Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By C. Michael White, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy Practice, University of Connecticut

A California company has recalled more than 3.1 million bottles of lubricating eye drops because it had not properly tested – and thus could not prove – whether the products were sterile.

These products are sold under several names at major retailers across the country. The company, K.C. Pharmaceuticals, initiated the recall on March 3, 2026.

I am a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist who has assessed risks of poor-quality manufacturing practices and lax oversight for prescription drugs, eye drops, dietary supplements and nutritional products in the United States for many years. This recall is very large, potentially affecting over a million people. Using nonsterile eye drops that harbor bacteria and fungus can cause eye infections, which can become severe because the immune system has a hard time accessing the eyeball and fighting the microbes.

This is not the first time that a major recall has occurred in the eye drop market – and it is the second time since 2023 that the Food and Drug Administration has become aware of sterility issues at K.C. Pharmaceuticals.

Multiple products affected

Eight products are being recalled: Dry Eye Relief Eye Drops, Artificial Tears Sterile Lubricant Eye Drops, Sterile Eye Drops Original Formula, Sterile Eye Drops Redness Lubricant, Eye Drops Advanced Relief, Ultra Lubricating Eye Drops, Sterile Eye Drops AC and Sterile Eye Drops Soothing Tears.

These products are sold under different company names, including Top Care, Best Choice, Good Sense, Rugby, Leader, Good Neighbor Pharmacy, Quality Choice, Valu Merchandisers, Geri Care, Walgreens, CVS and Kroger.

Their expiration dates range from April 30, 2026, to Oct. 31, 2026. They were sold at stores including Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Kroger, Harris Teeter, Dollar General, Circle K and Publix.

If you purchased an eye drop product since April 2025, check to see whether the name matches any of these. If it does, go to the FDA site, where you can see the exact lot numbers and expiration dates for those products.

How to tell whether your eye drops were recalled

You can determine whether your eye drop product is part of the recall by looking at two columns in the table. Column 2 of the table lists the names of the products, with one name per row. Column 5 provides the specific lot numbers of the affected products and their expiration dates. For example, recalled Sterile Eye Drops AC products – row 1, column 2 – have the lot number AC24E01 with an expiration date of May 31, 2026, listed in row 1, column 5.

If the product you purchased has the same name but a different lot number or expiration date than the ones listed on the FDA website, it is not subject to this recall and you can safely keep using it. If you find your product has been recalled, stop using it and bring it back to the store for a refund.

The FDA has not received reports of any infections as of early April. However, if after using one of these recalled products you experience redness in your eyes, eyelids stuck together, unusual eye discharge such as goo or pus, vision changes, eyelid swelling or eye pain itchiness or irritation, these symptoms could be due to an eye infection.

If you experience these symptoms, seek medical attention – and also, if possible, report your symptoms to the FDA.

A history of eye drop sterility issues

The FDA has many important public health roles: approving new drugs and medical devices; overseeing the manufacturing quality of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplement and food products; and protecting the public from counterfeit medications.

With its limited personnel, the agency focuses its time on areas where the risks are greater. This means manufacturers of more dangerous products, or product types that were previously found to have issues, are inspected more frequently.

The FDA had inspected over-the-counter eye drop manufacturers only a few times before 2023, when cases of rare eye infections due to a drug-resistant Pseudomonas bacteria strain started occurring.

In total, 81 people from 18 states developed severe eye infections during the 2023 outbreak. Fourteen people experienced vision loss because of the product, an additional four people had their eyeballs removed and four people died.

The agency identified two products as the culprits: Global Pharma’s EzriCare Artificial Tears and Delsem Pharma’s Artificial Tears and Eye Ointment.

Later in 2023, the FDA issued recalls for Dr. Berne’s, LightEyez Limited, Pharmedica LLC and Kilitch Healthcare eye drop products for sterility issues. Kilitch Healthcare had serious quality lapses, in which the facility was filthy, employees were barefoot on the manufacturing floor and the company fraudulently passed products that failed sterility tests.

Repeated manufacturing problem

At the time, the FDA also inspected K.C. Pharmaceuticals and issued the company a warning letter. The FDA was concerned that the manufacturer failed to establish and follow appropriate written procedures designed to prevent microbiological contamination.

