Monthly Archives: June 2021

A venue for Deaf playwrights; an interpretation of a Tony Award-winning musical; performance by talented student dancers; and New Yorkers struggling with relationships and identity during the AIDS crisis are all part of a new collaborative season byRochester Institute of TechnologysNational Technical Institute for the DeafPerforming ArtsDepartment and theCollege of Liberal Arts.

The partnership between NTID and the College of Liberal Arts is a long-term collaboration in which strong backgrounds in performance, acting, directing, dance and music converge to create stunning theatrical productions.

The productions present an array of cultural, political and social issues. The 2021-2022 season includes:

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, directed by Andy Head, Nov. 19-21 in the Robert F. Panara Theatre. The play is set in New York City in the1980s asPresidentReagan sits in the White House while the AIDS crisis rages on.Caught in the middle are aValium-addicted Mormon and her closeted lawyer husbandand two men ripped apart by an AIDS diagnosis. These New Yorkers are desperatelyfighting for survivalas they wrestlewith love, politics, and God.Throw in a few ghosts, angels, and the infamous McCarthy-sidekick Roy Cohn and you have afantasticalandheart-breaking story.Not appropriate for children under 12.

RIT Performing Arts Scholars Showcase: Dance, Music, Theatre, directed by Marc Ellis Holland, Feb. 11-13, 2022, in the Robert F. Panara Theatre. The RIT Performing Arts Scholars Showcase features the newly-formed RIT DanceCore, an ensemble of talented student dancerswith choreography by DanceCore Director Marc Ellis Holland and RIT Director of Dance Thomas Warfield. More than exploring different ways to make a shape or learning a series of steps to music, this dance performance presents ways of moving that use the body as an instrument of expression and communication. The performance will also include collaborations with live music, theater students and projection design.

Deaf New Play Festival, directed by Aaron Kelstone, Feb. 25-27, 2022, in Room 1510, Lyndon Baines Johnson Hall. NTID Performing Arts will spotlight four emerging Deaf playwrights chosen from the 18 plays presented in 2021 at the Chicago, Illinois/Columbia College MAP-Deaf Theatre Festival. Each of the four Deaf playwrights 10-minute plays were produced by Deaf Spotlight, Deaf Austin Theater, New York Deaf Theatre, and Northern Lights Collective (Canada). The top four plays representing each of the four producing groups will be expanded by the NTID Theatre Department. Working with a dedicated team of actors, directors, dramaturgs, and other theater professionals each of the plays will be developed through the remainder of 2021.

In the Heights, directed by Luane Davis-Haggerty, April 15-17, 2022, in the Robert F. Panara Theatre. This musical tells the universal story of a vibrant community in New Yorks Washington Heights neighborhood, a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. Its a community on the brink of change, full of hopes, dreams and pressures, where the biggest struggles can be deciding which traditions you take with you, and which ones you leave behind.

All four productions are planned to be fully accessible for deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing audiences, whether using captions, American Sign Language in the performance, interpreters or a combination.

Tickets for performances in Panara Theatre$5 for students, senior citizens, and children under age 12; $10 for RIT faculty/staff/alumni; and $12 for the publicwill be available throughrittickets.com, by phone at 585-475-4121 or at the door two hours prior to curtain time.Performances in the 1510 Lab Theatre are free. Tickets will be released on Eventbrite.

For more information, visit RITs Performing Arts productions webpage.

See the rest here:

RIT's College of Liberal Arts, NTID Performing Arts announce 2021-2022 theatrical season | National Technical Institute for the Deaf | RIT - RIT News

Photo: Ng Han Guan/AP/Shutterstock

As we sift through the lab-leak debacle, the good news is that the healthy antibodies in the system are still strong enough to overcome the groupthink that produced the original error. News media are investigating a hypothesis they once dismissed, and the government has announced an investigation to find the truth.

The bad news is that the problem is turning out to be worse than it initially seemed and worse still, the source of the failure is not going away. The implications of this episode are much broader than understanding the source of the pandemic. It is a question about whether institutions like the media and government can withstand the pressure of ideological conformity.

A recent Washington Post story, looking back at the governments response to viruss origination, reported that many officials refused to explore the lab-leak hypothesis because it was associated with right-wing politics. For some of the officials who were privately suspicious of the Wuhan lab, Trumps and Navarros comments turned the lab-leak scenario into a fringe conspiracy theory, the Post found, It became nearly impossible to generate interest among health experts in a hypothesis that Trump had turned into a political weapon, they said.

That is an extraordinarily damning admission. Health experts who understood all along that it was entirely possible that the virus emerged from a lab simply refused to examine the hypothesis because it had become associated with the likes of Donald Trump.

Katherine Eban, writing in Vanity Fair, has written a lengthy expos drawing out the failure in detail. One State Department officialwrote that his team was warned not to investigate the origins of the pandemic because it would open a can of worms. Miles Yu, the State Departments principal China strategist, tells Eban, Anyone who dares speak out would be ostracized. After former CDC head Robert Redfield said he believed the virus originated in a lab, he tells Eban I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis.

