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    ray bradbury

    Cambridge protesters urge Harvard not to concede to Trump demands: 'We have some demands, too. Back off.'

    Radical Curiosity Versus the State

    In this moment of disruption, to teach, to write, and to read critically are no longer normative acts expected of rigor and scholarship; they have become, in face of federal bullying, acts of defiance.

    Ibrahim N. Abusharif
    Jun 01, 2025

    Wherever we turn today, the drumbeats of a foreboding crisis in the country grow louder. It’s telling us that an authoritarian drift is pushing hard against the gates of once-inviolable institutions of democracy, like press freedom, due process, and independent higher education. They are institutions that have long fronted the American brand in the global imagination and have served as invitations to replicate a coveted liberal order whose hinges are now ready to blow.

    If the din of apocalyptic warnings is overwhelming, then disengage from all media, store canned foods, and wait for the collapse to pass. But for those unwilling to abdicate critical judgment, there are more generative responses. As worn out as it may sound, it’s useful to seek out story and metaphor again, not as escapism, but as epistemological tools to help us divine the bearing of a crisis whose logic is as erratic as its logic-masters. Dystopian fiction quietly endures as one of the few genres honest enough to envisage the coming shape of our contemporary decline and also show us subversive ways out.

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    Opinion
    academic freedom
    Ray Bradbury signs a book.

    What We Can Learn From Bradbury’s 70-Year Defense of Democracy

    As we head into a new year of momentous choice, we ought to remember that it is the unwillingness to be bothered that Bradbury warns is ultimately responsible for undermining democracy.

    David Chamberlain
    Dec 23, 2023

    I’ve been out walking on the snowy back roads of Vermont a great deal this December, often accompanied by Ray Bradbury. The author has been on my mind of late and not for the reason that you might expect. As we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece Fahrenheit 451, a number of commentators have remarked that the book’s attention to the perils of censorship, in the form of state-organized book burnings, is powerfully relevant to our own national experience in light of the spate of book bans in schools across America.

    There is obvious truth to these observations. But narrow comparisons between Bradbury’s dystopia and our own times that center on censorship fail to capture the chilling prescience of Fahrenheit 451 and its dire warnings about other more insidious threats to our democracy.

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    Opinion
    democracy
    Scene from Fahrenheit 451

    Error 451: A New Dystopian Internet Code With a Very Important Meaning

    'If your government does that, it sends a strong message to you as a citizen about what their intent is.'

    Nadia Prupis
    Dec 22, 2015

    A new internet code, Error Code 451, inspired by Ray Bradbury's dystopian writings, aims to alert users when websites are unavailable because the state has censored them.

    The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), a global body that reviews internet standards, approved the XML specification on Monday, which can be used to alert users when requested content has been blocked by "legal obstacles" that all government censorship. T former Google engineer and co on Monday. The specification suggested the term in 2012 as a reference to Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a 1953 novel in which books are outlawed and burned--an allegory for state suppression of free speech.

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    Big Brother Trump Is Watching You

    Mike Lee Tries to Sneak Public Land Sale Back Into 'Big, Ugly Bill' Ahead of Senate Vote

    'Just Killed, for Nothing': Israeli Troops Say They Were Ordered to Shoot Aid-Seeking Gaza Civilians

    Medicaid Defenders in Wheelchairs Arrested Ahead of Senate Vote on 'Betrayal of a Bill'

    Zohran Mamdani's Battle Against the Billionaire Class and Democratic Establishment Is Just Beginning

    Senate GOP and Fetterman Block Effort to Stop Trump's War on Iran

    The Kids Are Alright and They’re Taking Over

    'Vicious Islamophobia': GOP Calls for Deportation of US Citizen Mamdani

    Watch: After Key Senate Vote Dems Force Reading of 940-Page GOP Megabill

    By Limiting Nationwide Injunctions, Supreme Court Declares 'Open Season on All Our Rights'

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