Although the agency did not request a recall, it did ask that the company immediately change its protocols and consult outside experts to prevent these issues from recurring.

The current massive recall of K.C. Pharmaceuticals’ eye drop products suggests lingering quality control issues in the manufacturer’s Pomona, California, plant that need to be urgently addressed. If the company had heeded the FDA’s recommendations, it would have detected the nonsterility issue before so many batches of the products were manufactured.

C. Michael White does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Massive eye drop recall reflects ongoing issues with manufacturing and FDA inspection – https://theconversation.com/massive-eye-drop-recall-reflects-ongoing-issues-with-manufacturing-and-fda-inspection-279971

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Anindya Kundu, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Florida International University

Since March 2025, at least 15 Florida public universities and colleges, including the University of Florida and Florida State College at Jacksonville, have signed memorandums of agreement for their campus police departments to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

These partnerships authorize ICE agents to expand the role of campus police officers so they can receive training and “perform certain functions of an immigration officer.”

The agreements give campus police officers the federal authority to question students who are believed to be immigrants about their legal right to be in the country. Campus police officers can arrest students if the officers have “reason to believe the alien to be arrested is in the United States in violation of law.” Campus police can also check federal immigration databases to see students’ immigration status.

The list of universities in the state that have signed on to these agreements includes leading research universities such as Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University in Miami, or FIU, where we work as professors of education. We are unaware of any school in the Florida state university system that has publicly said they will not sign an agreement.

In the past few decades, the U.S. government has classified universities as “sensitive” spaces that are protected from aggressive immigration enforcement. This means that schools, like churches and hospitals, have until recently been generally considered off-limits for immigration enforcement officers.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump revoked these long-standing Department of Homeland Security protections.

A shift on campus

As scholars, we study relationships between schools and democracy, from how students learn languages to how students and educators can become leaders.

As professors, we teach many students who are immigrants or are from foreign countries who come to the U.S. for their studies, as well as many who are children of immigrants.

As a result of these new initiatives, we are seeing and personally experiencing an intensifying climate of uncertainty and anxiety on our campus. These policies are worsening many of our students’ sense of belonging.

Understanding the changes

Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement is supported by the federal 287(g) program, a 1996 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. This amendment to the wide-ranging immigration law lets ICE delegate certain federal enforcement activities to local state police.

In February 2025, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis directed state universities to enter into 287(g) partnerships with ICE and to “deputize” university police officers to enforce federal immigration laws on school campuses.

ICE does not have blanket access to student records, which remain protected under federal privacy law. But 287(g) agreements create new pathways for information to flow through campus police encounters, effectively lowering the barrier between university data and federal immigration enforcement.

There are no official reports of FIU or other Florida university campus police officers arresting students because of their immigration status. A few college students, though, have been detained off-campus by local police agencies and then turned over to ICE.

FIU’s communications team wrote in a statement to The Conversation: “Last year FIU Police signed a 287(g) memorandum of agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as have other state university, local and state law enforcement agencies in Florida. The 287(g) memorandum of agreement for Florida International University is readily available from ICE.gov.”

“Since signing the agreement, there have been no immigration-related enforcement actions on our campuses,” FIU’s statement continued.

Florida Atlantic University did not respond to a request for comment.

In January 2026, an immigration activist recorded FIU’s chief of police saying at a FIU meeting that if ICE requests campus police’s help, they would comply.

As FIU faculty members, we have not received any explicit guidance on what to do if an ICE agent comes to campus, or if a campus police officer tries to arrest someone for immigration reasons in our classrooms.

FIU President Jeanette Nuñez said in 2025 that there was “much confusion, much angst, and much misinformation” about the agreement.

Other universities have emphasized the need to comply with state directives.

Some Florida university officials have said that campus police will not target students or conduct raids as part of their routine cooperation with federal authorities.

Heightened stress and anxiety

As educators, our work has shifted over this past academic year from providing instruction to focusing more on mentoring our students as whole people. Our students are questioning how much their university supports them.

