anti-racist curriculum for universities and colleges in Scotland..16 Efforts extend even into kindergarten and high school with the National Education Association (NEA) in the United States promoting the teaching of critical race theory in all 50 states.17 And this but a partial list.
Media
Recognizing the foundations of a good story, the mainstream media has also entered the fray. News organizations from around the world cover stories related to the debate and the effect it is having on both institutions and students. Oftentimes, the story slants toward the political posture generally taken by the news organization.
For example, in America, FOX News tends to highlight stories that question actions of institutions who try to embrace more liberal hiring and teaching. One recent story was titled, “Oxford University blasted for considering
hiring based on ‘woke score’ of academics: report.”18 By contrast, CNN has run stories titled, “The ‘anti-woke crusade has come to Europe. Its effects could be chilling” and “How ‘woke’ went from a social justice term to a pejorative favored by some conservatives.”19
Commentators have also chimed in. On the right, there is the example of Andrew Doyle, a comedian and political commentator, who told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that “Wokeism ‘assumes everyone else is evil, we’re right, everything must change.’” On the left, there is the example of Bill Maher, comedian and host of Real Time with Bill Maher, who presented “New Rule: A Unified Theory of Wokeness,” which mocked most everyone associated with promoting woke policies and practices..20
Trying to find some balance, Simon Shama weighed in after the attack on Salman Rushdie, making the historical case there was a “sacred right to irreverence” as disrespect has “always been essential for democracy. And responding to the same, Janan Ganesh pushed forward the case that “liberals must overcome their aversion to conflict,” claiming “there is nothing innate about liberalism that mandates evasiveness.”21
Politics
Naturally, media coverage of events happening on campuses around the world suggest to politicians that the culture wars are real and that they can exploit respective positions for personal gain. In America, on the right, former President Donald Trump said the Biden administration is “destroying the country ‘with woke.’” Senator Josh Hawley said the woke mob ‘wanted to prevent people from reading his book.’ South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said wokeness was about progressive views that have “grown off of the campuses into first the corners of the Democrat Party, and it’s slowly just taking over.”22 And Glenn Youngkin attributed his winning the governor’s race in Virginia to a backlash against cultural moderates, vowing to purge school curricula of “divisive concepts, including critical race theory.”23
On the left, James Carville, a former campaign strategist and advisor to President Clinton recently stated in a CNN interview that ‘woke people are tired of being woke’ and that it is ‘stupid wokeness’ that caused the democratic party to lose elections. Even President Obama entered the fray: “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you're politically woke, and all that stuff – you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”24
And the involvement of politicians is not limited to America. In Britain, Boris Johnson’s government, cheered on by sections of the British press, waged a “war on woke,” targeting leftwing activists, anti-racists, academics and trans rights advocates; and Oliver Dowden, a senior Conservative and former Tory culture secretary claimed in a speech that seemed to mock campaigners for trans rights and those pushing to confront the legacy of colonialism “‘woke’ ideology was a ‘dangerous form of
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