Media top headlines July 1
Reaction to Bill Cosby's sudden release from prison, Nikole Hannah-Jones getting tenure granted by the UNC board, and liberals rejoicing over Donald Rumsfeld's death round out today's top media headlines
Critics are slamming an essay published in New York Times Magazine this week that took aim at anti-critical race theory laws being signed into law across the country.
In the piece published on Tuesday titled, "The War on History Is a War on Democracy," Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder compared opposition to CRT to Russian "memory laws" that essentially erased blemishes in the nation's past.
"This spring, memory laws arrived in America. Republican state legislators proposed dozens of bills designed to guide and control American understanding of the past. As of this writing, five states (Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas and Oklahoma) have passed laws that direct and restrict discussions of history in classrooms. The Department of Education of a sixth (Florida) has passed guidelines with the same effect. Another 12 state legislatures are still considering memory laws," Synder wrote.
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He argued, "History is not therapy, and discomfort is part of growing up… Teachers in high schools cannot exclude the possibility that the history of slavery, lynchings and voter suppression will make some non-Black students uncomfortable. The new memory laws invite teachers to self-censor, on the basis of what students might feel — or say they feel. The memory laws place censorial power in the hands of students and their parents. It is not exactly unusual for White people in America to express the view that they are being treated unfairly; now such an opinion could bring history classes to a halt."
Snyder later singled out Florida's policy, which reads, "Examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with State Board approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of [W]hite persons."
"This is a striking repetition of the rhetorical tactic of the Russian memory law of 2014: In both, the crimes of the Nazis are deployed to silence a history of suffering — in Russia to deter criticism of the Stalin era, in Florida to forbid education about racism. And in both cases, the measures in question actually make the Holocaust impossible to understand," Snyder reacted. "If it is illegal in Florida to teach about systemic racism, then aspects of the Holocaust relevant for young Americans go untaught. German race laws drew from the precedent set by Jim Crow in the United States. But since Jim Crow is systemic racism, having to do with American society and law, the subject would seem to be banned in Florida schools."
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National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry took to Twitter on Thursday with a lengthy rebuke against the NYT Magazine essay.
"It’s hard to exaggerate how shoddy this New York Times magazine piece by @TimothyDSnyder comparing anti-CRT rules to Russia’s ‘memory laws’ is," Lowry began the Twitter thread. "He either didn’t take time to understand these rules or deliberately is distorting the truth."
Lowry called out Snyder's claim that Florida is attempting to "to forbid education about racism" and the subject of Jim Crow "would seem to be banned in Florida schools."
"This is a blatant falsehood," Lowry declared. "He interprets this prohibition on teaching a controversial theory about contemporary American society as a prohibition on lessons about the history of racism in this country. He must know that this nonsense if he looked at the rule that actually passed."
He then highlighted the Florida State Board of Education's policy, highlighting a sentence not found in Snyder's essay that reads, "Instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the contributions or women, African American and Hispanic people to our country."
"Again, that’s the immediate prior sentence!" Lowry exclaimed. "And the sentence right *after* says, ‘Instruction must include the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments.’ That obviously includes the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments."
"How could @TimothDSnyder miss this or leave it out when it is directly relevant to—and gives the lie—to a key accusation in his piece?" Lowry wondered. "Indeed, if a state like Florida isn’t banning instruction about racism and Jim Crow, his entire argument falls apart."
The National Review editor-in-chief also cited a statute in Florida law that says instructors should be teaching "efficiently and faithfully, using the books and materials required that meet the highest standards for professionalism and historical accuracy… The history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of African Americans to society. Instructional materials shall include the contributions of African Americans to American society."
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"This is *the law* in Florida. Nothing changed it, and in fact the new board of education rule is obviously written to accord with it, hence the references to slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the civil rights movement," Lowry stressed. "The question now is whether @TimothyDSnyder or the @NYTmag will correct his falsehood, which is probably wrong and would have been revealed as such with any competent fact-checking or just a little bit of curiosity."
Lowry continued, "If @TimothyDSnyder doesn’t correct his blatant distortion it would show, sadly, like the authoritarians he rightly excoriates, he considers a convenient political narrative more important than the truth."
Chronicles Magazine associate editor Pedro Gonzalez, associate editor of Chronicles Magazine, also blasted Snyder's work.
"Idgaf what effeminate eggheads like ‘scholar of totalitarianism’ Timothy Snyder say because the basic narrative of CRT is that [W]hites are uniquely bad--wife is [W]hite, my son is half, this trash is a threat to my family, so Snyder et al can shove it," Gonzalez tweeted.
Sullydish columnist Andrew Sullivan mocked the Times, writing "NYT magazine strikes again."
Washington Free Beacon reporter Joe Gabriel Simonson suspected that even if New York Times Magazine corrected Snyder's essay, they would not be so forthcoming.
"They may correct it, but don’t expect them to admit to doing so. Remember their ghost edits to the 1619 Project?" Simonson wrote.
The Times did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
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