We had been discussing my family’s habit of communicating exclusively through New York Times (NYT) article links, and I had admitted that I inform myself by reading NYT, the whole NYT and nothing but NYT. 

I am 16 years old. I identify as a liberal, and I find current conservatism — as redefined by Donald Trump — to be abhorrent. I consider myself relatively politically engaged; I’ve volunteered with congressional campaigns and phone-banked, and I stay on top of the news. I acknowledge that I inform myself through “left-leaning” news sources such as NYT and CNN. I consider these organizations to be heralds of a sort of glorious truth-telling, the white doves of the increasingly partisan delirium that is the American media-scape. But my aunt’s question made me wonder — how can I be sure?

Ideological coddling

I understand, in a purely academic sense, the principle of cross-referencing information across different news sources. Yet, I simply do not have, or care to take, the time to do so. It is more comfortable to accept my knight-in-shining-armor news outlets as correct and dismiss whatever I disagree with as fallacious and deceptive. And it is not just me. A June 2024 study conducted by University of Pennsylvania researchers and published in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review found that Democrats are generally highly concerned about misinformation and, in consequence, seek sanctuary in partisan media sources. Similarly, Pew Research data suggests that partisan media divides have grown in recent years, largely driven by Republicans losing trust in legacy outlets.

Noah Nye, an 18-year-old high school senior at the Loomis Chaffee School in Connecticut and one of the four first-time voters whom I spoke to, admitted that he only reads NYT. “They’re the single only place I get news from. They may lean liberal, but I personally am fine with that. I think liberal politics in general and the liberal view is mostly correct,” he said. “Where you choose to get your news is, unfortunately, a reflection of your politics these days.” 

The same ideology-coddling phenomenon reigns over social media news. “Social media can create a bit of an echo chamber depending on how the algorithm works for you,” said Dawson Kelly, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, whose studies focus on the regulation of social media companies. “It curates only information that you want to see.” Perhaps it is for this reason that so many young people find political sanctuary in social media.

Can Generation Z become savvy voters?

That night after dinner, my aunt and I turned on the TV and flipped to channel 2, CBS News — It was October 1, the night of the debate between Vice Presidential candidates Tim Walz and J. D. Vance. As I listened to Walz and Vance spar, I was underwhelmed — and astounded. There was no squabbling; rather, I found myself listening to a civil, urbane and cordial conversation. The debate was actually focused on politics and policy, not, at last, personality and poison. As I watched, I dismissed the majority of Vance’s well-polished words for what they were: deceit, deception and double-talk. And yet Vance’s disturbing rationality gave me pause. How did I know that what I held as true actually was so? We all think we are smart enough to know when somebody is lying — until we hear Vance tell stories as if they are nothing more than “two plus two equals five.”

As a young person who has grown up in the decade of Trump, I worry that I — and the rest of my generation — have been robbed of the chance to make involved, necessary political decisions. For my whole life, it has always been a political binary of fanaticism versus reason and lunacy versus sanity — Trump versus The Democrat. The choice has been clear. But there will come a day — or at least I hope there will, for all of our sakes — when Trump is gone, and the answers are not so obvious. And I’m not so sure that I or young people will have the shrewdness to make open-minded and truly well-briefed decisions. Politicians are wiley; we must be more so. Are we? Our information consumption says no.

“I feel like [young] people blindly trust social media because they’re spending so much time with it,” said Ava Spinelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at California Polytechnic State University. Spinelli recognizes how duplicitous social media content can be; even still, she admits that she “end[s] up believing a good portion of it.” 

And it is not just social media news that young people have a warped relationship with. Spinelli’s roommate, journalism major Caroline Belew, remarked that young people “trust the media [only] to an extent … I feel like [they] have a very toxic relationship with the media. Our generation definitely [doesn’t] access [mainstream media] as much as they should for their news.” And when they do, it is along partisan fault lines. 

That night at dinner, my aunt also told me a story. It was the one of her political upbringing. She had grown up in Saginaw, Michigan, and was raised by conservatives. She told me how, as she reached college age and moved out, she had educated and eventually “de-programmed” herself from her parents’ right-wing doctrine. 

I began to wonder if I was “programmed” liberal. I’ve grown up in a proudly Democratic household; my dad refers to himself as an “extreme Democrat.” At just ten years old, my brother participated in the January 2017 Women’s March against Trump in New York. At eight years old, I cried at Trump’s electoral victory.

I believe in the Democratic party because I believe in human rights. And yet all this made me wonder: What if everything I think I know is wrong, and I have no idea? What if the other side is right? And while I do not see myself (in the near future, or ever) changing my political morality, these sorts of disconcerting self-doubts are crucial for holding ourselves accountable in an age where the fear factory runs 24 hours a day and the big lie technique has become the playbook of one party, where the informed consent of the people is under siege and democracy cowers on its knees.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Trouble With the Truth: Young People and the Media appeared first on Fair Observer.

TikTok is a distinctive sea. Gen Z — the generation born from around 1995 to 2010, currently teenagers and young adults — makes up 60% of TikTok’s 1.1 billion users. But just as the ocean tides can push around a ship that thinks it’s still sailing on its own, TikTok influences Gen-Z users more than they know.

In recent years, politicians have begun to catch on to TikTok’s potency. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, who is much younger than her predecessor Joe Biden, or their Republican rival Donald Trump, seems to understand the power of the video app better than most. But, to understand this digital sorcery, the contenders of this November’s US presidential election must understand the platform’s unorthodox content. 

Political dismay

In the 2020 presidential election, a record-breaking number of young people voted. Based on recent registration numbers, youth turnout this year seems poised to be near that of 2020. However, it was only two months ago that many young people were distancing themselves from the ballot boxes. They disliked both presidential candidates; both were, to put it simply, old. They were “stuck in a political Groundhog Day,” as Erica Pandey at Axios said, and saw national politics as a rusted establishment. Confidence in the nation’s institutions has plummeted among younger Americans. Like many Iranians, young people saw no point in voting in the presidential election. There was a sort of nihilistic apostasy among young people from both candidates and the political system at large. “Youth perception towards politics [was] a combination of disinterest and disgust,” Richard Fox, a professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University, told me. 

Young people decided to turn their noses up at their electoral power simply because neither the government nor its politicians had a “magic wand to end the suffering,” as The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin describes.

In classic Gen-Z fashion, young people took to the Internet and flooded TikTok with satirical political content.

Coping with humor, celebrity culture and moral standards

“If you had to pick a Democrat or a Republican, Joe Biden or Donald Trump, gun to your head, who would you vote for?” “The gun would go off.” This back-and-forth (posted by Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, an American political comedy duo that has amassed 2.2 million followers on TikTok) was viewed over 27 million times. The clip took on another life as an additional 25,000 original videos were made reusing its audio track, spreading it across the internet.

Cut to video: “Late at night I toss and I turn” — insert Biden and Trump photos — “and I dream of what I need. I need a hero” — insert photos of Sue Sylvester from the series Glee or of the media personality Kid President. For young people, Bonnie Tyler’s song “Holding Out for a Hero” perfectly mirrored their political predicament. 

Generated with Craiyon.

And then — kickstarted by the worrying and almost comedic presidential debate at the end of June — there was the advent of “Triden,” the romantic pairing of Trump and Biden. Thousands of young people posted videos, often set to popstar Chappell Roan’s song “Casual,” portraying the two political rivals as lovers. These videos featured AI-generated images of the two men shaking hands, hugging and playing golf. One user, @diorgr6ande, partook in the trend by splicing together AI voice impersonations of Trump and Biden: “They want to take us away from each other, but I won’t let them. Joey, I love you,” declared AI-Trump. “I know you never meant to say anything mean about me, Donny. Maybe in another lifetime, we could be together,” replied AI-Biden. The video got over 10 million views. One user commented, “I love my generation.”

