Fears over the spread of the COVID-19 virus have led more than 20,000 people (so far) to join in the request that organizers call off this year’s festival, which is still scheduled to run March 13-22. And even as the two tech giants withdraw from SXSW, a number of high-profile individuals say they’re still in, including Hillary Clinton and Rep. Adam Schiff. – Dallas Morning News
Category: issues
How The Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum Is Helping The Public Understand Pandemics
“Ebola was not a pandemic, but it created a panic rarely seen in the U.S. It was on the heels of the Ebola mania that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History developed Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World, a major exhibition proposed by Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease physician on the frontlines of the epidemic in West Africa. His idea came with the recognition that the public needed a better understanding of how outbreaks of unknown (or unfamiliar) infectious diseases start and spread.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Study: One In Five Students Are Financially Worse Off Because Of University
Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found while 80% of former students gained financially from attending university, about 20% earned less than those with similar school results who did not attend, highlighting how some subjects, such as creative arts, offer negative financial returns. – The Guardian
The Walkout At The ‘French Oscars’ Shows The Massive Fracture In French Film (And Society)
Unsurprisingly – but not a great look for the men of French cinema – mostly women have supported Adèle Haenel after she walked out when Roman Polanski was awarded for his film about the Dreyfus Affair. But even France’s Minister of Culture doesn’t think the award looks good at a moment when the #MeToo movement is truly starting to explode in France. – Le Monde
Boris Johnson’s Government Tries To Block Mary Beard As A British Museum Trustee For Her ‘Pro-Europe Views’
That’s not going over well at the Museum. “In response to the first rejection of a proposed British Museum trustee by No 10 for many years, the museum is understood to be planning to take matters into its own hands and appoint Beard without the lengthy and sometimes byzantine process of the Whitehall system.” – The Observer (UK)
As Roman Polanski Wins Best Director, Actors Leave The Césars, Calling Him A Pedophile
While most of the César ceremony was predictable (and perhaps this was too), “the ceremony’s most notable moment was only indirectly related to what was happening on its stage, as Portrait Of A Lady On Fire star Adèle Haenel [and director Céline Sciamma, followed by other actors] pointedly walked out of the theater after the announcement of this year’s Best Director award, which went to convicted sexual abuser Roman Polanski.” – France24
This Land Is Only Made For Woody Guthrie’s Descendants, Apparently
Though it might seem like common sense that, like “Happy Birthday,” the iconic Woody Guthrie song “This Land Is Your Land” should come out of copyright anytime now, that’s not what a recent court case decided – and not what his daughter wants. Nora Guthrie says this is about more than money; keeping it in copyright “allowed the song’s message of inclusion to be protected from abuse and political jingoism.” – The New York Times
Betrayal Of Education: America’s College Adjunct Crisis
According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, 25 percent of part-time faculty nationally rely on public assistance programs. In 1969, 78 percent of instructional staff at US institutions of higher education were tenured or on the tenure track; today, after decades of institutional expansion amid stagnant or dwindling budgets, the figure is 33 percent. More than one million workers now serve as nonpermanent faculty in the US, constituting 50 percent of the instructional workforce at public Ph.D.-granting institutions, 56 percent at public masters degree–granting institutions, 62 percent at public bachelors degree–granting institutions, 83 percent at public community colleges, and 93 percent at for-profit institutions. – New York Review of Books
How Coronavirus Is Affecting The Entertainment Industry
Theaters in China, the world’s second largest box office market behind the U.S. and Canada, have almost entirely shut down. So have theme parks and film shoots. Travel bans meant to curb the global spread of the virus have affected business conferences and live events, such as concerts. – Los Angeles Times
Roberto Bedoya On Expressing Oakland Creatively
Bedoya describes the culture of the city as “the embodiment of forms of knowledge and wisdom people have gained through their different lived experiences.” Another way he expresses this idea is that culture is the frame within which the arts provide “the power of shared sensibility and memory… kindling the emotions that make us aware of our shared humanity.” – Reportage From The Aesthetic Edge