Donald Trump’s recent comments on federal district judge Gonzalo Curiel’s supposed partiality may seem outrageously Trumpian, but they’re aligned with a broader Republican attitude, writes Dahlia Lithwick. “Here’s the larger issue the Republican nominee’s attacks on Judge Curiel highlights,” Lithwick argues. “It is actually part and parcel of a broader GOP assault on judicial independence that predates Trump and transcends the recent racism directed at Curiel.”
There are more non-white than white students in American public schools. How is the public education system responding? Sarah Carr introduces a Slate reporting series on this topic, produced through a partnership with Columbia Journalism School’s Teacher Project.
To kick off the series, Alexandria Neason writes about efforts to recruit black teachers to work in New Orleans’ post-Katrina school system. “Between 2004 and 2014,” Neason writes, “the percent of black teachers [in the city’s schools] plunged from 71 percent to 49 percent. And far fewer teachers working in schools were raised in New Orleans—resulting, many say, in large cultural gaps between the teachers and their majority-black, native New Orleanian students.”
And Jessica Huseman visits a school in Anchorage, Alaska, that’s had startling success in integrating children of refugees into the system. One teacher told Huseman “it’s just as much her job to teach students to feel comfortable in American classrooms as it is to teach academic material. ‘It’s a shock to the system for them,’ she says. ‘If we don’t help them understand how to feel comfortable here, they won’t learn, regardless of how smart they are.’”
And, finally: RIP, Muhammad Ali.
- That time Ali talked a suicidal man off a ledge. By Josh Levin.
- The 1964 trip to Africa that cemented Cassius Clay’s transformation into Muhammad Ali. By Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith.
- Ali’s eccentric and beautiful boxing style, still the Greatest of All Time. By Eric Raskin.
- What Ali gained, and lost, in fighting the government over his induction into the armed forces. By Hampton Dellinger.
- Ali’s famed opponent Joe Frazier, remembered. By Robert Lipsyte.
- Ali as poet. “Me? Whee!” By Katy Waldman.