“It was like a form of coping,” Mebby, a 19-year-old part-time TikToker studying communications and film and media studies at Saint Louis University, told me. 

To much of the youth, the political motif of Chappell Roan’s artistry represents all that they stand for. During her performance at the Governors Ball Music Festival in June, she stated, “This is a response to the White House, who asked me to perform for Pride. We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.” 

When politicians fail to satisfy the youth’s hunger for justice, the youth forsake the government and seek refuge in their own generation and the reverie of idealism. While these high moral standards are admirable, young people risk losing sight of progress and pragmatism in the pursuit of political perfection. The heart of democratic politics is compromise, but many young people are unwilling to “betray” their principles by voting for an imperfect candidate. 

The TikTok echo chamber

TikTok works by algorithm, tailoring a user’s feed based on videos the user has interacted with. After the algorithm has done its dirty work, a user will be fed a stream of agreeable, accommodating content, their “own personal self-affirmation chamber,” as Vox’s Christian Paz described it.

“TikTok is … likely part of a new echo chamber as the algorithms being applied deliver ideologically compatible content to TikTok users,” Richard Fox and Kiani Karimi wrote in a recent study that surveyed a large sample of 18- to 25-year-olds to explore TikTok’s political influence. If a user engages with satirical political content, their echo chamber will spit like content relentlessly back at them. The Biden-Trump memes were “discrediting the [political] process,” Fox told me. And how can one not be influenced by such an endless stream of cynicism? 

“People are consumed by what they see on social media and think it’s the world around them,” Mebby told me. 

If a young person is trapped in a sphere of political fantasy and incredulity, they will lose sight of reality and inevitably lose any motivation to vote. If not outright, TikTok’s influence is subliminal, rooted in conditioning through repetition — we are what we eat, we are what we behold. 

The 2024 Harvard Kennedy School Survey of young Americans’ attitudes towards politics and public service reports that 62% of 18- to 29-year-olds nationwide disapprove of the government’s performance and that 73% use social media platforms to stay informed. These same people dominate social media platforms. In consequence, young people are staying informed through the same apps on which their generation is perpetuating a negative view of the government. 

“When these people that they consider to be “real,” that they consider to be truthful and honest, tell stories of certain government acts, people feel empathy for them and therefore see the government as the enemy,” Mebby told me.

But can TikTok be a force for good?

And suddenly, Biden dropped out. Like a phoenix, Kamala Harris rose. TikTok was the wind beneath her wings. A new hysteria overtook the platform, but this time the digital commotion was not nihilistic — it was hopeful. As young people processed the news of Kamala’s candidacy, she became a heroine of high-octane Gen-Z culture. 

Kamala became “Brat,” the trend of the summer, an online delirium named for popstar Charli XCX’s new album, Brat. Even Charli herself endorsed Kamala as a Brat-figurehead, posting on X, “kamala IS brat.” The Harris campaign’s official social media embraced the Gen-Z typhoon, rebranding in Brat’s signature lurid green color.

One year earlier, in May 2023, when giving remarks at a White House swearing-in ceremony, Kamala laughingly spoke some words that Gen Z will never forget: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” And luckily for Kamala, the internet never forgets. These seemingly cryptic, pseudo-philosophical words fit into the TikTok meme machine like lock and key. “Coconuts” and “context” entered the Gen-Z vocabulary. 

When Kamala became the presumptive Democratic nominee, her words came back not to haunt her, but to supercharge her. Young people mixed coconuts and context with Brat and got to work. They spliced Kamala’s iconic words into “Apple” by Charli XCX, “Blow” by Kesha and “Look What You Made Me Do,” by Taylor Swift — three singers representative of female power. Kamala HQ caught on quickly, subtitling its social media pages with the words “Providing context.” 

Chappell Roan made her way back into the fray as young people used her song “Femininomenon” to celebrate Kamala’s candidacy. These same young people, who only days earlier had used Roan’s music to mock the government, were now invested in the election. One user, @cattakespics, posted a video set to a Charli XCX-coconut mashup prophesying: “All of Gen Z pulling up to the voting booths with nothing but this audio in their heads as they single-handedly elect the first female president of the United States.” It was bombs away. In the days just after Kamala’s emergence, tens of thousands registered to vote. More than four-fifths of them were between 18 and 34 years old. 

The making of memes and organicness

What was so effective about these memes?

For starters, they came about organically. “It was regular, random people finding the things that they cared about already and mashing it together. It was not top down, it was bottom up — and that is so important to meme culture,” said @organizer, a pro-Harris influencer.

If political campaigns push content too hard, young people may feel coerced by what they scorn as efforts from the “out-of-touch” and “cringe” older generation. The memes must be coming from young people so they feel as if they are in control. Furthermore, they then become empowered as the mobilizers and not just the mobilized. 

In a phenomenon called the “social vote,” people are more likely to vote when they perceive that their social networks and friends expect them to vote. Due to the personal nature of TikTok’s content, users may psychologically classify complete strangers on the For You Page as friends. Another, soon-to-be released study finds that social media and friends, more than any other factors, have the most influence on political beliefs.

“I think the most interesting thing about social media is shared human experience,” Mebby told me. “Real people have a major impact.”

Kamala Harris got lucky. The seeds of her coconut meme-wave had already been planted in social media, so when she took over for Biden, young people on TikTok knew what to do with her. “Candidates have always attempted to stage this kind of virality … but the moments that truly take off lock into the absurdist, chaotic energy of the internet and are almost impossible to predict,” writes Vox’s Rebecca Jennings.

In 2020, ultra-influencers — such as Charli D’Amelio, with over 100 million followers — ruled TikTok. Now, the app has a more lived-in feel. It is characterized by multitudes of everyday users turned creators. 83% of TikTok users have posted a video. The most valuable advocate on TikTok is the ordinary user. Campaigners must recruit these users and use them like sleeper agents; they can flood the platform with seemingly authentic videos until other users market the candidate of their own free will — until the content catches on like a prairie fire. 

“What this all amounts to is a viral marketing stunt that any presidential candidate would pay millions for, but one that no strategist or ad agency could create,” Jennings concluded. “It’s all entirely organic, forged from the fires of a truly bizarre and unpredictable time.” 

What bones to throw?

To create a Gen-Z trend, one must understand that TikTok is a place where young people go to keep things that are theirs and only theirs, things their elders would not understand. It must deviate from mainstream culture, because TikTok, if anything, is an avenue for young people to assert their own, unorthodox cultural identity. It should be idiosyncratic, atypical and avant-garde. It should be jarring, discordant and unmistakable. 

And if you can get something like that, something like Brat, associated with a political candidate — Gen Z will listen. 

“I feel like, for so, so long, people were always under this impression that anything political couldn’t be fun or entertaining,” Cathryn Kuczynski, a 20-year-old UCLA student, told me. Ioana Literat, the TikTok researcher from Columbia’s Teachers College, told Vox, “The idea that political expression should be serious and based on facts and rationality — when we look at TikTok political content, it looks almost the opposite of that.”

Maybe fun — and joy — is exactly what politics needs.

In any case, fun and joy certainly seem to be working for Kamala Harris.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Kaleidoscope Voting and Kamala: TikTok’s Influence on the 2024 Election appeared first on Fair Observer.

