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In Berkeley, a Library Protest Is a Fight for Anthropology in an A.I. Age

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In Berkeley, a Library Protest Is a Fight for Anthropology in an A.I. Age

BERKELEY, Calif. — To kick off homecoming weekend final fall, the College of California, Berkeley, held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new knowledge sciences constructing, often known as the Gateway. At a price of over half a billion {dollars}, the 367,270-square-foot constructing, with “prolonged sightlines and pure light-filled corridors,” is being billed as a hub for analysis in synthetic intelligence, knowledge analytics and machine studying.

That will symbolize the longer term, however the previous is only a quick stroll throughout campus within the stacks of the anthropology library. For many years, the repository has served generations of students in an area as modest because the Gateway is grand: a 1,500-square-foot nook on the second flooring of the anthropology division’s constructing, with a comfy studying space of armchairs and pc terminals alongside one wall.

For days now, the library has grow to be a scene of occupation. College students have stuffed it with tents, sleeping baggage and air mattresses in a last-ditch effort to avoid wasting the 67-year-old establishment devoted to anthropology, which encompasses the examine of humanity, societies and cultures. The college is getting ready to maneuver the collections of archaeological area notes and books — about 80,000 volumes in complete, on topics as assorted as people tales, Black tradition and Mexican American social actions — to a close-by warehouse and the primary library, saving $400,000 yearly.

For the coed occupiers, the battle is as a lot a battle over a library as it’s over humanities and social sciences in an age when the world is obsessive about expertise and appears keen to interchange the bodily world with digital experiences pushed by A.I.

“It’s about basically writing a unique story about what training is, what the college is for,” mentioned Jesús Gutiérrez, a graduate scholar who works on the library and is writing a dissertation about people artwork types of the African diaspora.

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Prior to now 5 years alone, the variety of Berkeley undergraduate college students selecting to main in anthropology has dropped by a couple of quarter, a part of a technology that has struggled to pay scholar loans and flocked towards science and engineering within the profitable shadow of Silicon Valley.

School members say they’re impressed by the depth of the younger college students protesting to avoid wasting the anthropology library, a trigger that in any other case has relied on assist from Ralph Nader, the liberal activist and onetime third-party presidential candidate, and Jerry Brown, the previous governor of California who majored in classics when he was an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley greater than a half century in the past.

As a third-year anthropology scholar, Ian Molloy, one of many protest organizers, has heard the snickers from classmates pursuing science and engineering majors, framing his topic selection as “Oh, you don’t wish to become profitable.” He known as the library, the place he has discovered titles on the domestication of animals important to his analysis, the “spine” of the division, and central to rebuilding group after the isolation of the pandemic.

Regardless of the outcry, the administration says it isn’t budging, explaining that the cuts are crucial because it faces an $82 million funds deficit. In March, Carol Christ, the Berkeley chancellor, pointed to raises that the U.C. system had agreed to pay graduate scholar instructors and assist workers as one driver of latest prices.

The college has mentioned it is going to save about $1.5 million by closing not simply the anthropology library however the arithmetic and physics libraries as effectively, and reducing hours and companies at others.

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“We’re conscious of the protest and are monitoring the state of affairs,” the college mentioned in an announcement. “Concerning the anthropology library’s closure, we, too, want the library may stay open, however that isn’t an choice at this level.”

At 93, Laura Nader stays a prolific scholar and trainer a long time after she turned the anthropology division’s first girl to realize a tenure-track place, in 1960. “However I couldn’t have performed it with out the library,” Dr. Nader, Mr. Nader’s sister, mentioned. She worries that college students focused on anthropology will as a substitute desire different universities with devoted anthropology libraries.

Dr. Nader views the deliberate closure of the library as one other step within the decline of humanities and social sciences typically — and anthropology particularly.

“So rapidly it turns into a job query,” she mentioned. “You don’t want anthropology.”

Underneath the administration’s plan, a number of the supplies within the library, based in 1956 and later named for George and Mary Foster, two outstanding Berkeley anthropologists, will probably be moved to a storage middle in close by Richmond, Calif. Different components of the gathering will probably be dispersed all through the college’s essential library.

