On September 26, 2016, a white supremacist group calling itself “Identity Evropa” (@IdentityEvropa) used Twitter to announce a new campaign called #ProjectSiege. The campaign would target college campuses across the nation with eye-catching posters designed to glorify white European identity and the politics of the Alt-Right. Pairing glossy images of classical and Renaissance sculptures like…
Category: History and Context
Crisis Democracy: Moral Struggle in American Politics
President Mark Schlissel and the UM Board of Regents are moving forward with neo-Nazi provocateur Richard Spencer’s request for campus space to host a speaking event. In a communication to the student body that emphasized his opposition to Spencer’s “vile” white supremacy, Schlissel nonetheless justified his decision in terms of a defense of democratic institutions.…
How to Build a People’s University
By Emily Price, Kate Silbert, and Gregory Parker If you visited the bicentennial exhibit Forever Unfinished: Making and Remaking a Public University, you had the chance to stand behind the actual lectern used by university commencement speakers and consider what you would say if invited to give the keynote address. You might urge the graduates…
How I prepared for the biggest talk of my career: thoughts on speaking at the March for Science in DC
On April 22, I spoke on the main stage at the March for Science in Washington, DC, because I agreed with the march’s core principles – including regarding the need for diversity and inclusion in science, for evidence-based decision-making, and for strengthened funding for scientific research. In the weeks leading up to the march, I…
On “Populism” Today
The political meaning of “populism” (and “populist”) has become notoriously difficult to define. In the United States, it once had a fairly clear definition, referring to the People’s Party, which was founded in 1892 to represent the interests in particular of poor and middling farmers and to challenge the two major parties, Democrats and Republicans,…
Introducing LearnSpeakAct: A LSA Blog
This new blog is rooted in a particular time and place and emerged from a distinctive set of circumstances. In the fall 2016, the University of Michigan unveiled a five-year strategic plan to increase Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on campus. During the same semester, racist flyers were posted across campus that made erroneous and discriminatory claims about the nature…
Is Trump a Fascist?
By Geoff Eley, Department of History During the events of the recent past—especially during the Presidential election campaign and the turmoil surrounding the inauguration and early initiatives of the new administration-—the label of “fascist” has been easily reached for and bandied around, whether in relation to Steve Bannon and other intellectual influences now centrally installed in…