As increasingly advanced AI technology starts to challenge writing, we need to reevaluate what it means to be able to write. How can students wield AI technology to their advantage in order to succeed in the digital age? Where does AI trump human skill, and where does it fall short?

Educators have widely addressed generative AI such as ChatGPT, but one platform tends to fly under the radar in high school classrooms: Grammarly.

What is Grammarly?

Grammarly is a digital writing application that uses AI to analyze user-submitted text. It provides suggestions to improve grammar, style, clarity and more. The platform works by underlining identified errors with red and blue lines, which users can accept or decline with a click. It also has a lesser-known generative AI feature akin to ChatGPT, which can rewrite a given sentence to satisfy a goal.

To demonstrate Grammarly’s primary function, I provided it with the following grammatically flawed sentence:

Mike, climbing the tree saw few apples that were very red.

Grammarly’s suggestions reworked the entire sentence. It now read:

Mike climbed the tree and saw a few very red apples.

Grammarly makes the writing much better, right? The students at my all-girls private high school in New York City certainly think so. They often use the platform as a sort of crutch to fall back upon. The prevailing attitude is, “My essay is bad, but that’s okay — I’ll just put it through Grammarly.” They laud the technology as “a lifesaver.” But is it really?

Investigating Grammarly in high school: test and results

I wanted to pinpoint how Grammarly affects student performance, as well as identify when it proves useful or backfires. To this end, I conducted a proper test with high schoolers, analyzed the results, recorded statements from teachers and used the platform’s chatbot to make additional observations. I considered all of this information and reached a conclusion: Students should use Grammarly only to learn the mechanics of writing, then rely on their own skills once they’ve grown confident in their grammatical knowledge.

I recruited an English teacher and eight of my fellow sophomores for this experiment. The study’s purpose was to assess in what ways Grammarly may affect how students write for English class.

I started by crafting a sufficiently thought-provoking prompt. After all, students tend to make more grammatical errors when attempting to relay complex ideas. I settled on the following instruction: “Please write 300–500 words on how the main character of your favorite book, show, or movie relates to an aspect of your identity and represents a broader lesson for individuals or society.”

I had four of the students edit their writing with Grammarly. To simulate how students use the platform in practice, I did not give overly specific instructions but told each student to utilize the tool as they saw fit.

To the other four students, I stressed that they should avoid all outside assistance. None of the students knew the full picture of the experiment. The participants could not look at the prompt until they were ready to begin writing.

I allotted each student a single 30-minute session to complete their paragraph. Each response was graded by a high school English teacher based on the student’s style, diction, syntax, clarity and grammar, irrespective of their chosen subject matter. The teacher also attempted to identify the works that had gone through Grammarly.

Overall, there was no distinct correlation between Grammarly usage and higher scores. The highest-scoring piece, which received 96%, did not use the platform. Of the four highest-scoring and four lowest-scoring pieces, two of each used Grammarly.

When choosing the students to participate in other study, I enlisted ones with different grades in English class. Four of them averaged grades between 94% and 100%; the other four between 90% and 93%. In a selective school like this one, such a difference between these grade-average ranges meant a significant distinction in writing abilities. Two students from each group used Grammarly on their pieces.

The teacher correctly identified Grammarly usage, or lack thereof, in six out of the eight pieces.

Five of the students received scores in this exercise that were lower than their average scores; one received a higher score, and two received average scores. At first glance, Grammarly did not seem to affect whether students surpassed their own records. Of the five students who performed worse, three used Grammarly. Of the two students whose grades remained consistent, one used Grammarly. The sole student who scored better than their average grade used Grammarly.

Upon deeper analysis, Grammarly maintained or improved the grades of lower-performing students while negatively impacting higher-performing ones. Of the two students in the lower-performing group that used Grammarly, one scored better than their average grade (94%-) and one scored the same (90%). The two students in the lower-performing group that did not use Grammarly scored below their average grades, scoring an 84% and an 89%.

Of the two students in the higher-performing group that used Grammarly, both scored much lower than their average grades (85%). The students in the higher-performing group that did not use Grammarly scored higher than their average grades, scoring a 96% and an 88%.

This result seems relatively clear-cut. Still, it must be noted that the writing skills of same-grade students are not necessarily identical, which could skew how Grammarly changes students’ grades, from their average grade to their exercise grade.

While it makes sense that Grammarly should improve weaker students’ writing, it is striking how Grammarly is detrimental to higher-ability students. Maybe Grammarly is not as efficacious as it claims to be. On the paragraph of one higher-performing student who used Grammarly, the English teacher’s critiques concerned “usage rather than things that [were] grammatically ‘wrong.’” The teacher further said that “the writing [was] awkward, with syntactic issues.”

Similarly, for the other high-performing student who used Grammarly, the teacher stated: “I marked a few ‘errors’ that are really more about usage than exact rules. Yet I found this [essay] hard to follow overall. I would not be surprised if it had been through Grammarly.”

He told me these were the two pieces he was most certain used Grammarly. He was correct.

Grammarly vs human artistry

The cardinal purpose of grammar is to illuminate and elevate the meaning of writing. Grammarly was able to improve the technicality of the higher-ability students’ writing, but it concurrently diminished its cohesivity and impact. Perhaps there is a deeper flaw in the platform, one regarding its artificiality in contrast to the innate humanity of writing.

Regarding the highest-scoring response, which was written by an A student who did not use Grammarly, the English teacher remarked upon the vividness of the student’s writing style: “The writing here is strong, in a way that transcends grammar. The writer purposefully uses polysyndeton and asyndeton (repeating or excluding conjunctions) even though they are technically grammatically ‘incorrect.’” Had the student used Grammarly, the platform would have “fixed” those errors, thereby damaging their writing quality.

Writing is more than a set of hard rules — it is a craft. Proficiency in this field requires a deft knowledge of how to both follow and break grammatical rules. Grammarly’s unyielding technicality is incompatible with the holism of writing.

“Grammarly is just another machine to flatten our multidimensionality,” Dr. Paul Phelps, another high school English teacher, told me. By feeding it a passage written by English novelist Jane Austen, Phelps further highlighted what my study revealed about the platform. “I can tell you this,” he said, “Grammarly thinks that Jane Austen is a terrible writer. Grammarly wants to change everything about Jane Austen.”

Even generative AI does not make Grammarly creative

Grammarly is no substitute for human ingenuity — not only in regards to grammar, but also in producing “original” writing. I learned this when I tried out the platform’s generative AI chatbot feature. I provided the same Grammarly-revised sentence from earlier — “Mike climbed the tree and saw a few very red apples” — and asked the platform to change it in various ways. I instructed it to make the sentence persuasive. Grammarly gave:

Mike skillfully climbed the tree and was thrilled to discover several irresistible, vividly red apples.

Next, I told it to make the sentence funny and creative. Grammarly returned:

Mike channeled his inner monkey and ascended the tree like a pro, only to be greeted by a bunch of apples that were more tempting than a chocolate fountain at a dessert buffet.

Then I told it to make the sentence so sad that it would move a reader to tears. Grammarly spat back:

Mike, struggling with a heavy heart, ascended the tree, his mind weighed down by the burden of loneliness and regret. At the top, he was met with a cluster of apples, their allure mocking his unfulfilled desires and lost opportunities, leaving him feeling more isolated than ever before.

Finally, to really see what the platform could do, I told it to make the sentence sound like it was written by former US President Donald Trump. Grammarly concluded:

Nobody climbs trees like Mike. The best tree climber, believe me. And let me tell you, he saw some incredible, very red apples. I mean, really tremendous apples. The reddest apples you’ve ever seen, folks.