Daily, we observe how Trump’s immigration policies, including travel bans the U.S. has placed on certain countries, heighten stress for all of our students, regardless of their immigration status. Our international and immigrant students have told us they are fearful of the government’s increased surveillance.

One graduate student shared that he was hesitant to leave his dorm room and participate in any campus activities for fear of possible arrest because of his immigration status.

Another student said he would not leave the U.S. to visit his mother who was sick with cancer for fear he would not be let back into the country. His mother has since passed without his presence.

Many students, including one international doctoral student and father to young children, are unable to return to their homeland and visit their relatives or conduct research due to current travel bans placed upon 75 countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

These new policies have also prompted student and faculty protests at our university and other public universities across Florida.

Some Florida Atlantic University students in Boca Raton staged a walkout on Feb. 25, 2026, to protest the school’s agreement with ICE.

Florida State University students called on administrators in February 2026 to set up a “sanctuary campus,” which would limit FSU partnerships with ICE.

We are trying to create more opportunities for open dialogue and for sharing students’ emotions and experiences related to these policies. We are also helping students find resources, including legal aid, that could help them or their peers if they have a negative encounter with ICE or campus police.

Refuge or risk

Universities, especially in conservative states such as Florida, may continue to market themselves as places of inclusion, mobility and global belonging. This is true even as schools cut diversity, equity and inclusion programs and as some students experience heightened surveillance, visa cancellations, detention or deportation.

One of our FIU graduate students recently explained how these policies are affecting their day-to-day life.

“I just want to finish my studies as soon as possible and go back to my country. I feel unwelcome and unsafe on campus. I don’t want to join campus activities anymore because students can be targeted there,” the student said. “I no longer trust campus police officers and won’t ask them for help, even if I need it. I am afraid I will be profiled even though I am here legally.”

When campus police are folded into federal immigration work, we believe that universities cannot claim they offer more refuge than risk.

Ryan W. Pontier receives funding from the U.S. Department of Education. He is affiliated with P.S. 305 in Miami.

Anindya Kundu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. We teach at a Florida university that agreed to cooperate with ICE – and we worry that it is making our students feel less safe – https://theconversation.com/we-teach-at-a-florida-university-that-agreed-to-cooperate-with-ice-and-we-worry-that-it-is-making-our-students-feel-less-safe-277911

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Tim Derdenger, Associate Professor of Marketing, Carnegie Mellon University

When the NFL draft arrives in Pittsburgh in April 2026, city officials are sure to tout projected economic impact figures. They will likely point to the US$73 million generated by Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the surrounding area in 2025, the $213 million generated by Detroit in 2024, or the $164 million by Kansas City the year prior.

I’m a sports marketing researcher who studies the economics of celebrity endorsements, and I view these short-term, direct economic impact numbers with skepticism.

The reality is that local residents often stay home to avoid the chaos of mega-events. Economists have long understood the “displacement effect” that happens when an influx of fans crowd out regular tourism and local spending, essentially replacing existing economic activity rather than adding to it.

If Pittsburgh measures NFL draft success strictly by hotel bookings and weekend beer sales, it has missed the point. Because the draft moves from city to city each year, the true return on investment isn’t found in a temporary spike in local revenues. It is found in brand equity – the long-term increase in a city’s “market value” and reputation.

The impact of endorsements

For three days, the NFL will act as a massive celebrity endorser for Pittsburgh. Because attention is a scarce and valuable commodity, that institutional endorsement holds a value that can far exceed any immediate cash injection.

In marketing, researchers frequently analyze the signaling power of endorsements. “Signaling” in this context is the shift from Pittsburgh saying, “Trust us, we’re great” to a massive global brand, the NFL, saying, “We trust them, and you should too.”

For example, my research into the golf industry quantified the immense impact Tiger Woods’ endorsement had on the sale of Nike golf balls. When Woods switched from Titleist, Nike sold an additional 119 million golf balls over a 10-year period, adding $105 million to its bottom line.

Woods’ endorsement served as a market-wide signal of quality and legitimacy, elevating the brand’s premium status. This led to an increase in price of 2.5%. The increase in price also sends a signal of product quality.

The NFL draft functions in a similar way for host cities.