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Alexander Parra, who’s majoring in pc science and Chicano research and who has been occupying the library, mentioned that one of many issues that may be misplaced if the library closed was the potential for serendipity — of discovering a e book you didn’t know you have been in search of. When college students staged an occupation earlier this 12 months, after the college introduced the closure plans in February, Mr. Parra by likelihood seen a title about Mexican American youth organizations, a topic he was researching.

“That’s me,” he mentioned. “That’s me in that e book.”

Some college students and professors additionally see the battle as an fairness challenge. Amongst these majoring in anthropology, 43 % of scholars are from underrepresented minority teams, in contrast with 5 % for pc science. The library additionally serves these majoring in Chicano research and African American research, disciplines that likewise have a better share of unrepresented minority college students.

Mr. Brown, who as soon as taught a course in Berkeley’s anthropology division, has reached out to members of the College of California Board of Regents, urging it to spare the library.

“Nice and capacious minds have graced that constructing,” he wrote in an e-mail to the board chairman. “To exchange it now, even partially, by a mere warehouse in Richmond is past the pale.”

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Charles Hirschkind, the chair of the anthropology division, mentioned that the college had diminished the variety of graduate college students it accepts into the anthropology since 2004 by a bit greater than half, reflecting, he mentioned, the division’s “weaker monetary state of affairs” and the rise in prices to assist graduate college students.

“Once we’re speaking about budgetary restraints, we’re additionally speaking about priorities and the place one decides to speculate,” he mentioned. “And I feel the college feels little incentive to put money into the social sciences and humanities.”

Dr. Hirschkind mentioned some college members had been pleasantly shocked to see the youthful technology preventing for the library after assuming college students that grew up within the digital age may need much less appreciation for bodily books or the pleasures of a library. And the occupation of the library, to some, is harking back to an earlier activist period at Berkeley.

“There’s a sturdy sense of communitas within the air — it isn’t in any respect like identification politics — we’d like a brand new phrase for it,” Nancy Scheper-Hughes, an anthropology professor, wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Brown. “They wish to learn. They wish to be with open communities of individuals of very completely different concepts.”

The scholars, in the meantime, have been residing within the library for greater than every week, learning for finals, taking part in board video games and consuming breakfasts of croissants and granola. Frightened that the college is making an attempt to expire the clock till summer season break after which dismantle the library, the scholars say they may keep so long as it takes.

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“They may give us the library tomorrow,” Mr. Molloy mentioned, “and we’ll all be blissful to go residence.”

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Education

How Usher Writes a Commencement Speech

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How Usher Writes a Commencement Speech

At 5:04 a.m. last Monday, Usher sent his publicist an audio file named “My Commencement 2025.”

“What ya think?” one of the world’s most renowned musicians wrote.

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He had been awake for hours, tinkering with the speech he would deliver at Emory University that morning. The school was about to feed his script into a teleprompter. But Usher, who allowed The New York Times to peer into his process over more than a month, wasn’t done.

In the dark and quiet of his bedroom, the 46-year-old star was, at last, away from the roaring crowds and hypnotizing special effects of a tour through Asia and Europe. Now he had more edits to make, more lines to weigh, more pacing to measure.

Those adjustments still did not satisfy him. Even after he arrived at Emory, he kept writing.

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Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times

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The fans had filtered out of the O2 Arena in London, disappearing into the darkness, after Usher sang, danced, flirted and roller-skated through a panorama of his career. It was late on April 9, but Usher needed to convene a meeting.

His schedule had vanishingly few openings, and he wanted to talk through what to say at Emory, where he would receive an honorary doctorate.

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He had given a commencement speech before, at a conservatory in Boston in 2023. The crowd at Emory, though, would be bigger and more academically diverse, ranging from physics majors to future United Methodist ministers.

The moment would be jarringly different and endlessly more complicated than the one in Boston. As the date of this spring’s speech approached, the Trump administration was pressuring universities and stripping funding from campuses.

A fully improvised address was out of the question. Usher, though, wanted a framework that would leave room for his performer’s instinct.