Grammarly’s writing abilities are mediocre, to put it bluntly. Its generated sentences are bland and banal, and its metaphors are overwritten and drawn out. Its writing is dull, laughable and clunky. Its descriptions sound phony and generic. However, while the platform is certainly no match for the great wordsmiths of literature, its writing is functionable. It is clear and sensible.

Grammarly can be a handy tool for practical purposes. Writing rarely needs to be revolutionary outside of an artistic setting. Most people are not aspiring authors, nor do they want to produce groundbreaking prose. However, most people need to send clear emails, memos and letters, tasks for which the platform would be a boon.

Grammarly’s impact on student learning

Some teachers have argued that using Grammarly deprives students of learning. Phelps described the consequences of Grammarly usage as “a sort of weakening of confidence.” He argued that while the platform is “the path of least resistance, it’s also the path that will produce the least amount of learning.”

Yet other data suggest Grammarly may help students improve their writing. In 2022, Negeri 1 Ujungbatu, a high school in Indonesia’s Riau province, performed an experimental study in which students took separate writing tests before and after using Grammarly on other work. This study found that the platform yielded a significant improvement in student scores. Likewise, in a 2011 survey conducted by Grammarly, Inc., 70% of the 392 student respondents reported that the platform had increased their confidence in their writing abilities.

To get a straight answer on this matter, I turned to Grammarly itself. I asked the AI chatbot whether high school students’ usage of Grammarly comes at the cost of their learning. It replied with an answer that, while true, overlooked one critical detail:

Using Grammarly does not necessarily come at the cost of learning. While Grammarly can help identify and correct mistakes, students still have the opportunity to learn from these corrections. They are able to see explanations for the suggested changes and can gain a deeper understanding of grammar and writing conventions.

Though this is a valid statement, Grammarly’s simplicity discourages users from taking advantage of its educational function. Users can click a button to view the justification for its suggested edits, but they are not required to read the explanation before accepting it. So, many won’t. Likely, Grammarly did not account for this easy bypass in its answer because its AI is programmed to uphold its image as integritous and meritful for classroom use. 

“The issue is that [Grammarly] is so automatic that you can just hit check,” a high school senior told me. “I’m not sure if someone would actually pay that much attention to what it’s saying.”

Phelps concurred. “Nothing Grammarly does is hard to learn. Nothing. It is not difficult to learn whether or not you need a comma between two independent clauses. But if you’re not invested in that learning or asking about it, you’ll never learn it.”

However, even without reviewing the reasons behind the suggestions, I believe students can learn from Grammarly. As they click on underlined words, accept changes and see the red color vanish before their eyes, their brains can develop a subliminal aversion to these colored underlines. They will then unconsciously work to write in a way that avoids triggering these error marks.

Properly wielding Grammarly

Does learning grammar even matter if Grammarly will always be available? I would argue that, yes, students do need to learn the laws of grammar. Doing so enables students to discern precisely how and when to use AI tools. For their own benefit, they should use Grammarly as an assist to learn writing mechanics; once they are more self-assured, they must detach from it and take the wheel themselves.

We must teach students when they can stop using Grammarly: when they inevitably transcend its abilities. As my data has illustrated thus far, the platform has its limits, and human thinking can surpass them.

Imparting this technological savvy upon students equips them for their professional lives. Their competition will undoubtedly have access to Grammarly. While this platform is not necessarily the best-suited for a high school setting in which students must complete tests with pencil and paper, there will be very few instances in adult life where Grammarly is inaccessible.

Ultimately, we must remember that Grammarly is simply a machine, one that we can employ but should not rely upon. As Phelps told me, “None of these [AI] devices are independent of insidiousness. If they are not used carefully, they can be as harmful as helpful. Unfortunately, sometimes the harm and the help can be the same thing.”

With that said, wholly rejecting useful technology would be like driving a horse-drawn carriage instead of a car just so you can develop that skill. The best way for us to get ahead is to use AI like Grammarly as a supplement to, rather than replacement for, our own unparalleled human prowess. This is what students need to learn.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar — not Grammarly — edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Should Students Rely on AI Grammar Tech to Write Better? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Fridays for Future (FFF), an international youth-led climate movement, organized a series of strikes across the country on April 19. They were in a fighting mood. A 17-year-old student who attends the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics told me that, if US President Joe Biden “wants us to show up to vote for him in the polls, he needs to take action.” A few paces away from her, another girl held a sign in the air like Neptune with his trident that said, “I didn’t vote for fires and floods.”

Coordinated demonstrations across the country

Four days earlier, I had spoken with Keanu Arpels-Josiah, a 19-year-old student at Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School. Keanu was one of the lead organizers of the march. He had told me that the strike was “part of a broader national escalation of 200 actions around the country.”

Keanu described the process of organizing people to show up to strike. “We have a network of different people who are school ambassadors, and a lot of it is just texting friends we know at other schools and seeing if they know someone who’d be interested in getting a group to go.” He told me that the central purpose of the marches and the strikes was to get Biden to declare a climate emergency.

Keanu told me, “This is a president who ran for president saying, ‘I will end fossil fuels.’ What we’ve seen him do is quite the opposite.”

Four days later, the marchers gathered in Foley Square in downtown New York City. They chanted, “Keep it in the ground, just keep it in the ground.” They were referring to fossil fuels, particularly oil.

Fighting for nature and for justice

Fittingly, Foley Square sits atop the grave of Collect Pond, a natural spring that the city smothered with pavement in the 1920s. Further beneath where Collect Pond used to gurgle lies a nearly 300-year-old African burial ground. Thousands of men, women and children rest beneath Foley Square.

The FFF protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, stepping further and further into the cage of cables that holds the structure up. The bridge is an industrial caricature of a tree-canopy. When its construction was completed in 1883, the bridge became the longest suspension bridge ever built and was regarded as a miracle of modern engineering. Now, it has become a reminder of the fossil-fuel-guzzling industry that underpins the modern global economy.

“Love your mother,” one teenage girl’s sign read. She had drawn a water-colored earth on this square cardboard sign. She was alluding to Mother Earth, as Earth Day was soon to follow on April 22.

“When the climate is under attack, what do we do?” shouted one girl into a megaphone. “Stand up, fight back!” the crowd cried back with fervor. “When the air we breathe is under attack, what do we do?” “Stand up, fight back!” The slogans went beyond the environment. “When the Palestinians are under attack, what do we do?” “Stand up, fight back!”

“Climate justice is intersectional: Free Gaza,” said another sign in thick sharpie. Another woman held up a Palestinian flag above her like a torch. She was wearing an indigo backpack stamped with the words “extinction rebellion” below a butterfly with wings like tapestries. To her right, a teenage boy clutched a rainbow sign with the words “queer climate justice.”

In front of me strode a short indigenous woman, wearing a straw hat and robed like a preacher in yellow and blue monarch butterfly wings. Her name was Gabina Santamaria. She was 50 years old and lived in Staten Island. “I hope our president hears us and does something for climate change,” she told me, “especially because I have kids.” “My kids’ futures…” she pleads. She wrapped me in her butterfly wings.

 “I hear the voice of my great-granddaughter singing, ‘Climate Justice Now,’” the congregation of protestors chorused.I pulled aside the 17-year-old leading the song, and asked her why she was there. “I am worried. I’m not just worried for my children’s futures, I’m worried for my future. My future is getting destroyed by Biden’s actions.” I notice another sign, held in front of another young girl like a desperate soldier. “What future are you studying for?”