By selecting Pittsburgh, the NFL broadcasts a signal that the city is a premier destination capable of managing a global stage. This presents a critical rebranding opportunity. Despite its decades-long transformation into a thriving hub for robotics, health care and higher education, Pittsburgh continually battles to shake off its 20th-century Rust Belt reputation in the national consciousness.

Detroit leveraged the draft in 2024 not just to host a massive party, but to also aggressively counter persistent narratives of urban decay and to highlight investments made in the city.

The broadcast shots of a vibrant, packed downtown did far more to modernize Detroit’s image than any taxpayer-funded ad campaign ever could.

The same thing happened in Kansas City after it hosted the 2023 draft. The city added almost 25,000 residents in the year after the draft – more than in any of the previous four years.

NFL draft could shape local recruiting

Hosting the NFL draft could also prove beneficial to recruitment efforts at Pittsburgh-area colleges.

In recent years, I have analyzed how name, image and likeness policies, commonly referred to as NIL, reshape talent acquisition in college football.

In the NIL era, universities aren’t just selling an education; they are selling a direct pathway to professional success.

I believe hosting the NFL draft will likely generate a “halo effect” for regional football programs like the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University and West Virginia University. A halo effect occurs when the prestige and glamour of a major endorsement spills over to elevate the perception of other brands that have some association.

For highly touted high school recruits who are watching the NFL draft broadcast, seeing the pathway to the pros physically located in Pittsburgh anchors the idea that this region is a center of the football universe – at least for three days.

Fans will see this play out in real time. When ESPN broadcasts from the North Shore, it won’t just talk about Penn State quarterback Drew Allar’s arm strength; it will show highlights of him developing just two hours east.

The impact on the University of Pittsburgh could be even more direct. The rise of linebacker Kyle Louis and running back Desmond Reid offers continued evidence of a Pitt-to-pro pipeline.

In a hypercompetitive recruiting market where every major college football program offers money, nonmonetary differentiation is key. Being in one of the NFL’s chosen cities signals that you are already in the league’s orbit.

Of course, hosting a mega-event comes with inherent risks. If logistics fail, traffic becomes unmanageable or the fan experience is poor, this high-profile endorsement backfires. The brand signal rapidly flips from “premier destination” to “not ready for prime time.”

In landing the NFL draft, Pittsburgh essentially scored a three-day commercial that will be viewed by tens of millions of Americans across the country. Now, it just has to make sure the set looks good.

Tim Derdenger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Hosting the NFL draft is less about weekend beer sales and more about long-term brand value – https://theconversation.com/hosting-the-nfl-draft-is-less-about-weekend-beer-sales-and-more-about-long-term-brand-value-277465

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christopher Magra, Professor of American History, University of Tennessee

A crowd gathered along the waterfront in New York City in the summer of 1776. The scene they witnessed was terrifying.

The largest expeditionary force in British history sailed into the American harbor. Over 300 ships brought 32,000 professional soldiers and Hessian mercenaries to crush a rebellion.

Nearby, Gen. George Washington’s army gathered to hear their commander read a document that would forever change the nature of their fight: the Declaration of Independence.

And contrary to how Americans now think of that document – as an inspiring declaration that detailed the grievances of Colonists against the British king and announced their independence from Great Britain – what Washington read to his army was also something else.

The Declaration of Independence was America’s first formal declaration of war. It planted a symbolic flag for Patriots to rally around. It transformed illegitimate rebels without hope of foreign aid into state-sponsored freedom fighters eligible for military alliances.

This foundational American text wasn’t just a philosophical breakup letter but a strategic move to secure vital support for the American war effort. America’s first declaration of war was a high-stakes geopolitical gamble essential to achieving independence.

Converting rebels into soldiers

As I and other military historians show in our forthcoming collection of essays, “America’s First War: The Military History of the Declaration of Independence,” the declaration was written within the confines of 18th-century legal standards that strictly governed diplomacy and warfare.

Thomas Jefferson, the foremost writer of the declaration, relied heavily on the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel’s 1758 treatise “The Law of Nations.” Vattel stressed the fact that in the eyes of European courts, providing aid to rebels was a violation of sovereignty and a dangerous precedent.

