Two years ago, Mark Zuckerberg held up Holocaust denial as an example of the type of speech that would be protected on Facebook. The company wouldn’t take down content simply because it was incorrect. This week, Facebook reversed that stance. Is this decision the first step toward a new way of policing speech on the social network?
Guest: Evelyn Douek, Lecturer at Harvard Law School and affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
We hit the road with NPR Education Reporter Elissa Nadworny. She's been on a weekslong road trip to get an up-close view of how colleges across the U.S. are handling the pandemic. On today's show, she tells us how one university has been using mass testing to fight the spread of the coronavirus on its campus. It's a strategy that's run into some challenges, namely, student behavior.
In his new book, Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America (UNC Press, 2020), Dr. Jeffrey Erbig charts the interplay between imperial and indigenous spatial imaginaries and shows the critical role that indigenous actors played in imperial border-making between the Spanish and the Portuguese in the Río de la Plata region during the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Dr. Erbig demonstrates how this process does not fit neatly into concepts of resistance or accommodation, as Hispano-Portuguese border-drawing from 1750 to the end of the century was in-part necessitated by indigenous actions, shaped by indigenous actors, and even reinforced the authority and autonomy of certain native polities. Far from peripheral players on an inevitable path to destruction as they are mostly remembered today, native peoples were essential to determining the early-modern history of the Río de la Plata. Centering the actions of indigenous agents and incorporating archival material from seven countries along with digital mapping techniques, Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met will prove to be an enduring contribution to the historiography of indigenous studies, the Río de la Plata region, cartography, and borderlands topics.
Dr. Jeffrey Erbig is an Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Grant Kleiser is a Ph.D. candidate in the Columbia University History Department. His dissertation researches the development of the free-port system in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, investigating the rationale for such moves towards “free trade” and the impact these policies had on subsequent philosophers, policy-makers, and revolutionaries in the Atlantic world.
A new study shows eight million people have fallen into poverty since May, when the CARES Act money started running out, but lawmakers in Washington still can’t agree on a second relief bill. We review the current state of negotiations, and how the delay is affecting Americans in need.
Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up their confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, with no big surprises except a few frustrating moments where Democratic ranking member Dianne Feinstein went out of her way to signal approval for the process and for Lindsey Graham.
And in headlines: Thailand declares a “state of extreme emergency” after protests, three people who were traveling with Biden and Harris test positive for COVID-19, and the BTS IPO. Plus Crooked's own Erin Ryan fills in for Akilah.
Mail-in voting has sharply increased due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Pew Research Center reported in the 2016 general election, 24.9 percent of votes were absentee or mail-in and in the 2018 general election, 27.4 percent of votes were absentee or mail-in. But during the 2020 primaries, 50.3 percent of votes cast were absentee or mail-in.
Is election security at stake? What are some of the documented security vulnerabilities and problems associated with mail-in or absentee ballots? J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, joins the podcast to discuss.
We also cover these stories:
Three Republican senators are calling on the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about censorship and possible election interference.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is poised to vote on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation on Oct. 22.
Citing his son Barron's COVID experience, President Donald Trump said children should be back at school.
That skit made it to the front page of Reddit, and was soon seen across the internet. It's nice to make people laugh, but following the surge of interest, Emily also had to deal with severe harassment and cyber stalking. She wrote a piece about the experience which you can find here.
In this episode, we discuss how moderation can be improved and the work that remains to be done to make the software industry feel safe and inclusive for everyone.
Andrew watched the hearings so you don't have to! What is super-precedent? And did ACB really rule that an employer using the n-word wasn't hostile or racist? We've got the full breakdown! Before that, we have an excellent listener question on potential federal laws on things like Roe V Wade after the Handmaid's Tale Court takes away reproductive rights