Indigenous leadership and a child’s concern

I observed some motifs in the outfits of the youth. Wide-leg jeans, colored sunglasses, copious amounts of peace signs — a style reminiscent of the student protests of the 1960s. The march stopped at Borough Hall, a Greek Revival edifice completed in 1848. With a backtrack of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the demonstrators assembled on and in front of the Tuckahoe marble stairs. 

Borough Hall borders Columbus Park, anchored by a statue of the abolitionist orator Henry Ward Beecher and named for Christopher Columbus, trailblazer of the Americas and exploiter of indigenous lands. The indigenous women that led the line are battling the same displacement begun centuries ago by Columbus. 

One by one, numerous speakers stepped up to the podium and delivered speeches. Lena Goings, a 16-year-old organizer with FFF,  instructed the crowd to remember that the climate movement was started by indigenous leadership. Shirley Krenak, an indigenous activist from Brazil, attending with the Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement, directed everyone to repeat after her. “When we speak the same language Mother Earth listens,” she proclaimed. 

She declared, “Today, you are my people.” We chanted in her tongue, bending down and up, down and up, and crooning soft hymns like mothers. Then she told us to scream. A guttural scream, like a war cry, rose out of the crowd as the people’s anger, betrayal and hope unified into one roar for change.

As the rally subsided, Joni Mitchell’s “Paved Paradise” bid us farewell: “They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.” A little boy, tiny in an orange puffer coat, stood next to his mother. They were part of Climate Families NYC. The six-year-old Jasper told me that he is scared for the planet. “What if climate companies don’t do anything about it?” he asked me in a quavering voice. “What if they don’t stop?”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Young People Rise Up for the Climate in NYC appeared first on Fair Observer.

When I stepped out of the airport and into Las Vegas, I felt like I had entered the outer edge of the universe. The low skyline met with the ancient seabed, and the city seemed to float in the azure sky. It was as if I were in a snow globe with toylike monuments — the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building and a pyramid were all around me. As night fell, the proprietors of the globe flicked a switch, lighting Las Vegas up. “Sin City” swaggered to center stage out of an innocent daytime.

And then there was Sphere. It was like its own planet within the galaxy of Las Vegas. Its phantasmic exterior lighting made it appear as a giant, extraterrestrial eye. U2 wielded Sphere to eclipse the typical characterizations of the infamous city.

U2’s shows at Sphere went beyond concerts; they were full-body journeys that enveloped each audience member with wraparound illusions. This held true even at the very outset, as the dome was made of faux cathedral stone that seemed to spiral to the stars above.

Although drawing from multiple albums, the shows centered on U2’s 1991 album Achtung Baby. The band, with lead singer Bono, had previously staged the album in the 1992 Zoo TV Tour. Sphere, decked out with the world’s largest LED screens and costing $2.3 billion to construct, opened the door to a new type of concert.

Intensity vs intimacy and meeting past selves

U2’s performance style had taken a turn in 1992, escalating from relatively unembellished stage setups to sensory overload. With their revolution of rock show techniques, fans grew concerned that the spectacle could diminish the music. That’s why it is paramount to learn how the band approached its new show in this regard.

After my trip to Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to interview Bono about the show.

India Nye Wenner: The first topic I want to discuss is U2’s relationship to the audience in the fresh Achtung Baby production, and how you dealt with the immersiveness of Sphere.

Bono: Originally, when Achtung Baby came out, we had a tour called Zoo TV. Part of it was deliberately disorientating. We wanted not to have a friendly relationship with our audience. It was a kind of confrontational relationship. We bombarded our audience with media; I shapeshifted into your worst-nightmare rock star. It was the time of grunge, and everyone was kind of thinking, “We’re really authentic, man, we’re wearing plaid and we don’t believe in even a light show.” We said to ourselves, “We’ll go in the exact opposite direction and be the opposite of authentic, and we’ll bombard our audience.” These were more art principles than music principles.

With this show, it’s the same. It starts in what’s known as Plato’s Cave. But it starts, really, at the invention of fire, if you want to think of it like that — early experiences of cave paintings, aloneness. I walk out on stage without any glasses and I sing this ancient Irish melody, and it feels like you’re in a cave. And then it quickly moves to a nightclub in Berlin in the 90s and it gets all very kind of decadent and fun and playful, and we become your worst nightmare of rock stars — which is kind of fun, too, ’cause playing that up is fun. So we let the ego run rampant for a while, so even that’s not super connected. In the middle […] you have songs like “One,” which do connect. But it doesn’t become truly intimate until we get to the bit where we turn off the technology.

Wenner: As an attendee of two of U2’s Sphere concerts, I can attest to the energy shift that accompanied the middle of the show.

Bono: We break things down into this kind of acoustic, radical intimacy, I would call it. Because of the acoustic technology in Sphere, Sphere itself is a speaker. And no matter where you are in Sphere, you get perfect sound. You’re able to whisper and be heard at the very back. So we realized that the acoustic set where we’re just playing acoustic guitar and these deconstructed versions of our songs is as powerful as the big visual extravaganza. Because you had been so disoriented by the first part of the show coming at you at full throttle, when we got to this moment of intimacy, it was really intimate. People started to sing, people got very emotional and they opened up more.

Then we get to this bit that I’m just talking to you about: the breakdown acoustic set on [musician] Brian Eno’s stage, a turntable with algorithms that change its colors. Then we get back into more visuals and then finally into this cathedral of the natural world, which [stage designer] Es Devlin designed with all the endangered species of Nevada. And people get really emotional at that point. And I’m looking out there, and there are people with tears in their eyes — a lot of them are men. And sometimes I’m one of them.

Wenner: Each U2 show at Sphere lasted a little over two hours. With over 20 songs, 120 minutes, 18,600 attendees and 1.2 million LEDs, I’m curious to hear how you made sense of such vast potential.

Bono: The arc of the show is the thing that’s most successful. In theater, you have a sort of arc. And to get to what the Greeks call catharsis, you have to go on a journey. So I think that’s why this show worked well. I think you allow the visuals to overpower the music because in the end, the music comes back and […] wins. I wondered: If it was like that all the way through, would it have been as powerful? I don’t think so. It’s the arc, this theatrical arc.

You just always enjoy a three-act structure, believe it or not, even though most rock ’n’ roll bands are like jukeboxes. They just play their songs, and it’s great, because it might be different every night. With [rock singer] Bruce Springsteen, you never know what you’re gonna get when you see him play, which is amazing. Bruce is so clever. He creates a three-act structure just with his music every night. But to do it with visuals of this scale, you have to lock in a few things. And so in that sense, it’s a little restrictive. But I think it’s a worthwhile compromise to make.

Wenner: In your Zoo TV Tour of Achtung Baby, you were 32 years old. Now you’re 63, and you’ve just performed the same songs you wrote 31 years ago.

On top of revisiting the past, as lead singer, you were tasked with maintaining harmony as a pillar amidst the tsunami of Sphere’s visuals. U2 was just four men within the universe of lights. What did you learn about yourself as a performer throughout the show?

Bono: I have to confess to you that I still suffer from a kind of stage fright. I can wake up in the morning, and it’s not that I think I can’t sing the songs — it’s just I wonder if I’ll have the essential energy to really make tonight the best night. U2’s grandiosity or arrogance, or whatever you want to call it, is [that] we want every night we play to be not just a Friday night, we want it to be New Year’s Eve. Every night. That’s our insanity. We go out with that kind of commitment.

What I was so surprised by performing those sounds was stepping inside the songs. I discovered the person who wrote them 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever it was. And it was a challenge — you meet your different selves. I could see some ways that I’d grown and become, I think, a better version of myself. But I could see in others where I hadn’t grown.