In retrospect, the error is clear enough all along. The origins of the pandemic were always murky, and the strongest reason to dismiss lab-leak out of hand that the Wuhan lab supposedly had airtight security protocols was more rumor than fact. Whats more, the notion that the theory was racist was always transparently dubious. A story in which the virus emerged from failed safety protocols at the Wuhan lab is not inherently more racist than a theory in which it emerged from a wet market. (If anything, blaming the pandemic on Chinas people for eating bats lends itself much more easily to racism than blaming Chinas government for lax security at its research labs.)

Journalists make mistakes, especially operating in a chaotic atmosphere dominated by the ceaseless jabberings of a pathological liar with a giant megaphone. Whats concerning is that, even faced with undeniable proof of the error, many people still refuse to concede it.

An article in Nature warns against a a divisive investigation into the viruss origins. Remarkably enough, given that it comes from a scientific journal, the article does not directly question the possibility that COVID did escape from a lab. Instead, it warns that the investigation is fueling online bullying of scientists and anti-Asian harassment in the United States, as well as offending researchers and authorities in China whose cooperation is needed. One scientist who reports this bullying is Canadian virologist Angela Rasmussen, who in 2020 had developed a high-profile Twitter presence laced with confident dismissals of lab-leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory that was steeped in racist stereotypes.

When scientists are openly arguing against the study of a scientific hypothesis, for non-scientific reasons, something has gone haywire. In this case, that something seems to be a hothouse atmosphere centered around social media, that has cultivated an ethos of moral fervor and political homogeneity.

Personally I think that when a public figure is a known racist liar its fine to treat their evidence-free statements as racist lies, insisted podcaster Michael Hobbes. If David Duke gives a speech about rising urban crime rates its not the medias job to report the most plausible version of his argument. Writer and University of Minnesota Law School fellow Will Stancil called renewed attention to the lab-leak hypothesis the latest example of hybridization between the right-wing fever swamps and the white guys who run journalism.

The notable aspect of these statements is not the conclusion but the logic that produced it. That journalists dismissed a plausible theory, because they associated it with people who have noxious beliefs, does not strike them as a problem, but a correct epistemological model.

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Jonathan Last, an apostate conservative writing for the Bulwark (a new magazine that serves as a kind of refuge for Republican and conservative intellectuals unable to stomach Donald Trump), recently made an observation about conservatives taunting the mainstream media for dismissing the lab-leak hypothesis. Yes, Last allowed, many outlets got the story wrong by describing the hypothesis that COVID-19 escaped from the lab in Wuhan, rather than the nearby wet market, as a false, racist conspiracy theory, when in truth they never really knew the viruss origins. But most of those outlets have since corrected their error and treated the issue as a live scientific mystery. When has conservative media ever engaged in anything like this sort of self-correction? Is Fox News running self-flagellating segments questioning, say, the networks promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a proven COVID treatment? The very thought is a punchline.

This asymmetry between the mainstream news media and the conservative media that was created to oppose it has long been a source of satisfaction for we liberals. Modern journalism, like think tanks and the bureaucracy, grew out of a Progressive Era belief in disinterested expertise. Guided by the principles of scientific inquiry, these institutions would follow the truth wherever it led.

The conservative movement built a counter-Establishment to oppose this network, but the alt-institutions of the right mimicked the hallowed liberal Establishment only in form. The Heritage Institution, the Washington Times, and Fox News were not mirror images of Brookings, the New York Times, and CBS News they were parodies of them. Liberals had a phrase to describe this imbalance: the hack gap. The Republican Party had an army of partisans at its disposal, unburdened by any fealty to any scientific or professional norms save the advancement of the conservative movement. The liberal media might make mistakes, and bureaucracies may produce wrong conclusions, but at least they aspire to norms of fairness and impartiality that the right-wing counterparts merely sneer at.

Openness to evidence is the historical strength of American liberalism. This is why, for all the errors liberals have committed since the Progressive Era, a capacity for self-correction has given continued vitality to their our creed. The lab-leak fiasco ought to be a warning sign of what happens if the urge to not be defeated or manipulated by the right turns into an emulation of its methods. The only thing worse than having a hack gap would be not having one.

Analysis and commentary on the latest political news from New York columnist Jonathan Chait.

Read more:

The Groupthink That Produced the Lab-Leak Failure Should Scare Liberals - New York Magazine

The Australian Electoral Commission has approved the registration of the New Liberals as a political party, despite warnings from the Liberal party it would result in widespread voter confusion.

In a decision published on Thursday, the AEC assistant commissioner, Joanne Reid, found the new partys name was sufficiently distinct and not likely to cause confusion or imply a connection with the Liberal Party of Australia.

The Liberal party had accused the New Liberals of a cynical attempt to piggyback on its brand, and tabled Crosby Textor research claiming up to two-thirds of voters wrongly believed the parties were connected.