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Lydia Kanuga, Usher’s publicist and the person who would prepare the earliest drafts, observed that he often spoke of “spark.” Shawn Wilson, a fixture of Usher’s charitable foundation for at-risk students, floated a two-theme talk focused on leadership and spark. Chris Hicks, a strategic adviser, pressed deeper and argued that Usher, whose foundation has close ties to Emory, should explicitly blend his life experience with the world’s turbulence.

Mr. Hicks suggested that Usher talk about the times he fell down and then got back up. “That aligns with him,” he said, adding, “because as someone who has a youngster that age, that’s all we talk about: There are going to be some very lean days, and you have to be your own champion.”

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“I like that, perseverance and resilience,” Mr. Wilson chimed in. Someone else reminded Usher that the talk would need to include a few moments of celebration, too.

Friday Draft

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Good morning, Emory!

What a profound honor it is to stand before you today—not just as an artist or entrepreneur, but as someone who, like each of you, knows the power of dreaming big, working hard, and finding purpose. I’d like to thank President Gregory L. Fenves, Chairman Bob Goddard, and the esteemed members of the Emory University Board of Trustees for having me.

Monday Draft

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[ … ]
What a profound honor it is to stand before you today — not just as an artist or entrepreneur, but as someone who, like each of you, knows the power of dreaming big, working hard, and finding purpose.

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Early drafts of the speech called for Usher to begin with a fairly standard recitation of gratitude.

But Usher rewrote the top of the speech a few hours before he arrived at Emory, to bring in some guiding principles of his life.

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In London, he told his team he wanted “gems,” speedy lines that might resonate sharply with individual listeners. The Monday morning rewrite added these lines up high in the text.

But no speech, the brain trust knew, could be entirely feel-good at a time when a national storm was raging over education. Usher had a political streak — he appeared at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris — but his brand had hardly been a partisan lightning rod. His team urged caution.

Usher said relatively little as his aides talked over ideas. Instead, he peered at a notebook, pen in hand. His vision was forming.

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He craved a sensible message for the masses, with easy-to-remember mantras and clear takeaways that were not suffocatingly scripted. He wanted a snappy sound-bite or two and a message imbued with his own story, not just with stock lines.

He had lots of time to fill. Emory wanted his speech to run between 15 and 20 minutes, an eternity for a man whose hits have come in four-minute bursts.

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The meeting ended, the gallery of faces vanished, and Usher sat alone, speaking to himself in front of a mirror well past midnight.

Ms. Kanuga started thinking. Usher kept on touring. But he also began to dream about the Emory speech. Sixteen days after the brainstorming session, he said he was sometimes startling awake to scribble ideas.

He had been reflecting on titans of oratory, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Quincy Jones and Denzel Washington, as well as two men who had taught at Emory, Desmond M. Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

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Giving a speech at Emory was personal for Usher. It was, after all, going to take place in Atlanta, the city that fueled his rise to fame from a Chattanooga church choir. Speaking in a city where he had become something of a landmark himself would bring a different sort of pressure.

His post-meeting murmurs in London had been a way to test and channel ideas. But at a hotel in Amsterdam in late April, he thought the speech was still in infancy. He had grown adamant, though, that he wanted clear language — the musician who regarded run-ons as his weakness did not want to lose listeners in long sentences.

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And he was looking to build a speech that would prove he was not just an entertainer, but also someone who could bring meaning, even without a college education to his name.

“There’s a beginning, there’s a middle and there’s an end, and within that process, what you choose to make people feel,” he said. “Do they smile? Do they think? Do they laugh? Do they cry? Are they angry? Are they motivated?”

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Tone, he said, would matter. He was working on his speaking voice.

“In the same way I’ve figured out how tone and algorithm and cadence works in music, it does the same in speech,” he said.

The question of whether politics would enter the text loomed. Usher knew he was not headed to Emory as a candidate for Congress. He also did not seem inclined to ignore the turbulence entirely.

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Friday Draft

I’m 46, and over the last few decades, I’ve seen how fast things can change. Some of those changes are beautiful — technology connecting us, communities rising up, barriers breaking down. But some of those changes are deeply troubling — especially when we look at the state of basic education in this country.

