In this week’s episode, Niki, Natalia, and Neil debate CPAC’s decision to disinvite Milo Yiannopoulos, legislation to require political balance in university faculties, and Christian blogger Momastery’s announcement of her lesbian engagement.
Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show:
- The conservative organization CPAC disinvited Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at its annual conference after tapes surfaced showing him celebrating sex with underage teens. Niki situated the controversy in a longer history of CPAC, an organization that she has written about for Politico and the Los Angeles Times.
- An Iowa legislator has proposed a bill that would require faculty in the state’s university system to reflect a partisan balance. Neil outlined a history of conservative responses to universities as liberal bastions, including William Buckley’s 1951 classic, God and Man at Yale. Natalia mentioned Heterodox Academy, a project that advocates for more intellectual diversity on college campuses
- We discussed the announcement by Glennon Doyle Melton, the Christian blogger behind Momastery, of engagement to the women’s soccer star Abby Wambach. Neil commented on a 2013 Momastery blog post that went viral where Melton wrote a letter to her son about how she would respond if he told her he was gay. Neil recommended Heather White’s book, Reforming Sodom, for understanding how mainline Protestantism provided religious support for gay rights in the second half of the twentieth century. Niki shared a Christianity Today article that argued Melton peddled a “gospel of self-fulfillment.”
In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History:
- Natalia commented on Ross Perlin’s book Intern Nation.
- Neil discussed the Adulting School.
- Niki talked about Ibram Kendi’s essay, “A History of Race and Racism, in 24 Chapters.”