Vattel argued that for foreign powers to intervene legally in conflicts, the oppressed party had to formally declare its independence and assume the status of a state. Jefferson kept Vattel’s treatise open while he was working on the Declaration of Independence to ensure he used the specific terminology required to transform the American rebellion into a just war.

By framing independence as “necessary,” Jefferson was not just waxing philosophical. He was satisfying the legal requirement set out by Vattel that all peaceful avenues for reconciliation had been exhausted, which justified war to the “Powers of the Earth.”

A formal declaration of war, approved by Congress, increased support for the American military here at home. It rallied a divided and wary population. Even as late as 1776, there were Americans who remained fence-sitters, uncertain about the risks of a total break with the British Empire.

The declaration functioned as a public rallying flag that allowed Americans to identify themselves as a legitimate, unified group. Like Thomas Paine’s widely read pamphlet “Common Sense,” the declaration educated the uncommitted on the inescapable necessity of breaking away from the British Empire:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the declaration reads, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

By framing the fight in the universal language of the preamble, Jefferson sought to inspire and unite disparate Americans through a shared vision of a better life.

In doing so, he helped transform localized resistance movements into a collective national mission. In the words of the declaration, “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The declaration and the American army

This psychological shift was especially critical for the rank-and-file soldiers in the Continental Army.

That’s why, on July 9, 1776, Washington ordered the declaration to be read to his troops in New York. His aim: to provide a fresh incentive for the coming struggle.

This public address was intended to transform the nature of their service. They were no longer disloyal subjects in rebellion against a legitimate sovereign, but soldiers of a new nation defending their own homeland. Through Jefferson’s words and Washington’s address, the declaration fueled enthusiasm for a new political system and rededicated America’s soldiers to a cause that was not yet won.

Washington told the troops he hoped “this important Event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer, and soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms.”

America’s first declaration of war bolstered troop morale at a pivotal point in the conflict. The Continental Army was going to square off against the largest expeditionary force in British history in the summer of 1776. And Washington’s troops consisted of approximately 19,000 militiamen.

The British army had the British navy. Washington had only minimal naval support. The arrival of the first waves of Hessian mercenaries, auxiliaries for Britain, in July 1776 only deepened American resolve to seek out their own foreign military allies.

Forging alliances

The declaration helped bring about much-needed support for the American war effort among foreign governments.

The primary strategic target of the declaration was the Bourbon monarchies of France and Spain, Britain’s chief rivals. The Continental Congress understood that the fledgling United States could not withstand British military might without receiving overseas shipments of gold and gunpowder, in addition to warships, sailors and soldiers.

Silas Deane, the Americans’ first secret envoy, arrived in Paris in July 1776 with instructions to procure equipment for an army of 30,000 men and to inquire about a formal alliance once independence was declared.

Working with the French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Deane established the shell company Roderigue Hortalez and Co. to funnel secret aid from the French government to America. This clandestine supply chain eventually provided thousands of muskets, field artillery and millions of pounds of gunpowder that made possible the 1777 victory at Saratoga and France’s subsequent formal alliance.

While France provided the bulk of the naval support, Spain’s role was equally critical to the American war effort.

Following the declaration, the Continental Congress intensified its appeals to Spain. Bernardo de Gálvez, the governor of Spanish Louisiana, became a central figure in this secret war. Even before Spain formally entered the war in 1779, Gálvez channeled over $70,000 worth of medicine, weapons and uniforms up the Mississippi River to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. This southern lifeline kept the American war effort viable in the Western theater and forced the British to maintain a defensive posture on multiple fronts.

Reframing the declaration as a strategic war measure highlights the Founding Fathers’ sophisticated understanding of power.

They recognized that each individual’s “unalienable rights” were a fantasy without the “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, [and] contract Alliances.” Jefferson and the members of Congress understood that American freedom required support for the war effort at home and abroad.

By transforming a localized insurrection into a state-sponsored homeland defense and an international conflict, the declaration ensured that the American Revolution would not be a mere sound of one hand clapping, but a successful geopolitical struggle that brought about independence.

