Madeline Fry Schultz

At a private liberal arts college in Minnesota, art history is now Islamophobic. In October, an art history professor at Hamline University was teaching Islamic art, a segment that included two depictions of the Prophet Mohammed in fourteenth- and sixteenth-century paintings with significant historical value. The professor alerted her students beforehand, careful to ensure that observant Muslims who object to the depiction of their prophet would not have to see him on screen. It seems that the professor had done everything right: providing images of famous paintings for her students’ edification but allowing students to opt out of viewing them if doing so ran contrary to their religious beliefs. But who are we kidding? This is a liberal arts college in the twenty-first century.

DARE is concerned about Euphoria. The anti-drug campaign put out a PSA recently warning that the show “chooses to misguidedly glorify and erroneously depict high school student drug use, addiction, anonymous sex, violence and other destructive behaviors as common and widespread in today’s world.” Considering the prevalence of drugs (snortable, swallowable, injectible), drug dealers (lovable, despicable), and drug-laced dream sequences on Euphoria, it would seem you can’t blame the group for being concerned. But it’s also hard to watch Euphoria and not think it's a cautionary drama on the dangers of drugs that could have been created by a group like DARE itself.

In late spring, when every corporation and nonprofit in America was releasing statements about how racism is bad, the Poetry Foundation joined in the chorus of self-preservation. On June 3, it released a statement announcing that it stands ‘in solidarity with the Black community’ and denounces ‘injustice and systemic racism’.It continued: ‘We believe in the strength and power of poetry to uplift in times of despair, and to empower and amplify the voices of this time, this moment.’ Imagine some poor foundation employee posting that statement to their website and wiping his brow. Crisis averted. It took all of three days for social justice campaigners to respond in a fury.