In order to sing these songs, I have to really get inside them. The songs towards the end are very emotional; they’re quite operatic. To be able to sing them, I gave everything I had — and I discovered that I didn’t want to go out after the show. Or I couldn’t meet anyone before. When I was younger, even ten years ago, I’d be the guy who’d be saying hello to everybody, going out afterwards, having a laugh. But this show was very demanding, so I accepted that while I’m here, this show owns me. My best friends would come by and I wouldn’t get to see them. I’d be preserving my voice. So it’s been quite challenging on that front. But when I’m on stage and with the band, I am so alive. And I’m okay if it’s just two hours a day that I’m fully alive.

Achtung Baby’s new relevance and the perils of love

Early in the show, a projected stone wall cracks apart. This is a nod to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. It allows brilliant light to seep through its cracks and set the venue aglow. Today, in contrast to the unity that came in 1989 in Germany, walls are being built up across the world. Bitter divides have gone up in the Middle East, social battlements mortared with intolerance in America. And Russia continues to brutally encircle Ukraine.

By putting the spotlight onto Achtung Baby again decades later, U2 urges listeners to hear the songs in the larger context of our modern world.

Wenner: What made Achtung Baby, as opposed to The Joshua Tree or Songs of Innocence, the album to be re-energized and to bring Sphere to life?

Bono: We’d made two albums before Achtung Baby: One was The Joshua Tree, and another was called Rattle and Hum, which was really an extension of The Joshua Tree. So we really wanted to move away from a focus on the United States, on America and its mythology, to a more European perspective. It just felt fresh for us to get involved in electronic music. We went to Berlin just as the wall was coming down and the Soviet Union was ending, and freedom was growing around the world. It was a very exciting moment to be in Berlin, when the wall came down and the world changed shape almost overnight. It was an astonishing moment in history. 

Even though our song, “One,” was written with very personal themes — “We’re one, but we’re not the same, we get to carry each other” — it resonated in Berlin because East and West Germany were coming together. That song has gone on to mean a lot to people who are at odds with each other or trying to move towards some kind of union that’s difficult, whether it’s in a marriage or a country. And it just seemed that Achtung Baby and the album that followed it, Zooropa, was the right thing for us to do in the 90s.

It’s like an artist does a retrospective because they want people to remember their earlier work. A museum will curate their work from a period and you go and re-experience it some years later. It felt like that. It was like an anniversary. It was the right time to remind ourselves, as well as the rest of the world, that we’ve made this album. And some of the themes of unity, or the lack thereof, were present again — because now the wall is starting to be built back up. So I think that song in particular might be newly relevant.

After an opening of staggering lights and illusions, Sphere wrapped itself in solid-colored wallpapers, and the music took hold of the room. The song was an unsettling one. As silhouettes of butterflies began fluttering against the cobalt blue backdrop, Bram van den Berg — filling in on drums for Larry Mullen Jr, who was recuperating from surgery — struck up a quiet but gripping rhythm. The foursome, including van den Berg, Adam Clayton, David “Edge” Evans and Bono, began to play “Love is Blindness.”

Wenner: What was your thinking behind pairing “Love is Blindness” with the mise-en-scène of butterflies and brooding blue?

Bono: The short answer is it’s setting up what comes later: the ode to the natural world, the Nevada Ark, Es Devlin’s work. But we made it a little eerie and a little spooky. I’m very interested that you should mention “Love is Blindness.” We did the best version we’ve ever done in our life last night. I couldn’t believe it. Sometimes a song can come into itself 20, 30 years later. I’m really enjoying singing that at the moment, and it’s such a bleak song in one sense. How love can turn in on itself. Love is blindness. This thing that should be light itself, love, can turn sour and lead you into a dark place.

You’ll see this in relationships. I imagine you’ll see it in some of your own or your friends’. They’ll get into relationships… and they’re just not good for them. It can overpower you. When I was writing it, I was throwing in some terrible, frightening images, like car bombs. It’s very melodramatic stuff, but it’s like a cabaret song.

Have you heard of the chanson tradition? I had these really extreme images which I’d taken from Ireland as we were dealing with terrorism and trying to get a peace agreement with paramilitaries. Last night, I was singing it, asking myself, “Where did these lyrics come from? How did I write them?” They’re so intense. And there is something about grasping the nettle. It’s okay sometimes to stare at the world and see that occasionally, it can have a dark heart. You don’t want to stay there, but it’s okay to look at it at times in your life and just say, “Here’s a problem. Here it is. I’m stating it, and this relationship is not going well. It’s not good. It’s going to blow up my life.” And the person who’s writing the song, the character at the center of the song, the protagonist — his relationship is destroying him.

Finding awe in nature and people

As the audience sat in Sphere, transfixed by the lights and absorbed into the music, we suddenly found ourselves outside. The walls had become transparent like a crystal ball, and our attention fixed upon a surreally mundane vicinity: a drab car lot, hotels and a fluorescent Ferris wheel. And before our eyes, in a stop-motion erosion of time, Las Vegas began to disappear. From top to bottom, the framework of each building was exposed and dismantled, until we were returned to the sweeping desert that lay beneath the glamorous city. Water sprung from sandy fissures and washed over the land until Las Vegas was rendered a placid sea, the ancient ocean floor it once was.

Bono: Making the building disappear and then making Las Vegas disappear came to me very early on. I realized that the resolution of the screens was so high that if you showed people what was going on outside, at the same time, people would confuse reality, and it would look like the building disappeared. And from that we had this idea: What happens if then we deconstructed Las Vegas? What if we brought Las Vegas back 100 years? Then what if we brought it back a million years? Because the Nevada desert wasn’t the desert then; there was water over it.

The show was a spiritual experience in itself, complete with cathedral-like imagery consistent with the motif of faith present in many of U2’s songs. Prior to the band taking stage, Sphere projected the stonework of a gothic cathedral that appeared to stretch all the way to heaven. As the show started, the stone panels were traded in for codes of neon numbers. They flickered as they proliferated into a digital age church, a rainbow of integers that rose to a peak. They closed in on the audience, locking viewers into a sort of digital infinity.

Elvis Presley then swooped in to free the audience from this box, rocketing them into a celestial stained glass window of glamor and allure, joined by gilded displays of gamblers and ravishing women. After Las Vegas’s debauchery, the audience ended with exultation in a cathedral of the natural world, filled with the endangered creatures of the Mojave Desert. At the center of each distinct cathedral stood one continuity: the preacher U2, guiding guests along the pilgrimage through each facet of human nature.

Wenner: What did you want people to take away from the church of U2?

Bono: We wanted people to understand that every one of us has many different selves. From a very egocentric self, to a playful self, to an earnest, caring, change-the-world self. The thing that we wanted people to leave the building with was a word that you Americans have ruined. And the word is “awe.” It’s one of my favorite words, but I know everyone says, “everything’s awesome!” And I always laugh saying the word, but I actually like the word. But we use it too lightly. It’s not just Americans; Irish people do, too. But awe is, I suppose, wonder?

And the thing that U2 has always challenged, in all our different incarnations, was jadedness. Being bored. I have never been bored. Maybe I was bored when I was 16 in school, but once I joined U2, I could write songs, and there was always stuff for me to do. And I just wanted people to wake up in the world, and realize it’s awesome, and realize that the world is fragile. It’s a fragile ecosystem. We have to take care of it and we have to take care of each other. 

The sins of Las Vegas are just more obvious. What’s going on in Las Vegas does not stay in Las Vegas. It is going on all over the world. There’s that kind of hard commerce, but there’s a lot of people who work really hard. I always try and thank people, the taxi drivers, the servers. The people who work there, they work around the clock for people who probably don’t work as hard as them. And it’s a little microcosm of America.

