Category: issues

CBS Tried To Get A Sexual Harassment Suit Dismissed By Saying The Harassed Woman Swore On Set

CBS, of course, is the (former) network of Les Moonves and Charlie Rose. Perhaps not surprisingly, the network’s “Eliza Dushku swore, so she couldn’t have been harassed!” stunt backfired – but it backfired in spectacular fashion when the footage the network proposed as exculpatory showed the actual harassment. Five by five, CBS. (For more details, here’s a timeline of the network’s last 13 months with #MeToo.) – The New York Times

The ‘Wisconsin Idea’ And The Battle Over Liberal Arts Education

The ideal upon which the University of Wisconsin was founded and expanded was not merely to train workers, but to “search for truth … [and] improv[e] the human condition,” ultimately reaching every family in the state. Reporter Adam Harris looks into the current state government’s attempts to change that idea, which is leading to budget cuts and the elimination of liberal arts majors. — The Atlantic

They Tried Once To Save Atlantic City With Art, And It Flopped. Can It Work This Time Around?

Last time, in 2012, it was the “multimillion-dollar, casino-tax funded Art Park conceived — but indifferently received and later returned to its roots as a vacant lot — by Lance Fung, a world-renowned curator. This time, an Atlantic City art scene is being birthed by less renowned people: longtime community activists, returned locals, old high school friends, and artist/entrepreneurs.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer

Why Beauty Pageants Still Have A Hold On The Popular Imagination

Pageants still tend to fascinate. The very word suggests why: The ceremony and accoutrements of beauty contests play a powerful role in the national imagination, with their sashes and their tiaras and their inevitable rows of machine-stitched sequins. The ratings for Miss America have fallen consistently since its heyday, but 4.3 million viewers still tuned in to ABC to watch Nia Franklin triumph at this year’s ceremony in September. The pageant, despite everything, still catches the eye, a shiny, contoured, rose-clutching cultural behemoth. – The Atlantic

University Group Asked Comedians To Sign ‘Behavioural Agreement’ Before Benefit Performance

A student group supporting UNICEF at the School of Oriental and African Studies, a prominent research institution in London, booked five comedians for a benefit performance. Then it sent them a contract “agreeing to our no tolerance policy with regards to racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia or anti-religion or anti-atheism. … All topics must be presented in a way that is respectful and kind.” — The Guardian

Tasmanian Billionaire Is Building Hotel-And-Arts-Center Next To His Modern Art Museum

Gambling mogul David Walsh, who built and opened MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in Hobart in 2011, has announced plans for a complex he’s calling Motown. In addition to 176 high-end hotel rooms, Motown will include a 1,000-seat theatre, a conference center, a library, a gallery, and a spa designed by no less than James Turrell and Marina Abramović. — The Art Newspaper

The MFA Degree-As-Fraud

We are a long way from late-19th-century Paris, where “academic painting” signified technically dazzling neoclassical figures, lush but sterile, and where the brutal disruptions of Manet and the Impressionists were consigned to the “Salon des Refusés.” Beauty within the academies, scandal without. Today these positions are reversed, and the academic institutions that serve as gatekeepers for the art world praise the conceptual, the alienating, and the abstract while disparaging craftsmanship as “merely” pretty and “merely” illustrative — and a sure sign of political quietism. – Chronicle of Higher Education