The Josh Hammer Report

Josh Hammer

Newsweek Opinion Editor And Host,
"The Josh Hammer Show"

This week, my column surveyed the broader institutional landscape in the U.S. and tried to link recent events with a common theme: Many formerly "neutral" and even historically liberal institutions have been captured, in recent years and even recent months, by a rising tide of illiberal wokeism. One need not even go as far back as Bari Weiss' July 2020 resignation from The New York Times to spot the broader trend: As I point out in the column, recent incidents from the NAACP to the ACLU to the SPLC to science (yes, science) itself paint an unmistakable picture of a civil society and culture in disarray, held hostage to pernicious left-wing forces peddling a parochial and tendentious agenda.

For the most recent episode of "The Josh Hammer Show," the great Heather Mac Donald—long-standing fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal, and bestselling author—joined for a wide-ranging discussion about the possible (long-overdue) demise of affirmative action in higher education (which Heather astutely points out is a predecessor to the rise of the contemporary woke ideology), the ascendancy of wokeism and metastasis of "DEI" in the three years since George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, and the broader war on excellence and meritocracy that forms the crux of Heather's forthcoming book. Heather has been one of my favorite public intellectuals for years, and it was a real pleasure to have her on the show. You can listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In terms of recent media appearances, I joined Newsmax's "National Report" to discuss how some high-ranking Democrats are still (seven years after Jim Comey let Hillary Clinton off the hook for her private email server) conducting official government business on private email servers, joined Bob Frantz on AM 1420 The Answer in Cleveland to discuss the southern border crisis and the need to deescalate the war in Ukraine, recorded a CenterClip audio op-ed on the triumph (for now) of mobocracy over reason and deliberation in Israel's judicial reform debate, and (as usual) co-hosted the Edmund Burke Foundation's most recent episode of the "NatCon Squad" podcast.

Our highlighted right-leaning Newsweek op-eds this week include selections from Matthew Foldi, John Soriano, Caroline Glick, Mark Davis, and Chris Griswold.

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Spotlight

ARNOLD TURNER/GETTY IMAGES FOR NAACP

Recent Lowlights in the Woke Capture of Our Once-Venerable Institutions

Lamenting the astonishing success of the activist Left's century-long Gramscian march through America's major institutions is, at this juncture, old hat. Still, there have been a few recent powerful examples, coming in quick succession, illustrating the extent to which leading liberal institutions of civil society have been captured by far-left activist wokesters who take opportunistic advantage of their groups' venerable reputations in an attempt to repurpose them for dubious ends.

Take, for example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), once one of the nation's leading lights of the civil rights movement, which in recent decades has increasingly degenerated into a cesspool of grievance politics, intersectionality, race-tinged hucksterism, and crass Democratic Party politicking. This week, the Florida chapter of the NAACP asked its national board to issue a travel advisory against visiting the Sunshine State due to Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) recent moves to, among other things, extirpate "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) racialist indoctrination from public universities and convince the College Board to drop asinine leftist indulgences such as "queer studies" from its model AP African American Studies curriculum. As DeSantis aptly summed it up at a press conference, when asked about the NAACP tiff: "What a joke!"

Consider also the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) steady descent, in recent years, away from the free speech absolutism that was long a hallmark of the organization and which led it, back in 1978, to legally argue on behalf of neo-Nazi provocateurs who wanted to march in the heavily Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois. Not so much nowadays, as a 2021 New York Times headline put it: "Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the ACLU Faces an Identity Crisis: An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important."

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