The New Liberals registration sets up the nightmare possibility for the Liberal party of a repeat of the 2013 election, when David Leyonhjelm was elected to the Senate from New South Wales. Leyonhjelm recorded a 7.19% swing to him after the Liberal Democrats ticket was placed further to the left on the ballot paper than the Liberal party.

The Liberal party federal director, Andrew Hirst, has told Guardian Australia the party is disappointed with the decision and intends to seek a review of it.

After internal review by a three-person panel in the AEC, the Liberal party can also seek a merits review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

In the decision, Reid said she was not in a position to judge the accuracy of a survey of 2,036 voters conducted by Michael Turner, the head of research at Crosby Textor, as the precise methodology was not specified.

Reid accepted the survey showed some of the participants in the research were confused or mistaken by the name The New Liberals and said she gave this evidence some weight.

Reid said the New Liberals application was much closer to the line than the earlier registration of the Liberal Democrats and Liberals for Forests.

But she found the new party name was sufficiently visually and aurally distinct from the Liberal Party of Australia, as they only shared the word Liberal and in the precedent case of Woollard the AAT had found that no political party can claim the exclusive right to generic words such as liberal.

Reid said the ordinary definition of the word new does have the connotation of representing something different.

Unlike New Labour, a rebranding of Labour in the UK, both the Liberal party and the New Liberals would appear on the same ballot making it very likely that a voter would have a choice between the two, she said.

The word liberal has a broad meaning and history. It is suggestive of a certain political philosophy.

It is not a word that is only associated with one particular party.

Based on the prevalence of the term liberal in politics and in relation to liberal thought, any perceived correlation between The New Liberals might be on the basis of their shared belief in liberalism.

Reid concluded a reasonable person would not think that a connection or relationship exists between the two parties.

The New Liberals was founded in 2019 by the Sydney barrister Victor Kline, who is also a founder and director of the Refugee Law Project. He is also the partys leader and a New South Wales lead Senate candidate.

The New Liberals say they are economically responsible and socially progressive and target the Liberals over failures on climate change and treatment of refugees.

Claiming the mantle of liberalism and providing inner-city voters with a non-Labor alternative to the Liberals has helped independents including Zali Steggall win previously blue-ribbon seats, efforts set to continue at the next election.

In April Kline told Guardian Australia the New Liberals aim to run candidates for the Senate in every state and up to three dozen urban seats held by Liberal MPs, preferencing independents such as the Voice movement first and the Liberals last.

On Thursday Kline said he and the party were absolutely thrilled with the registration decision. Although were not totally secure, our position is very strong, he said, commenting on the Liberal party challenge.

The New Liberals have announced 19 candidates so far, including lead Senate candidates in all states except Western Australia.

Excerpt from:

New Liberals registration approved despite Liberal party objection over voter confusion - The Guardian

The Liberal Party's national campaign co-chairs have declared a "state of electoral urgency," a procedural move that will allow the party to speed up the nomination processes for local candidates ahead of the next federal election.

It's the latest sign that the federal parties are preparing for a possible fall election. The Conservative Party is prepared to invoke a similar measure if an election is called to get many more would-be MPs nominated on a faster timeline.

MPs also unanimously agreed last night to hold a "take-note debate" in the House of Commons on June 15 to allow members who aren't running againto "make their farewell speech."

In a message to some senior members of the party Thursday, the Liberal co-chairsEconomic Development Minister Melanie Joly and former cabinet minister Navdeep Bainssaid they are invoking rule 18 of the national rules for the selection of candidates as of today "in all remaining ridings" that have yet to nominate a candidate.

CBC News has seen a copy of the message that was sent to national and provincial and territorial party leaders and organizers.

Under that rule, the two can "alter the timelines and procedures ... in such a manner as they, in their sole and unfettered discretion, may see fit," to get a local Liberal candidate in place.

As of today, the party has nominated just 162 candidates out of the possible 338 ridings, which means there are many more candidates to recruit and nominate in the months ahead of a possible fall election.

In statement, a spokesperson for the party, Braeden Caley, said the "electoral urgency" clause is a "longstanding administrative measure in our party's processes that gives the ability to shift timelines and procedures in the national nomination rules in order to nominate more candidates, more quickly in the months ahead."

Caley said the party is not pushing for an election but rather preparing for the possibility that the minority government could fall at any time.

"The Liberal team remains resolutely focused on doing everything it takes to keep Canadians safe and supported and that will continue to be the case," he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly said "nobody wants an election before the end of this pandemic."

While the party has fewer than half of its 338 possible candidates nominated so far, Caley said the party is routinely "approached by a whole host of talented community leaders interested in running as Liberal candidates."

Caley said the party is committed to recruiting candidates "from traditionally unrepresented perspectives and communities," including LGBT, women, Black, Indigenous, and people of colour candidates.

Excerpt from:

Liberal Party triggers 'electoral urgency' clause to speed up nominating candidates - CBC.ca