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On March 30th, 2021, the city newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine (HAZ) reported that the city of Hannover cancelled a lecture by Professor Helmut Bley, a renowned historian of colonialism in Africa, because an activist group, Initiative für Diskriminierungssensibilität und Rassismuskritik (IDiRa), that was also invited as a discussant, protested.[1] Professor Bley was scheduled to speak about […]
Der Beitrag On Cancel Culture erschien zuerst auf Philosophie InDebate.

Call for Papers for a Summer School at Klagenfurt, Austria, on September 11–16, 2023. Deadline: June 19, 2023

The modern presidency is a divider, not a uniter. It has become far too powerful to be anything else.

von Louise Porte Gelungener Abschluss des ersten Semesters in Aix-en-Provence: Die Studierenden des 2. Jahres haben, in guter Tradition des Studiengangs, als Fazit des dritten Semesters Referate im Fach "Culture Générale" (Allgemeinwissen) bei Rainer Gregarek gehalten. Die behandelten Themen waren Geschichtsschreibung, Nation und Terrorismus. Die Serie der Referate fand am 30. November ihren Abschluss. Mit […]

I have written about the effort to change the Canadian military's culture here although, to be clear, I am focused and expert (ish) on only one aspect of the culture change effort--changing attitudes and practices of civilian control.  Most of the conversation is about making the military more inclusive, diverse, and equitable, and the CDSN has done much in this area via our personnel research theme.  We have also discussed this much at the Battle Rhythm Podcast.  We know, thanks to Machiavelli, that any reform will face resistance from those who benefited from the old way.  And this is the case today, but there is more to it as I will explain.  The story right now is about a special issue of the Canadian Military Journal and the storm that has been generated in response.  Transforming Military Cultures is one of the nine networks currently funded by the Department of National Defence's Mobilizing Insights on Defence and Security program.  The TMC group organized a special issue of this journal to present a critical perspective on the military and what needs to change.  Yes, they used all kinds of buzz words that greatly annoy the right wing: critical race theory, decolonization, and anti-racism to name a few. * These kinds of analyses can be hard to read and process because they say: the way things have done has been harmful, and we need to change.  This calls out those who have been influential in the military (and their civilian overseers) in the past as complicit--either encouraging or condoning an environment in which those in power could act within impunity and those without power suffered quite significantly.  We know about the purge of LGBTQ2S+ from the military and intelligence services deep into the 1990s, we know about the problem of sexual misconduct from multiple reports by multiple retired supreme court justices, we have some understanding of the challenges Indigenous people have faced in and out of the CAF, and so on.  So, yeah, it calls out mostly white men because white men have generally had power when this bad stuff was happening.  It hurts the feelings of some apparently to be called out for the sins of the past.  Suck it up, snowflakes.Anyhow, this special issue got a heap of attention when a far right propaganda outlet blasted it, essentially siccing its readers on the TMC people who have now faced some significant harassment.  This is typical far right behavior, stuff that Trump does all the time (including providing Obama's address which led to a potential assassin showing up near Obama's house).  Some of the judges and prosecutors involved with Trump's various prosecutions have been swatted--that is when someone files a false report with the cops that indicates there is an emergency that requires the heavily armed special police types to go to a certain address with the caller hoping that the police end up killing the target of their animus.The ruckus this has stirred up has also led opponents of culture change to engage in a writing campaign aimed at CMJ.  Again, opponents to culture change largely but not entirely fit into one basket--those who find the ways of the past--of purged gays and lesbians, of women and men facing little recourse when sexually harassed, of senior officers abusing their authority, of historically excluded groups being relegated to inferior positions--to be the traditions they want maintained.  There is one additional complication--that the far right outlet's take on all of this was included in a Royal Canadian Navy news summary that was widely distributed.  The idea is that those in the navy should be aware of news stories, positive or negative, that are relevant to the navy.  While the far right is quite relevant and the military should be kept abreast of what it is up to, I think including such outlets in a news summary is akin to putting the press releases of Al Qaeda or the Islamic State in a news summary.  Again, the public affairs folks in the CAF should know what is being said about them, but I would not platform far right outlets in regular email summaries.And to be clear, while I want to avoid any false equivalence, I would not include press released by Greenpeace or Amnesty International or the Communist Party in a news summary either.  To be absolutely clear, we live in a time where the violence and the incitement of violence is coming from one side of the spectrum.  Far right terrorism has been far more harmful the past 20 years than far left violence.  So, we need to keep in mind where the threat is coming from, and we need to be clear that platforming the far right without context is very problematic.  I don't think there was ill intent here, but as one of my favorite bluesky follows often says, So, yes, the RCN needs to re-think what it sends around.  And I stand with TMC and others who are fighting the good fight of changing the culture of the military so that almost all Canadians would be welcome to join and to serve with pride and success--all except the far right, white supremacists that is. *A reminder that basic logic suggests that if one is anti-anti-racism, one is pro-racism.

