Notices by Alfie Kohn (alfiekohn@sciences.social), page 3

1. Erdogan, Turkey's autocrat, politicizes the central bank, replaces its director, and demands lower interest rates. (He's more successful than Trump has been so far because Turkey is farther along the road to autocracy.)
2. Inflation soars to 85%.
3. Voters are enraged. A pro-democracy opposition candidate, Istanbul's mayor, gains support.
4. Erdogan has the mayor arrested for "corruption and terrorism."

Eleanor Duckworth: The more intensely interested a teacher is in a student’s thinking, the more interested the student becomes in his or her own thinking.
Corollary: The more a teacher just wants to see right answers, the less interested students become in their (or any) thinking.

For more, read Duckworth's marvelous essay collection "The Having of Wonderful Ideas & Other Essays" (https://www.tcpress.com/the-having-of-wonderful-ideas-and-other-essays-on-teaching-and-learning-3rd-edition-9780807747308) and, for a teaser, watch this 18-minute talk of hers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sfgenKusQk

Front-page NYT story todayy on MAGA's "vision of a simpler past" (when straight white Christian men enjoyed unchallenged privilege and dominance) - how nostalgia powers reactionary, as opposed to merely conservative, politics: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/us/politics/trump-reversal-better-times.html

Here's my own take on the dark side of pining for the good old days: https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/aggressive-nostalgia/

The philosophical arguments against authoritarianism are clear: People have a right to self-determination & freedom from domination. (See Locke, Mill, Marx, Dewey...) But there's also a practical argument: the harms suffered if the leader turns out to be unstable and (cognitively, psychiatrically, morally) unfit.

A recent series of worldwide studies finds that ugly anti-immigrant prejudice isn't inevitable just because
immigration increases. "Inclusive legal and socioeconomic integration policies that render immigrants more equal to natives...reduce xenophobia among natives": https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358004508_Policies_and_prejudice_Integration_policies_moderate_the_link_between_immigrant_presence_and_anti-immigrant_prejudice

BTW, I found those studies in my review of social science research offering possible solutions to tribalism: "Heterogenius: Why and How to Stop Dividing People into Us and Them" - https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/diversity/

Los desaparecidos. In the U.S. Jesus.

"Dachau was the first step on the road to atrocity. Will America go there? Eight months ago, I would have said never. At that point, America was still a nation under the rule of law. Now, we have politicians cheering the image of people being fed to alligators" and "selling swag celebrating the construction of an American concentration camp."

https://charlieangus.substack.com/p/american-dachau-trump-takes-the-next

Yes, destroying foreign aid ultimately will boomerang on Americans because pandemics know no borders.
Yes, terrorizing immigrants will affect our food supply and slow down construction.
And, yes, the GOP's mammoth tax cuts for the uberwealthy funded by cuts to programs for the needy will be bad for the economy.

But these are secondary objections. What matters most - what we need to emphasize - is that the acts are outrageously immoral in their own right.

Imagine if we lived in a country where it would be almost impossible for Trump to find elected officials, lawyers, law enforcement officers, and businesspeople willing to participate in this evil.

Alongside my horror, anger, and fear these days is a deep sadness that he seems to have no trouble recruiting accomplices.

Read this account by a reporter who interviews people eager to join the MAGAstapo: "The US is filled with 'pretty nice guys'" - many of them apparently dog-lovers - "who are ready to inflict, who have already inflicted, senseless and life-shattering violence on innocent, impoverished people" -
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/two-days-talking-to-people-looking-for-jobs-at-ice/

“All forms of education are political because they can enable or inhibit the questioning habits of students, thus developing or disabling their critical relation to knowledge and society.” One important implication: “Rote learning and skills drills" inhibit kids' "civic and emotional developments.”
-Ira Shor

“The difference between a journalist and a historian is that the historian knows the difference.”

-Bill Moyers (1934-2025)

The best arguments against the use of AI in schools are made unwittingly by the people enthusiastically promoting the use of AI in schools: https://www.businessinsider.com/khan-academy-ceo-ai-classroom-teacher-aid-not-replacement-2025-6

A NYT article about evaluating ChapGPT says in passing: "But standardized tests are not always a good judge of how technologies will perform in real-world situations."

Yikes! What if journalists figure out that this is also true of students? Would they then have to rethink decades of reporting about education policy?

"How many bodies did you guys grab today?" one ICE agent asks another. The answer is 31, and the two high-five.

Concentration camps and totalitarianism are possible only because of people like this who willingly follow any orders they're given.

... by people like Miller, Noem, and Homan.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-20/border-patrol-agents-brag-in-front-of-detained

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-letter-to-home-from-a-weary-ice-agent

Another superb piece by Adam Serwer, this one explaining how Republicans have gone "from condemning leaders who threaten their own citizens to becoming sycophants for one": https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/trump-military-force-protests/683198/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8Cdfor12GRVOUysWoqfjmig&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Please read this thread:
https://skywriter.blue/pages/kenwhite.bsky.social/post/3kx6yqeb7hu2l

Pictures from America's two coasts today

If you use, expect to use, or have an opinion about using AI, you definitely need to read this. Jaw-dropping stuff.

https://amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-ex-machina