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Sunday Draft

I’m 46, and over the last few decades, I’ve seen how fast things can change. Some of those changes are beautiful — technology connecting us, communities rising up, barriers breaking down. But some of those changes are deeply troubling — especially when we look at the state of basic education in this country.
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Through all of the edits in the final days, this section remained a staple of Usher’s speech.

The moment in the country, Usher thought, was too consequential to ignore. But he opted for a subtle message about policy, not a direct attack on President Trump. After some other edits, the line appeared later in the speech than where it was initially drafted.

This gets at a big debate about higher education in America, and one that Usher is thinking about as the father of two children who are approaching college age.

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Ms. Kanuga had been trying to translate the ideas from the brainstorming session into a draft that Usher could use as a launchpad for his own turn working on the speech. As the commencement drew near, though, she could only guess what the singer would ultimately decide to say.

Usher landed in the United States on the Thursday before his Monday speech. He had yet to plunge fully into Ms. Kanuga’s latest draft.

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Usher texted her the next afternoon. He worried that the script sounded “too corporate.”

“It needs to have more grit,” he wrote, and “more touch points that humanize me.”

Ms. Kanuga asked when they could talk. He replied with seven paragraphs.

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He wanted to say how he felt his own school had not understood him — an account he had hinted at only with people who knew him well.

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Sunday Draft

When I moved to Atlanta, I was so far behind that I was unable to keep up, and the staff at the school I was attending didn’t have the resources to help me, so I was assigned to special education classes. As a young black man, it was discouraging.

As Delivered

I was academically so far behind that I was unable to keep up and the staff at the school I attended didn’t have the resources to help me, so I was assigned to special education classes. so they assigned me to remedial classes, which at the time felt like a judgment on my ability. As a young Black man, or a kid at the time, I was discouraged.

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Less than 72 hours before his speech, Usher added this anecdote, hoping it would help his audience understand “the reality” of education in America.

Usher relished the silence from the audience in response to this section. It seemed to him that the crowd had empathy, and that his willingness to be vulnerable landed in a poignant, powerful way.

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Ms. Kanuga had never fathomed that he would want to discuss it at Emory, but a story that he had never shared publicly would now become the spine of the speech.

“I will work this in,” Ms. Kanuga replied, before Usher sent her six more messages.

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Ms. Kanuga emailed the script to Emory officials — with some of Usher’s via-text additions included verbatim, and others streamlined — at 6:12 p.m. on Sunday. The subject line was “Usher speech // FINAL.”

Usher attended a reception that night, honoring him and other honorary degree recipients — an intimate, relaxed setting that left him feeling looser.

Afterward, he stopped for Japanese food and then started fiddling with the script some more.

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He dozed off, he said later, with his phone in his hand.

Around 2:30 a.m., Usher was awake and accepting that he would not fall back asleep. Taking command for these final hours, he started reading and rewriting, recording and rehearsing.

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His wife, Jennifer, said she stayed quiet. When Usher’s assistant walked in, the singer was still in bed, assessing how the script sounded.

“Just making certain that I pay attention to the beats,” he said later.

He actually felt more comfortable with speechwriting than songwriting, he said. But this process was still much like rehearsing a dance.

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“You’re listening, and I’m like, ‘OK, let me slow this down,’” he said. “‘Make that personal. They’re going to laugh at that. Oh, that’s a joke moment.’”

By about 5 a.m., he had “completely changed just about everything” somehow, whether in text or tone or timing — everything, he said, but his intent.

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Usher sent Ms. Kanuga his latest edits, and she shared them with Emory at 6:29 a.m., hoping the rewrite would make the teleprompter before the 8 a.m. event. Usher headed to the campus and donned academic regalia.

Backstage, he was still typing changes into his phone. When he heard bagpipers, he thought about the movie “Sinners” and conceived a line about vampires.

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Then it was his turn.

As Delivered

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Good morning Emory!
|

Monday Draft

What a profound honor it is to stand before you today — not just as an artist or entrepreneur, but as someone who, like each of you, knows the power of dreaming big, working hard, and finding purpose.

As Delivered

What a profound honor it is to stand before you, not just as an artist or entrepreneur, |But as someone more than that, who’s just like you, that knows the power of dreaming big, working hard and finding a purpose,

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Usher did some ad-libbing from the start.