Call for Papers for a Volume of the Yearbook of Knowledge and Society. Deadline: May 1, 2024

Culture wars have two main functions. First, to split an existing, dominant social or political coalition apart by the clever use of wedge-issues. (Not all wedge-issues are a part of a culture war.) So, a culture war reveals a latent or induces real divergence in a pre-existing coalition. So, for example, how to think about trans-issues […]

Vom 20.-22. September findet in Kiel die Tagung "Politics, Populism, Culture – The Politics of Populist Culture" statt. An den zwei Tagen werden unter anderem Themen verhandelt wie Visual Politics of Populism, Mass Media and Populism und Populist Rhetoric and Communication. Zudem wird das im nächsten Jahr erscheindende Buch "The Complexity of Populism" von Paula […]

Gene Healy


Last week, the New York Times ran a front-page story admiring President Biden's political acumen on culture-war issues ("Biden Sidesteps Any Notion That He's a 'Flaming Woke Warrior'", NYT, July 4, 2023). You've got to hand it to him, apparently: Biden has "deftly avoided becoming enmeshed in battles over hotly contested social issues" like transgender rights. "At a moment when the American political parties are trading fierce fire," we're told, "the president is staying out of the fray."
The claim is pure malarkey. In fact, Biden has repeatedly engaged the full powers of the presidency in an attempt to impose a forced settlement on issues where the American people are deeply divided.
The analysis, by Times reporter Reid Epstein, is entirely style over substance. Being elderly and somewhat out of touch is the president's secret superpower on social issues, the argument goes. Biden is "white, male, 80 years old, and not particularly up-to-date on the language of the left"; Epstein writes; "the president has not adopted the terminology of progressive activists," and sometimes seems confused by it.
To be fair, it's tough even for non-octogenarians to stay abreast of the ever-proliferating jargon in this area. Last month, Biden's Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, warned unsuspecting Americans of the perils of "biphobia" and "interphobia,"; and last week brought new "health equity" guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on "chestfeeding" infants. (Epstein got a little confused himself; the original version of the article included this perplexing sentence: "[Biden] also does not always remember the words most American politicians use to describe same-sex people.")
But even if, as the Times piece insists, "Mr. Biden has never presented as a left-wing culture warrior," what the president is actually doing with the weapons of executive power ought to count for something. For example:
the president's proposed Title IX edicts would give him the power to make national rules about which kid gets to use which bathroom and who gets to play on the girls' team for every K-12 public school and practically every college in America;
a rulemaking put forward by Biden's Department of Health and Human Services would require doctors and hospitals to provide "gender-affirming care"— puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and "top" and "bottom" sex-change surgeries—including for minor children. Private insurers—and the taxpayer, via Medicaid—will be required to foot the bill;
and in the president's June 2022 "Executive Order on Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals," he proposes sending the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after doctors practicing "conversion therapy," which may be defined broadly enough to include psychologists who resist immediately forking over puberty blockers.
"Staying out of the fray"? C'mon, man.
Millions of Americans believe that medical intervention for trans-identifying minors is compassionate "gender-affirming care"; millions more believe it amounts to experimenting on children in the midst of social contagion. The state of the medical evidence here is "worryingly weak"; but even if it wasn't, the debate's not likely to be settled by telling people to shut up and "trust the science."
Biden's attempt to force a settlement on transgender issues points to a larger problem with "the deformation of our governmental structure" toward one-man rule. The original constitutional design required broad consensus for broad policy changes, but as law professors John O. McGinnis and Michael B. Rappaport warn in an important recent article, "Presidential Polarization":
"now the president can adopt such changes unilaterally…. Domestically, Congress's delegation of policy decisions to the executive branch allows the President's administration to create the most important regulations of our economic and social life. The result is relatively extreme regulations that can shift radically between administrations of different parties."

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is running for president, and he has his own views on medical treatment for gender dysphoria: he says it amounts to making children "guinea pigs" and "mutilating them." If elected, he'll certainly take inspiration from Biden's FTC move—maybe he'll even encourage a few creative prosecutions under the federal Female Genital Mutilation law.
Alexander Hamilton supposed that "energy in the executive" would lead to "steady administration of the laws." In the service of presidential culture-warring, that energy can mean whipsawing between "compulsory" and "forbidden" in four to eight-year cycles, depending on which party manages to seize the White House.
Worse still, as McGinnis and Rappaport note:
The imperial administrative presidency also raises the stakes of any presidential election, making each side fear that the other will enjoy largely unchecked and substantial power in many areas of policy.

That fear encourages the dangerous sentiment that every election is a "Flight 93 Election": charge the cockpit, do or die. The relentless growth of federal power—and its concentration in the executive branch—has made our government a catalyst of social strife.
Having a president who actually stays out of the culture-war fray isn't just a worthy goal: under current conditions it may be essential to the "domestic Tranquility" our federal government is supposed to ensure. But unless we expect them to refrain out of the goodness of their hearts, we'll need structural reforms that limit their power to intervene.

