Category: issues

“In 1890, just months before the murder of some hundred and fifty Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee, a mustachioed anthropologist named Jesse Walter Fewkes dragged a state-of-the-art Edison phonograph to Passamaquoddy country [in northeastern Maine]. This was during the height of ‘salvage anthropology,’ an attempt to document the many tribes that were being massacred into extinction.” Those recordings have now been digitized and returned to the Passamaquoddy, and they’re being slowly deciphered and used to teach younger tribe members their people’s traditions. — The New Yorker

People want to blame the internet for the news industry’s troubles, but the seeds go back to the 1980s. To understand this moment and how to fix it, it means understanding three key forces creating this slow-motion disaster. – Slate

There’s a growing consensus across the donor community that the liberal arts can effectively complement the STEM model. Throw in traditional support for endowments and digitization projects, plus gifts earmarked for philosophy studies, and it becomes clear that the liberal arts funding space is more diverse and robust than one would initially suspect. – Inside Philanthropy

£400 million over the past eight years, with the reductions hitting hardest in rural areas. “[Local councils] claim dwindling resources from central government have meant they have had few options but to cut services such as culture and prioritise [social] services.” — The Stage

The flyer says the place offers a “journey back to socialism.” You can get a picture taken in an old restraining chair, or at a commissar’s desk in his coat; you can dial-a-dictator on an old rotary phone and hear Stalin or Brezhnev give a speech. It’s all “blithely morally neutral,” writes Masha Gessen. “In the absence of any historical or political context, everything becomes an exhibit. And, with enough cheer and an address in Chelsea, anything can be kitsch.” — The New Yorker

“The purchase is an opportunity to position the university, literally, to better contribute its expertise to national- and international-policy discussions. … It is also a power move for a university that ping-pongs in and out of the top-10 rankings — one that may lead more students to salivate over the school, and improve its status.” — The Atlantic

The scheme will recruit 100 babies and their families in 2019 and track them for the next 25 years. Another 100 will be recruited in 2020, and so on for at least two more years. – The Guardian