Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six are both valuable, high-quality student publications. I have known students who have worked on each of them and I admire the content of both magazines as a reader. For ten and five years, respectively, students have worked diligently to forge engaging content on feature stories that mattered deeply to them and to other members of the UA community. Consistently, even when tackling difficult issues, the tone of both magazines has been constructive, aimed at uplifting students and the larger University of Alabama community.
The latest Bondi memo follows in the vein of the earlier Trump Executive Order that sought to define any discussion of gender or race-related content as inherently unlawful and “divisive concepts.” Divisive is the last word I would use to describe either Alice or Nineteen Fifty-Six. Could UA officials, if pressed, truly find “divisive” or objectionable material in either publication?
The only divisive concepts here are the unabashed racism and antifeminism of the federal policy and Bondi memo themselves, which are intended to silence not only protest but even content that affirms the experiences and fundamental belonging of women, LGBTQ folks and students of color in the UA community — whether in the form of campus spaces, cultural programming or now extracurricular student self-expression. UA is already worse off for these losses.
What a miserable message for UA administrators to send to its students on every level. Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six represent precisely the kinds of student-driven projects that a public university should be encouraging: creating original work and learning the tools of quality journalism, graphic design and marketing in the process. What are these publications if not entrepreneurial in the best sense? This is crass, ideologically-driven censorship and that is something a university worth its salt should never abide.
Stacy Morgan is a professor at The University of Alabama in the Department of American Studies.
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