Neil Gaiman Speaks at the Alternative Graduation Held at a College Resisting Ron DeSantis’ Hostile Takeover

His presidential campaign has ended before it started. But Ron DeSantis is the last to know it. And so he continues pandering to Trump’s base. After shipping migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, the Florida governor now picks costly fights with Disney, his state’s second largest employer; bans books in Florida public schools; and exerts political pressure on the state’s public colleges and universities.

At the New College of Florida, DeSantis is using the cudgel of government to transform a traditional liberal arts college into a conservative-leaning institution. If you’re not following what’s happening at New College, read this profile in The New Yorker. The article will help set the stage for the video above.

There, you will see author Neil Gaiman speaking at an alternative graduation arranged by New College students. Not wanting to participate in the official graduation architected by the school’s new conservative bosses (the event featured Scott Atlas, the radiologist who became Trump’s controversial Covid “expert,” how inspiring!), the students arranged an alt graduation and invited Gaiman to speak via video. Through a personal story, The Sandman author reminded the students of the liberal arts values that undergird the school, and left students with some timely advice: “You must fight for what you believe to be right while never losing your sense of humor or your sense of proportion.” Here’s to hoping that New College outlasts the erstwhile presidential contender.

via BoingBoing

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The Seattle Public Library Gives Students Free Digital Access to Books Getting Banned Across the United States

According to a new report published by PEN America, the “2022-23 school year has been marked to date by an escalation of book bans and censorship in classrooms and school libraries across the United States.” PEN America has tracked “1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles,” during the first half of this academic year. That marks an increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months, January – June 2022.” The book bannings are taking place in conservative-leaning states (mainly, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina), and overwhelmingly, they’re targeting “stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.”

Fortunately, American public libraries are pushing back. As mentioned last summer, the Brooklyn Public Library launched Books Unbanned. This initiative provides American students, no matter where they live in the U.S., free access to 500,000 digital books, including books banned by students’ local libraries. And now the Seattle Public Library has joined the effort, rolling out its own version of Books Unbanned. “We believe in your right to read what you want, discover yourself and form your own opinions,” writes the library. “Teens and young adults ages 13 to 26 living anywhere in the U.S. can access our entire collection of e-books and audiobooks.” To get started, students can fill out the form at the bottom of this page (click here), and then explore these curated lists of banned non-fiction books and banned fiction books.

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School Principal, Forced to Resign After Students Learn About Michelangelo’s “David,” Visits the Renaissance Statue in Florence

In March, a Florida school principal lost her job when 6th graders encountered Michelangelo’s “David” during an art history lesson–even though the school ostensibly specializes in offering students “a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences.” Parents apparently found the Renaissance sculpture, um, “pornographic.”

Fast forward two months, and the former principal Hope Carrasquilla has now traveled to Florence and visited Michelangelo’s “David” in person. This came at the invitation of the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, and the director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, Cecilie Hollberg. Above you can see Hollberg on the left, and Carrasquilla on the right.

On Instagram, Carrasquilla commented:

I’m very impressed. The thing that strikes me the most, and that I didn’t know, is that this whole gallery was built for him [Michelangelo’s “David”]. I think it’s beautiful, it looks like a church. And to me, that just represents really the purity of this figure and you see his humanity.  There is nothing wrong with the human body. Michelangelo did nothing wrong. He could only sculpt it like this. It couldn’t be otherwise. He’s wonderful and I’m really happy to be here.

In her own statement, Hollberg said:

I am delighted to welcome her and show her the magnificence of our museum, as well as personally introduce her to David, a sculpture that I reiterate has nothing to do with pornography. It is a masterpiece representing a religious symbol of purity and innocence, the triumph of good over evil. His nudity is an outward manifestation of Renaissance thought, which considered man the centre of the universe. People from all over the world, including many Americans, make the pilgrimage to admire him every year. Currently, more than 50% of visitors are from the United States. I am certain that Ms. Carrasquilla will receive the welcome and solidarity she deserves here in Florence.

Florida may be canceling classical art and thought. Florence is decidedly not.

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Pussy Riot Sends a Powerful Message to Vladimir Putin: “You Have Already Lost. You Know It.”

