The Blueprint for the Attack on Public Education

Plus: Trump’s rally in the Bronx; a counter-graduation ceremony at Columbia; and saying farewell to Rafael Nadal. View in browser | Update your preferences Saturday, May 25, 2024 In today’s newsletter, the looting of public education, and then: • Trump’s rally in the Bronx • A counter-graduation ceremony at Columbia • Saying farewell to Rafael Nadal The Texas School District That Provided the Blueprint for an Attack on Public Education When conservative activists began waging battle against diversity plans, some had a much bigger target in mind. By Jessica Winter Illustration by Ben Wiseman In October, 2018, on the night of a high-school homecoming dance in Southlake, Texas, a group of white students gathered at a friend’s house for an after-party. At some point, about eight of them piled together on a bed and, with a phone, filmed themselves chanting the N-word. The blurry, seesawing video went viral, and, days later, a special meeting was called by the board of the Carroll Independent School District—“Home of the Dragons”—one of the wealthiest and highest-rated districts in the state. At the meeting, parents of Black children shared painful stories of racist taunts and harassment that their kids had endured in school. Carroll eventually convened a diversity council made up of students, parents, and district staffers to address an evident pattern of racism in Southlake, although it took nearly two years for the group to present its plan of action. Keep reading From the News Desk In the Streets The Bronx Cheers—Mostly—for Trump Biden’s a pedophile; Trump’s a fascist; the MAGA Hasidim have to get their act together—and other sentiments spewed at the former President’s rally in Crotona Park. By Ian Frazier On Campus The People’s Commencement at Columbia It’s 1968 all over again, as New York Ivy Leaguers flip the script and stage an unofficial counter-graduation ceremony. By Andrew Marantz If you know someone who would enjoy the daily, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. Dept. of Diversions The Sporting Scene Saying Farewell to Rafael Nadal The tennis champion, who is likely in his last year on the tour, brought an unusually considerate—and hugely endearing—ferocity to the game. By Gerald Marzorati Books We Recommend This Week Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction. Natural Magic, by Renée Bergland (Princeton). Although Charles Darwin and Emily Dickinson are not known to have ever crossed paths, this study finds meaning in their shared enchantment with the natural world. In the eighteen-thirties, as “natural philosophy” began to be reframed as “natural science,” emotion and wonder were eclipsed by objectivity and mastery. Darwin and Dickinson resisted this binary: Darwin saw his theory of natural selection as an occasion for humility, relating humans to other species; Dickinson, whose poetry reflects her extensive scientific education and interest in Darwin’s ideas, depicted the natural world with both botanical specificity and attention to its splendors. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Traces of Enayat, by Iman Mersal (Transit). Literary obsession and detective work merge in this biography of Enayat al-Zayyat, an Egyptian writer who died by suicide in 1963, at the age of twenty-six, years before the publication of her only novel. Following the threads of al-Zayyat’s life, Mersal depicts the Egypt in which she grew up and the largely vanished Cairo where she lived, while chronicling her search for the forgotten author. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Whale Fall, by Elizabeth O’Connor (Pantheon). Manod, the observant narrator of this début novel set on the cusp of the Second World War, lives on a sparsely populated Welsh island where, one night, a whale washes up on the beach and dies shortly thereafter. Soon, two researchers turn up to document the customs of the islanders. Manod agrees to assist them, translating phrases (such as “sheep farmer”) and cultural realities (the people cannot swim). In time, however, misunderstandings arise between researchers and subject, imbuing their relationship with both alienation and tenderness. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Cinema Love, by Jiaming Tang (Dutton). This moving if uneven début novel tracks a handful of characters who emigrate, in the nineteen-eighties, from rural China to Manhattan’s Chinatown. They quickly find that it is one thing to leave home and another to move on from the world that has been left behind. That world includes a ramshackle movie theatre, the Mawei City Workers’ Cinema, a place where gay men go to seek forbidden love—and where their wives go to look for them. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The best books of 2024 so far What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. Culture Dept. Fiction “Thataway” He pictured his town as something glowing from the American past, a Norman Rockwell kind of place, but the picture faded. By Thomas McGuane This Week in Fiction Thomas McGuane on Small-Town America The author discusses his story “Thataway.” By Deborah Treisman P.S. “I’m walkin’ here!” Dustin Hoffman’s iconic line is not in the screenplay of “Midnight Cowboy,” which was released on this day in 1969. Hoffman ad-libbed it. Primarily remembered as a movie ahead of its time, it was also a harbinger of New Hollywood. “Whatever effect ‘Midnight Cowboy’ might have had on attitudes toward homosexuality,” Louis Menand writes, in a piece about the movie’s role in Tinseltown’s transformation, “one thing it had a negative effect on was attitudes toward New York City.” What did you think of today’s newsletter? Let us know. If you like the daily newsletter, browse more New Yorker newsletters. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the daily newsletter from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2024. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.