We live in a time where people are very judgmental of each other — your politics, where you’re at in your life. And if this show succeeds, people will come out caring about the person they’re walking out with a little more, and a little less cynical at the world around them. As people are leaving, as well as being in awe of the natural world and being alive, I’d like people to notice each other more, be grateful to each other. And as they look around at this sort of adult playpen, kind of smile at the human condition, and go, “Yeah, we are funny. We’re funny, us human beings.”

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Bono Goes to Las Vegas: Let There Be Light appeared first on Fair Observer.

Seemingly straightforward statements are interpreted into double-edged swords. The political correctness required to satisfy all groups is nearly impossible to find. People with polarized views hostilely refuse to hear different perspectives, and civil discourse has become impossible.

The Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, 2023. The terrorist group Hamas, in control of the Gaza Strip, launched a land, sea and air assault on Israel. They killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The next day, Israel declared war. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began conducting air strikes and ground attacks upon Gaza, killing tens of thousands.

The conflict has reignited decades of hostility between the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas. Antisemitism and Islamophobia have intensified in the US as Americans have become increasingly engaged in debates about the war. Many have used the violence of Hamas to justify Islamophobia, while others have used Israel’s violent counterattack to justify antisemitism.

As ethnically charged brutality continues in the Middle East, Jews and Muslims in the US have divided into distinct blocs that heighten ethnic and religious division. These groups are often blinded to each other’s suffering and view any support of the other group, regardless of humanitarian intention, as inherently hostile towards their group. This creates a gap between intention and impact; in this discourse, their advocacy serves little to help their co-religionists abroad and instead inflames feelings at home. The two factions are too angry to recognize their shared outrage at inhumanity, and they are too polarized to acknowledge the duality of Israel and Palestine as both perpetrators and victims.

Strife over the war has permeated schools

The controversy has fostered fervor in American colleges and schools. The US Department of Education has launched multiple investigations into US colleges and schools where students have reported instances of antisemitism and Islamophobia. 

At elite college Harvard University, numerous student coalitions joined with the Palestine Solidarity Committee to issue a statement on the conflict. They declared the Israeli regime “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Although the statement was not explicitly directed against Jews or Israelis as an ethnic group, they received it as such. Jewish students interpreted the declaration as pro-Hamas, although the students responsible for the statement denied any support for the terrorist organization. Members of the pro-Palestinian student groups experienced a doxxing campaign as backlash to the statement. These pro-Palestinian students stated they were “flooded with racist hate speech and death threats.” 

Instead of fostering open discussion to rectify the hostile discourse, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students continued to resort to rigid rhetoric. On December 8, an anonymous group flew a plane towing a Palestinian flag and a banner proclaiming “Harvard hates Jews” over Harvard and its vicinity. The intent of the message was unclear. Was it condemning Harvard’s attitude toward its Jewish students? Or was it endorsing the hatred of Jews? No matter the interpretation, the vague message exacerbated agitation on campus. Once again, people used inflammatory methods instead of rational articulation to send a message.

Many Jewish and Muslim families are now reevaluating the schools to which their children will apply. Early applications for Harvard University declined 17% this year. Although the decline is not directly linked to antisemitic and Islamophobic hostility, the timing provides circumstantial evidence. Jewish students report feeling unsafe, alienated and afraid at Harvard.

Antisemitism is rising in high schools as well as colleges, creating unwelcoming environments that are harmful to students’ well-being. A high school sophomore attending an elite private school in New York City confided in me that seeing “the blatant antisemitism and justifications that emerged from these attacks is absolutely horrifying and heartbreaking to me.”

At Columbia University in New York, one student beat a 24-year-old Israeli student with a stick. The victim approached his peer, who was ripping down flyers with names of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas. The student responded violently, shouting obscenities and leaving the victim with a broken finger. In a separate instance, a Columbia administrator declared in an interview with the school’s radio station his hopes that “every one of these people die,” about pro-Palestinian protestors on campus. 

These schools pride themselves on their liberalism and inclusivity. However, current antagonistic  discussions lead to competitive attitudes of whether Palestinians or Israelis have it worse. The way college leaders handle the continuing conflict will impact which schools families feel comfortable having their kids attend. 

Education officials face backlash for addressing the issue

On December 5, 2023, Harvard’s president Claudine Gay gave testimony to a Congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses. She intended to soothe the controversy surrounding Harvard, but her words intensified backlash against herself and the university. 

Representative Elise M. Stefanik pressed Gay down a line of questioning. Stefanik laid down a rhetorical trap, asking whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s code of conduct. Gay struggled to respond as she grappled with the difference between using the phrase “globalize the intifada” to support Palestinian freedom as opposed to using it as a call for the genocide of Jews.

Additionally, Gay wrestled with the issue of the right to free speech. She stated: “We [Harvard] embrace a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful — it’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment, intimidation …” If Gay responded that language like “globalize the intifada” was against the code of conduct — even if not expressly genocidal — she would be prohibiting free speech on campus. There is a fine line between controversial free speech and outright threatening free speech. Gay was unable to clarify the difference during this narrow line of questioning. In an attempt to explicate this distinction, Gay stated that “it depends on the context.”

Gay could not, in truth, give a straightforward moral answer because the application of Harvard’s code of conduct depends on the context of specific speech or actions. Gay released a post-hearing statement: “There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students … Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community … have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”

The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also spoke in front of Congress. They appeared to similarly evade the question of whether students who called for the genocide of Jews should be punished. 74 members of Congress signed a letter urging for the removal of all three presidents. The president of UPenn, Elizabeth Magill, resigned on December 9. Gay, after backlash over her handling of antisemitism led to investigation of her academic integrity, resigned on January 2, 2024. She had served less than six months as Harvard’s first black president. Many argue the scrutiny that led to her resignation is a symbol of partisan tensions and a discriminatory level of probing. 

Does pressure to remain politically correct make silence a better option?

As colleges struggle to address the conflict in ways that satisfy all parties, some have begun to wonder whether silence is a better option. After being criticized intensely by students and donors alike over its public statements, Harvard has started to consider a neutrality policy. American public schools, as well as colleges, have contended with the issue of how — and whether — to engage with the war between Israel and Hamas. 

Colleges are under immense pressure from donors to stamp out antisemitism. Donors are overwhelmingly older Americans, who tend to have more favorable attitudes towards Israel than younger people do. These donors are shocked by the failure of colleges to take unequivocal stances about the murder of Israelis on October 7. Consequently, they have begun to withdraw their funds from colleges. Colleges face a paradox of retaining donor support while upholding their valued principle of free speech and preventing overall controversy. The attempt to balance appeasing donors and the happiness of students is a tricky task, especially with the looming standard of political correctness.

Politically correct language is used to appease members of particular societal groups. In this case, institutions must avoid offending both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian individuals. They will provoke anger if they make a statement that is not wholly politically correct. Making a wholly politically correct statement is nearly impossible, as supporting Palestinians is taken as antisemitic and supporting Israelis is taken as Islamophobic. Attempting to support both Palestinian and Israeli citizens, likewise, is received as spineless and conciliatory. Vague statements merely condemning “terrorism” simply trigger more frustration. Silence now seems like the only acceptable option.

Yet silence, incessant division and relentless anger will never result in anything productive. The whole principle of successful democratic politics requires working together with multiple perspectives to devise a course of action. Americans should be able to recognize common human rights violations and their shared goal of peace instead of amplifying violence and tensions.