Speaking at TED, Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of Pussy Riot, has a powerful message for Russians today: Resisting the authority of Vladimir Putin is an option. It’s a choice. Of that, Tolokonnikova has already provided ample proof. For more than a decade, the members of Pussy Riot have staged high-profile protests in Russia … and paid the price, with time served in prison. As she puts it, “Courage is an ability to act in the face of fear. And some of us have chosen to live courageously.” That example is what makes her a threat:

The reason why I became a threat to the system, not because of any actual physical power that I have, but because courage is contagious. And any act of speaking the truth can cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness. And we all have this power. It’s a moral act to use this power. You may or may not achieve the results that you wanted, but there is eternal beauty in trying to find truth, in risking everything you’ve got for what’s right…

As always, she saves choice words for Putin: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Kremlin walls became your prison walls. You have already lost. You know it. That’s why you’re so afraid. You lost in spirit.” Now we just need Russians at home, and Ukrainians on the battlefield, to make the implicit explicit.

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Ukraine Releases a Banksy Stamp That Features a Kid Judo Flipping an Older Man Resembling Vladimir Putin

Last fall, Banksy traveled to Ukraine and spray-painted a series of murals that offered a stinging commentary on the war launched by Vladimir Putin and Russia’s military forces. Now, to mark the first anniversary of the invasion, a defiant Ukraine has released an official postage stamp featuring one of Banksy’s murals. It depicts a young boy judo flipping an older man on his back. Seeing that Putain likes to pretend that he’s a judo expert (he does the same with hockey too), it’s not hard to get the message here. But just for good measure, the Ukrainians drive the point home with a little shorthand at the bottom of the stamp. Translating the Cyrillic script, it reads “FCK PTN!” And who could disagree.

via Hyperallergic

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The Brooklyn Public Library Gives Every Teenager in the U.S. Free Access to Censored Books

We have covered it before: school districts across the United States are increasingly censoring books that don’t align with conservative, white-washed visions of the world. Art Spiegelman’s Maus, The Illustrated Diary of Anne Frank, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird–these are some of the many books getting pulled from library shelves in American schools. In response to this concerning trend, the Brooklyn Public Library has made a bold move: For a limited time, the library will offer a free eCard to any person aged 13 to 21 across the United States, allowing them free access to 500,000 digital books, including many censored books. The Chief Librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library, Nick Higgins said:

A public library represents all of us in a pluralistic society we exist with other people, with other ideas, other viewpoints and perspectives and that’s what makes a healthy democracy — not shutting down access to those points of view or silencing voices that we don’t agree with, but expanding access to those voices and having conversations and ideas that we agree with and ideas that we don’t agree with.

And he added:

This is an intellectual freedom to read initiative by the Brooklyn Public Library. You know, we’ve been paying attention to a lot of the book challenges and bans that have been taking place, particularly over the last year in many places across the country. We don’t necessarily experience a whole lot of that here in Brooklyn, but we know that there are library patrons and library staff who are facing these and we wanted to figure out a way to step in and help, particularly for young people who are seeing, some books in their library collections that may represent them, but they’re being taken off the shelves.

As for how to get the Brooklyn Public Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned website offers the following instructions: “individuals ages 13-21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, providing access to our full eBook collection as well as our learning databases. To apply, email booksunbanned@bklynlibrary.org.” In short, send them an email.

You can find a list of America’s most frequently banned books at the website of the American Library Association.

Note: We first posted about this initiative during the dog days of last August. But it seemed worth mentioning this program while school’s in full swing. Hence why we’re flagging Books Unbanned again.

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Watch David Letterman’s Complete Interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy

In a special episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, the iconic TV host traveled to Kyiv to interview President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The conversation took place in a protected subway station, in front of a small live audience. About Zelenskyy, Letterman said: “When you first learn about the guy, it seems impossible to not find him appealing, and his story to be astounding. You just don’t see actions and deeds like this, people behaving like this, on the right side of things.” Above, thanks to Netflix, you can watch the interview in its entirety.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here.

If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo (@openculture). Thanks!

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The Making of Modern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale University, Featuring 23 Lectures

Back in September, we mentioned that Yale historian Timothy Snyder had started teaching a course, The Making of Modern Ukraine, and putting the lectures online. With the fall semester now over, you can watch 23 lectures on YouTube. All of the lectures appear above, or on this playlist. Key questions explored by the course include:

What brought about the Ukrainian nation?  Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day.  Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy?  In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine?  Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge?  Just how for that matter does any modern nation emerge?  And why some nations and not others?  What is the balance between structure and agency in history?  Can nations be chosen, and does it matter?  Can the choices of individuals influence the rise of much larger social organizations?  If so, how?  Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine?  Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

A syllabus for the course can be found on Snyder’s Substack.

The Making of Modern Ukraine will be added to our collection of Free Online History Courses, a subset of our meta collection: 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities

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If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal, Patreon, and Venmo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.