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While he mostly stuck to the speech he had reworked overnight, he did interject a few words here and there.

For example, he reveled in multiple mentions of his newly bestowed honorary title of doctor.

He spoke for about 17 minutes and was rewarded with one of the morning’s longest rounds of applause.

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Afterward, as he does after shows, he thought about what had worked.

Parents, he said, had been so animated when he spoke about education that he wound up altering the delivery of his next line. When his audience started to cheer a favored section about how “losers let it happen” and “winners make it happen,” he had thought about pausing but pressed on, looking to build momentum. And he had been pleased when the discussion of his own schooling had landed to somber silence.

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He regretted nothing.

“I love the fact that it was honest, that it was conversational, that it was me authentically,” he said. “Even the adjustments in the last minute, that’s me. That’s who I am.”

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Education

Video: Opinion | We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.

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Video: Opinion | We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.

I’m a historian of totalitarianism. I look at fascist rhetoric. I’ve been thinking about the sources of the worst kinds of history for a quarter of a century. “Experts say the constitutional crisis is here now.” ”The Trump administration deporting hundreds of men without a trial.” “A massive purge at the F.B.I.” “To make people afraid of speaking out against him.” I’m leaving to the University of Toronto because I want to do my work without the fear that I will be punished for my words. The lesson of 1933 is you get out sooner rather than later. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last decade trying to prepare people if Trump were elected once, let alone twice. “Look what happened. Is this crazy?” [CHEERING] I did not flee Trump. But if people are going to leave the United States or leave American universities, there are reasons for that. One thing you can definitely learn from Russians — — is that it’s essential to set up centers of resistance in places of relative safety. We want to make sure that if there is a political crisis in the U.S., that Americans are organized. ”We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet. It’s all just kicking in.” My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, “We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.” And I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship. Our ship can’t sink. And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink. “The golden age of America has only just begun.” America has long had an exceptionalist narrative — fascism can happen elsewhere, but not here. But talking about American exceptionalism is basically a way to get people to fall into line. If you think that there’s this thing out there called America and it’s exceptional, that means that you don’t have to do anything. Whatever is happening, it must be freedom. And so then what your definition of freedom is just gets narrowed and narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, and soon, you’re using the word freedom — what you’re talking about is authoritarianism. Toni Morrison warned us: “The descent into a final solution is not a jump. It’s one step. And then another. And then another.” We are seeing those steps accelerated right now. There are some words in Russian in particular that I feel help us to understand what’s happening in the United States because we now have those phenomena. “Proizvol”: It’s the idea that the powers that be can do anything they want to and you have no recourse. This not knowing who is next creates a state of paralysis in society. The Tufts student whose visa was removed because she co-authored an article in the Tufts student newspaper. [DESPERATE YELLING] I thought, what would I do if guys in masks tried to grab my student? Would I scream? Would I run away? Would I try to pull the mask off? Would I try to videotape the scene? Would I try to pull the guys off of her? Maybe I would get scared and run away. The truth is, I don’t know. Not knowing terrified me. It’s a deliberate act of terror. It’s not necessary. It’s just being done to create a spirit of us and them. “Prodazhnost”: It’s a word in Russian for corruption, but it’s larger than corruption. It refers to a kind of existential state in which not only everything but everyone can be bought or sold. “Critics are calling this a quid pro quo deal between Adams and President Trump.” “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza.” “He made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million.” There’s an expression in Polish: “I found myself at the very bottom, and then I heard knocking from below.” In Russian, that gets abbreviated to “There is no bottom.” “We cannot allow a handful of communist radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws.” What starts to matter is not what is concealed but what has been normalized. There is no limit to the depravity — ”President Trump did not rule out the possibility of a third term.” — and the sadism — “The White House released this video titled ASMR Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” — and the cruelty that we are watching now play out in real time. “This facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use.” You have to continually ask yourself the question, “Is this OK? Is there a line I wouldn’t cross? Is there something I would not do?” People say, oh, the Democrats should be doing more. They should be fixing things. But if you want the Democrats to do things, you have to create the platform for them. You have to create the spectacle, the pageantry, the positive energy, the physical place where they can come to you. Poland recently went through a shift towards authoritarianism. Unlike in Russia, unlike in Hungary, the media remained a place, in Poland, where you could criticize the regime. And as a result, democracy returned. The moral of Poland is that our democratic institutions — the media, the university, and the courts — are essential. You know you’re living in a fascist society when you’re constantly going over in your head the reasons why you’re safe. What we want is a country where none of us have to feel that way.