People and politicians must meet in the middle to have a sensible dialogue instead of wielding the controversy for their own purposes — whether those purposes be antisemitism, Islamophobia, or, in the case of American politics, right-wing politicians attempting to discredit opponents such as Claudine Gay. There is no such thing as a side that is so right that the other side has nothing to say worth hearing. The public must open their minds and listen to the other side. Democracy and discourse depend on it.

[Cheyenne Torres edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Israel-Hamas War Triggers Startling Division Between Young Americans appeared first on Fair Observer.

Simply using fear-based tactics can be counterproductive, causing people to shut down rather than engage with the problem. People can respond to distress with maladaptive behaviors, ignoring the issues in order to avoid the discomfort and fear. Although it makes little rational sense, we often behave as though, if we ignore a problem, it will not affect us; we assume that it will become somebody else’s problem.

Psychologists have classified different emotional responses to fear-inducing climate activism. These include eco-depression and eco-anxiety. Depression is a deactivating emotion, driving a person into a despair that inhibits climate action. Conversely, anxiety is an activating emotion, eliciting avoidance rather than engagement with climate change. Both culminate in the same failure to take action.

Another counterproductive effect of overly negative activism is psychological separation. Climate activists often wield the shock value of negative activism as a tool to produce action. For instance, they circulate images of polar bears starving on melting glaciers, turtles stabbed by plastic straws, forests reduced to fields of bare stumps and devastating wildfires. Instead of scaring people into action, these images create disbelief. From the comfort of their homes, viewers too easily regard these events as insignificant, happening far away. They simply cannot believe that something so disastrous is really occurring. Like eco-anxiety, this separation triggers avoidance of the problem.

The harsh images can also overwhelm people with their severity, fostering a doomsday mindset of inevitable climate failure. “If the situation is already so dire,” people think, “what will my individual help achieve? There is no point. We are all doomed.” Like with eco-depression, they shut down.

Positive activism helps negative activism achieve its goal

Without hope, fear is not an effective motivator. People need to believe their actions will have tangible results. This is where positive activism comes in, picking up where negative activism leaves off. Positive activism uses hope and inspires excitement to make a difference, focusing on the results people can achieve with action rather than the consequences of failure.

Elizabeth Wathuti, a young Kenyan climate activist, successfully blended negative and positive activism. In her passionate speech at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021, Wathuti began by using negative activism, describing the vivid effects of climate change on her home environment: “The natural world that [her] friends and [she] knew as children began to change before [their] eyes,” as they saw “the streams … no longer flowing” and “tree stumps instead of mighty trees.” She continued to speak of the hardships endured by millions of Kenyans starving due to deforestation and climate change-induced natural disasters. 

Once Wathuti established the urgency of the climate situation, she switched to positive activism and harnessed the fear. She declared that if people can “get everybody around the world to love nature … then [they] can change so much in the world within a short period of time.” With these inspiring words, she evoked the beauty of what climate change resistance can save, establishing a strong incentive for action. 

Using this synthesis of negative and positive activism, Wathuti has organized the planting of tens of thousands of trees in Kenya and addressed many leaders, successfully spreading climate awareness.

Another powerful example of this approach to activism is in the Irish rock band U2. The band has won 22 Grammys and been widely recognized as one of the best live acts in the world. The band has played many concerts for disaster relief, including a Conspiracy of Hope tour on behalf of Amnesty International, an organization centered on protecting human rights. Lead singer Bono co-founded the humanitarian organization One in 2004, aiming to fight extreme poverty and diseases. He also founded Red, an organization dedicated to battling the AIDs crisis. Through these organizations, Bono has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and saved millions of lives. But the band’s impact goes beyond direct aid. It also uses its music, complete with negative and positive activism, to inspire advocacy.

U2’s recent live act Achtung Baby debuted in September 2023 at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Using technology revolutionary to the music industry, U2 combined their music with digital projections. The band ended the show by placing the audience in a visual cathedral of the natural world. First, they displayed animals in danger of extinction, the footage filled with a monotone beige. This visual served to warn the audience of the devastating impacts of habitat loss. Gradually, as the music swelled, color crept into the animals until a vibrant array of life surrounded the audience. Negative activism gave way to positive, and the band reminded spectators about Earth’s beauty that they could protect, if they fought for it.

Fear is a powerful emotion. We need fear, because we need to know what to struggle for. But fear by itself is unsustainable and ultimately unproductive. We cannot remain in fear without going further. Fear will not vanish, because as long as humans live on Earth, evils will persist. We must center our mindset around hope. With hope as a horizon, a beautiful aim beckons us forward for every step of progress we make.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How to Inspire Climate Action With Negative and Positive Activism appeared first on Fair Observer.

Older generations have already experienced the impact of climate change. In 2021, devastating flooding occurred in Australia, Europe, Asia and the US Northeast. California burned and crippling icy temperatures paralyzed Texas. As the climate grows hotter, these events and their risks will only escalate.

Previous generations contentedly burned more and more fossil fuels, and now future generations will experience hotter and longer heat waves, intensifying droughts and increasingly devastating flooding. While they enjoyed luxury, they’ve left their posterity with the burden.

Youth activism in the face of inaction

The younger generation cares a lot more about climate change than the older one. This is clear when you consider how younger people organize their family life. An increasing number of young adults have qualms about bringing children into a world experiencing intensifying disasters due to global warming. In 2018, the United States Census Bureau reported that 83.5% of adults aged 55 and older have children. On the other hand, a 2020 Morning Consult poll, with a majority of younger Gen-Z and millennial voters, found that a quarter of childless adults cite climate change as a reason they did not have children.

Unlike thoughtless older generations, younger people do not have a choice in caring about climate change. It is their reality and their future.

Young people, realizing the climate burden left to them, have fought for change and organized mass youth climate strikes. In September 2019, more than 4 million young people in thousands of cities worldwide gathered to protest. 

However, adults and politicians have criticized the youth climate movement, often claiming youths are overreacting and would be better off going to school. The adults who are causing climate change will be dead when its consequences peak. The children they are deriding as dramatic are the very same children whose lives their actions will jeopardize. Activists from the younger generation are being shut out and mocked by an older generation living in denial.

For instance, Greta Thunberg, a prominent climate activist, passionately spoke at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2019 at age 16. She denounced global leaders for their inaction and greed in the face of extreme suffering due to climate change. Numerous policymakers, including US President Donald Trump, mocked Thunberg. Trump tweeted to say she had an “anger management problem” and sarcastically described her as “a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”

Trump demeaned Thunberg because her criticism personally attacked his presidential ability and high self-image. Thunberg and other young climate activists threaten the worldview and greedy interests of politicians who refuse to acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis. As Greta Thunberg puts it, “you [politicians] are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal.”

Climate anxiety and what young people can do

In the face of stubborn and selfish policymakers, young people can feel overwhelmed by hopelessness. In a study published in 2022, the majority of youth and young adults expressed extreme worry about climate change. They agree that their worry has negatively affected their daily life. In order to combat this hopeless worry, young people must do something to give themselves agency and a localized sense of control.

Advocacy is an accessible way for young people to get involved in and take action on the climate struggle. It can mean simple things, such as signing petitions, participating in marches or educating friends and family.

Little actions, such as turning off unnecessary lights and water flow, are also easy ways to take action and tackle the crisis.

The most effective way to get rid of feelings of helplessness is to take the bull by the horns and do something. The older generation of policymakers has taken agency away from young people, and they must take it back.

With all the odds pushing against them, young people must continue to press the older generation for change. They must shout, not whisper — demand, not ask — for immediate action.
[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Climate Change: A Toxic Gift for the Next Generation appeared first on Fair Observer.