Multiple requests from the Guardian for an interview with Governor DeSantis went unanswered. But in a recent statement, DeSantis defended HB 999 because it seeks to push back “against the tactics of liberal elites who suppress free thought in the name of identity politics and indoctrination”.DeSantis called a press conference on 8 March to debunk what he termed “the ‘book ban’ hoax” in relation to the Stop Woke Act, asserting that books containing pornographic content and other kinds of violent or age-inappropriate content had been discovered in libraries and classrooms in 23 school districts statewide. These included Maia Kobabe’s widely acclaimed Gender Queer: A Memoir, one of 10 books that received an Alex Award from the American Library Association in 2020 for having “special appeal for young adults ages 12 through 18”.“Our mantra in Florida has been education, not indoctrination,” DeSantis wrote in his recent memoir, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival. He hailed Florida as one of the first states to enact a parents’ bill of rights, which in his telling guarantees mothers and fathers “the right to inspect the materials being used in their kids’ schools”.Yet DeSantis also omits any reference to the state’s grossly underpaid public school teachers, who rank 48th nationwide in average salaries according to the National Education Association.‘Slate of hate’Another target of the 44-year-old governor is the state’s LGBTQ+ community and, in particular, the transgender population. A new bill, house bill 1421, titled “Gender Clinical Interventions”, would prohibit transgender individuals from amending their own birth certificates and eliminate transition-related care such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors.The chief sponsor of the bill, state representative Randy Fine, tweeted in March that the legislation would outlaw the “butchering of children” and free Florida taxpayers from having to subsidize “the sexual mutilation of adults”. In reality gender-confirming surgical procedures are seen as lifesaving, and are mostly offered to teenagers who are at least 15 years of age or older. Even among this group such operations are “exceedingly rare”, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.Not to be outdone, state senator Clay Yarborough introduced senate bill 254 that would allow the state to take temporary custody of children who may be receiving gender-affirming care now or in the future. (Yarborough declined the Guardian’s request for an interview.)The barrage of bills focusing on transgender people is part of a broader onslaught by far-right thinktanks and consultants on democracy, abortion rights and racial progress, according to Nadine Smith, a co-founder and executive director of Equality Florida, an LGBTQ+ community rights organization.“It’s not surprising to see this slate of hate introduced,” said Smith. “This rightwing shift has everything to do with usurping Trump on the right in the forthcoming Republican presidential primary elections. DeSantis is not driven by convictions or a core set of values, he is driven only by ambition and his desperation to become president.”The civil rights advocate remembers a different Ron DeSantis four years ago. Elected governor for the first time in 2018 by a razor-thin margin of about 32,000 votes, the former congressman and co-founder of the rightwing House Freedom Caucus gravitated towards the center-right during his early time in office.DeSantis issued a proclamation on the third anniversary of the 2016 mass shooting in an Orlando gay nightclub that paid tribute to the 49 people who died but failed to mention the targeting of the LGBTQ+ community as a possible motive of the killer.The governor came under fire for that omission and reissued the proclamation with amended wording. He even met with a survivor of the shooting and other members of the city’s LGBTQ+ community as a sign of solidarity.“The DeSantis we are seeing now doesn’t sound like the DeSantis who ran for governor the first time,” said Smith. “He went from being someone who went to the Pulse nightclub and responded to the criticism to someone who routinely calls LGBTQ+ people groomers and incites violence towards us.”The number of anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations in Florida has soared in recent months. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project documented 17 such episodes during 2022, up sharply from the six that the organization chronicled in 2021 and the five that were recorded in 2020. Some degenerated into riots. Nationwide, Florida ranked third in these incidents, surpassed only by California and Texas.Members of the state’s transgender population say they are feeling the intensifying heat.Morganti (not his real name) moved to the Gulf coast city of Bradenton from Louisiana in 2016. The 35-year-old New College of Florida student still identified as a woman at the time, and struck up a relationship with a local woman. “She and I could hold hands walking through a shopping mall, and when I first came down here it wasn’t a big deal,” said the third-year marine biology major.But the bearded trans man has noticed a palpable change in the political climate during the intervening six years. No violent confrontation has occurred to date, but he has dealt with comments about his voice and body.The hostile takeover of New College by six of DeSantis’s rightwing allies on its board of trustees earlier this year has not helped matters, and Morganti says he will move abroad to obtain his master’s degree once he has finished his undergraduate studies in January 2025.