Mustafa Akyol and Neal McCluskey


America's culture wars are sometimes perceived as conflict between "conservatives," who defend the values of white Christians, and "progressives," who defend the rights of minorities. But there is something new these days complicating this always too‐​simple dichotomy: Some minorities are also quite conservative in their moral standards, and they are raising their voices against impositions from the progressive side.
This is evident in ongoing protests by Muslim and Christian families, among others, from Maryland to Los Angeles, against public schools pushing lessons about gender and sexuality that contradict religious values. "Protect our children" these families have called together, adding, "Protect religious freedom."
On June 24, in National Review, we highlighted this new development in a co‐​authored article: "Defuse the Culture War with Liberated Education."
First, we argued that the newly emerging Muslim‐​Christian alliance for traditional values offers interesting lessons:
There are lessons for both political camps. America's assertive progressives should realize that theirs is a counterproductive campaign. By advancing their ideals through assertion and coercion, instead of persuasion, they are alienating many people, including some minorities they claim to defend. Among Muslims, they are also giving ammunition to hardliners, who preach that Western freedom is a lie, that it only means freedom from religion and tradition, and thus Muslims should reject it everywhere.

On the other hand, America's conservatives should reconsider their distance from minorities, including a rigid stance against immigration, symbolized by Donald Trump's famous "Build the Wall" campaign. Those on the political right should realize that they may well share values with some of the people that they want to push behind that wall.

Then, we also proposed a solution to these increasingly intense culture wars in American education:
We believe that the best strategy is to keep government out of decisions about values and culture whenever possible, including — perhaps especially — in education, which is about nothing less than shaping human minds. This requires allowing more choice, so families can decide for themselves what their kids will learn. Instead of diverse people being forced to fight, they can freely pursue what they think is right.

The solution, in other words, was in going back to the classical liberal foundations of America:
Government should not discriminate against LGBTQ individuals, nor should it discriminate against people with traditional values. The only way to treat all equally, while advancing genuine tolerance, is the good old American value of limited government.

Read the whole article here in National Review. Read more about School Choice here. And see our catalogue of culture war in public schools – the Public Schooling Battle Map – here.

Jeffrey Miron


This article appeared on Substack on July 31, 2023.
A recent front in the culture wars is public libraries, such as in Front Royal, Virginia, where
a handful of residents ha[s] begun demanding the removal of certain books in the children's section of Warren County's only public library. Most of the titles involved LGBTQ+ themes.

In Libertarian Land, such conflicts do not arise, since public libraries do not exist.
Despite the word "public," libraries are not a "public good" that private markets might undersupply.
The textbook public good is national defense. If any private group mounts an army that stands ready to defend the country, others will free ride. This makes it hard for the provider to finance its efforts and therefore discourages private provision.
No such issue exists for books; private provision is bountiful. People cannot free ride on book purchases by others.
The crucial benefit of leaving "libraries" to the marketplace is that no one's tax dollars support the provision of particular books. If Amazon sells books that some people do not want their children to read, these people do not buy such books. Thus the polarization that results from public libraries is absent.
Advocates will respond that public libraries provide free access to books and thus benefit low‐​income families. That is mainly false; public libraries typically locate in middle‐​class neighborhoods and serve middle‐​income families.
Fans of public provision might also argue that such libraries provide more than free access to books: story time, community events, author book signings, and the like. Private book stores, however, can do and provide these services if demand exists, perhaps because it brings in paying customers.

Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es. Brillat-Savarin's words describe how what we eat and how we prepare it forms part of our identity. The Bolognese tortellini, the Swabian Spätzle and the Polish Łazanki are very much different from one another. What they have in common, however, is that they do not represent merely a dish, but an essential part of regional heritages. Under the nationalist slogan of 'food sovereignty', the Italian government presents itself as the protector of Italian culinary identity with a ban on cultivated meat. From an EU law perspective, the ban is a largely ineffective 'talk show law'. Nevertheless, it puts on the table the politics underlying food regulation and the room left for national differentiation within harmonised areas of the internal market.

Contemporary Greek politics is typically characterized by polarization, not only during pre-electoral periods, like the current one leading to the parliamentary elections of 21 May 2023, but also in-between elections. A war-like political climate reflects decades of ideological conflict, party-led politicization of the state administration and interest groups, and widening socioeconomic inequalities. Yet, Greece has … Continued

Can there be a cultural study of EU law? The notion of legal culture is notoriously tricky. It is both omnipresent and yet seemingly ungraspable. Can we nevertheless hope to dispel the mystery of legal culture, and seize this notion as an object of study? And can it provide a method to improve our understanding of EU law?

Call for Papers for a Workshop Session at the Congress of the Swiss Sociological Association in Basel, Switzerland, on September 9–11, 2024. Deadline: January 5, 2024