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A $5 Billion Federal School Voucher Proposal Advances in Congress

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A  Billion Federal School Voucher Proposal Advances in Congress

Advocates for private-school choice celebrated this week as a federal schools voucher bill moved closer to becoming law, a major milestone that eluded their movement during President Trump’s first term.

The House Republican budget proposal that advanced on Monday would devote $5 billion to federal vouchers for private-school tuition, home-schooling materials and for-profit virtual learning.

The program in the budget bill could bring vouchers to all 50 states for the first time, including Democratic-leaning ones that have long rejected the idea.

Supporters hailed the proposal as “historic” and a “huge win,” but some cautioned that there was still much legislative haggling ahead.

“Ultimately, every child, especially from lower-income families, should have access to the school of their choice, and this legislation is the only way to make that happen,” said Tommy Schultz, chief executive of the American Federation for Children, a private-school choice advocacy group.

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Opponents of the proposal were stunned at its sweeping implications. While it is in line with President Trump’s agenda, it had been considered somewhat of a long shot to make it out of the House Ways and Means Committee, because of its cost.

The program is structured as a $5 billion tax credit, allowing donors to reduce their tax bill by $1 for every $1 they give to nonprofits that grant scholarships — up to 10 percent of the donor’s income.

The option to donate is expected to be popular with wealthy taxpayers.

The resulting scholarships could be worth $5,000 per child, reaching one million students. Any family who earns less than 300 percent of their area’s median income — which equals over $300,000 in some parts of the country — could use the funds, meaning a vast majority of families would be eligible.

The proposal could pass through the budget reconciliation process, and could become law with only 51 votes in a Senate where Republicans hold 53 seats.

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In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many Republican-led states passed new private-school choice laws, overcoming decades of resistance from teachers’ unions, Democrats and rural conservatives. Opponents have long argued that vouchers hurt traditional public schools, by decreasing enrollment and funding levels. And they have pointed out that lower-income neighborhoods and rural areas often have few private schools, making it difficult for many families to use vouchers.

“We are against giving people tax breaks to defund public schools,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest education union.

She pointed out that while Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have said they want to invest in work force education, artificial intelligence education and other priorities for student learning, they have consistently proposed cutting funding to public schools, which educate nearly 90 percent of American students.

“They don’t believe in public schooling,” she said. “What you’re seeing here is the fragmentation of American education.”

A boom in new private-education options, like virtual learning and microschools, has already changed the landscape — as has an influx of campaign spending from conservative donors, like the financier Jeff Yass, intended to build support for private-school choice.

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Last month, Texas became the last major Republican-led state to pass such legislation. Advocates quickly shifted their focus to Congress and the opportunity to push a federal voucher bill.

Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, is the sponsor of a Senate bill similar to the House proposal, and celebrated its inclusion in the budget package.

“Expanding President Trump’s tax cuts is about preserving the American dream,” he said in a written statement. “Giving parents the ability to choose the best education for their child makes the dream possible.”

But the proposal will still have to overcome opposition, on both the left and the right.

Advocates for public schools have said that the new generation of vouchers and education savings accounts, which are often available to relatively affluent families, are a subsidy to parents who can already afford private education.

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In Florida, which has more children using vouchers than any other state in the nation, some public-school districts have experienced enrollment declines and are considering shutting down schools or cutting teaching positions.

Even some conservative parental-rights activists oppose the creation of a federal program, which they worry could create a regulatory pathway that could eventually be used to impose government requirements on home-schooling parents or private schools — for example, by requiring standardized testing, which is not mentioned in the current proposal.

“The federal government should extricate itself from K-12 education to the fullest extent possible,” said Christopher Rufo, a leading crusader against diversity programs in schools, and a supporter of school choice. “It’s best left to the states.”

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