“If Ron DeSantis doesn’t make it to the White House, he will still be our governor – and that means Florida isn’t going to be a safe place to live in,” he said.If the 2022 and 2023 sessions of the Florida legislature are anything to go by, DeSantis is betting that legislation targeting the state’s transgender population and consolidating Tallahassee’s control over the curricula of the state’s public schools and universities will also strike a chord among voters in the Sunshine state and beyond.Whether or not DeSantis does mount a presidential bid in 2024 remains to be seen, as would the eventual success of such a campaign.In the meantime, university professors, schoolteachers and members of Florida’s LGBTQ+ community will continue to feel besieged for the foreseeable future. Some educators predict the departure of many colleagues in the coming months and years.“We have a governor and a legislature who are going rogue to harm the state,” said the union president, Andrew Gothard. “These laws are going to cause a major exodus of faculty and students from Florida’s system of higher education.” More

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      Wellesley College students vote to admit trans men and non-binary people

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      Students at the famed Wellesley College for women voted this week to extend admission to trans men and non-binary students, though campus administrators have said there is “no plan” to immediately change school policy.In a non-binding election on Tuesday, students at the liberal arts college in Massachusetts voted to open admission to all non-binary and transgender students, including trans men, reported Wellesley News, the college’s student newspaper.Wellesley’s alumni include former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, ex-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, and other public figures.The proposed resolution, which will be presented to Wellesley’s board of trustees, would allow trans men to be admitted to the university. Non-binary applicants, regardless of their sex at birth, would also be considered for admission, according to the resolution approved by students.The ballot measure would also call for the university to replace gender-specific language with gender neutral language in reference to its student body, including using they/them pronouns in place of she/her pronouns, according to CNN.The admissions policy which students have voted in favor of modifying notes that anyone who identifies as a woman is eligible for admission, the college’s website says.Non-binary students “who were assigned female at birth” are currently considered eligible for admission. But trans men are not considered for admission.Students have argued that the resolution came in part because of students who transitioned in college and felt excluded by the university’s use of descriptors including “women” and “alumnae”, the Boston Globe reported.Despite the student support, Wellesley administrators have said they will not consider the ballot measure ratified by students.“Although there is no plan to revisit its mission as a women’s college or its admissions policy, the college will continue to engage all students, including transgender male and non-binary students, in the important work of building an inclusive academic community where everyone feels they belong,” Wellesley’s media relations director, Stacey Schmeidel, said.Wellesley’s president, Paula Johnson, spoke about the proposed question last week in an open message entitled: “Affirming our mission and embracing our community.”Johnson’s message said: “Wellesley is a women’s college that admits cis, trans, and non-binary students – all who consistently identify as women.” Johnson added that Wellesley’s being both a “women’s college and a diverse community” was not a mutually exclusive proposition.Several students were critical of Johnson’s open message, with the Wellesley News’s editorial board calling out Johnson for intervening in student discourse and neglecting to mention legislative attacks on transgender people in her broader statement.“The Wellesley News editorial board is once again stating that transgender and non-binary students have always belonged and will continue to belong at Wellesley, a historically women’s college,” the editorial board wrote in a letter.Students have previously criticized the university’s lack of inclusive language for transgender and non-binary students.Students also have urged Wellesley’s board of trustees to keep a mural featuring the transgender flag which was powerwashed in 2021.School administrators have said that they support students who transition after being admitted, noting on their website that “[once] accepted to Wellesley, every student receives the full support and mentorship of college faculty, staff, and administrators through graduation”.Wellesley currently has no data on how many transgender and non-binary students attend the college, according to the New York Times. More