Christopher Magra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 1776’s Declaration of Independence inspired Washington’s troops to fight against the odds – and also helped bring in powerful allies – https://theconversation.com/1776s-declaration-of-independence-inspired-washingtons-troops-to-fight-against-the-odds-and-also-helped-bring-in-powerful-allies-278368

Source: The Conversation – USA – By John Broich, Associate Professor of History, Case Western Reserve University

Whiteness appears to be an official immigration credential in the eyes of the United States government.

The Trump administration in late 2025 slashed the annual cap on refugee admissions to 7,500 for budget year 2026, down from the 125,000 cap set in 2024 by the Biden administration. That’s a historic low that will shut out thousands of global refugees from war and persecution, such as the victims of Taliban repression in Afghanistan or the Rohingya minority in Myanmar facing documented mass violence.

The new refugee cap, however, will mostly benefit white South Africans, known as Afrikaners. The State Department is building infrastructure to process 4,500 refugee applications per month from Afrikaners, a pace that would easily exceed the administration’s global cap.

The Trump administration’s justification are claims of racial persecution.

Elon Musk, born in South Africa, posted on X in March 2025 that “there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide.” President Donald Trump agreed. “They’re being killed,” he said in May 2025. Casting blame on the news media, he said, “It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about.”

Tucker Carlson had spent years on Fox News pushing the claim that white South Africans were being murdered en masse. Trump had apparently been listening. The white genocide claim moved from fringe websites to cable television to the Oval Office.

As a historian who has spent years studying how racial supremacy gets weaponized as policy, I’d say these claims are worth examining carefully. The numbers don’t support the claims.

Over a year in 2023-2024, AfriForum, an Afrikaner civil rights organization, recorded 49 murders of Afrikaners. That’s .2% of the 27,621 murders across the country. As the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria concluded, “The idea of a ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa is completely false.”

A useful fiction

White genocide is a contemporary rallying cry for a project that predates it by over a century: keeping English-speaking nations white. The claim persists because it’s useful. Claims of white genocide, partly rooted in the fear that nonwhite populations are growing while white ones are shrinking, has been a far-right organizing concept for decades. But that fear was called “replacement theory” well before that.

Afrikaner lobby groups have successfully embedded their cause within a transnational far-right network, projecting South Africa as a warning for the U.S. and Europe. The Afrikaner myth is supposed to be a warning: white people are already being crushed in South Africa, and the same fate awaits whites everywhere unless something is done.

This has a specific history, one I’ve traced in my latest book, “White Supremacy: A Short History.”

Some English-speaking settler colonies explicitly identified themselves as “white men’s countries.” And in the early 20th century they coordinated immigration restrictions to keep them that way through a succession of acts passed in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States between 1901 and 1924.

These were pieces of a linked ideological network, as I trace in the book, with ideas and personnel circulating between countries that understood themselves as outposts of the same white civilization.

Australia passed immigration acts from 1901 onward that largely barred people from East Asia, Eastern Europe and the Pacific Islands. Attorney General Alfred Deakin justified the restrictions to Parliament in 1901 in the name of “the purity of race.”

In that same September 1901 debate, another member of the Australian House warned that Black political power in the United States offered a cautionary lesson: “The black people there have increased to such an extent, and have gained such power, that the jurists and statesmen there pause and look with fear upon them.”

Canada’s Immigration Act of 1910 gave the government authority to exclude “any race deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada,” implementing what historians call the “White Canada” policy. The aim was to limit immigration to “healthy, white, preferably British or American agriculturalists.” By the early 1920s, most nonwhite people were categorically excluded.

New Zealand’s Immigration Restriction Amendment Act of 1920 required entry permits for anyone “not of British or Irish parentage,” establishing what contemporaries called a “white New Zealand” policy.

The United States passed its own Immigration Act in 1924 to preserve what its proponents called an “unadulterated” and “Nordic breed,” restricting immigration from southern and eastern Europe and barring most Asians entirely.

A shared fear

South Africa was part of this network. The career of one eugenicist, who promoted the theory that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations, shows how it worked.

Harold Fantham, who lived from 1876 to 1937, was educated in London, taught zoology at Cambridge, then moved to South Africa in 1917. There, he took a leading role in promoting racial immigration restrictions, arguing in the South African Journal of Science in 1924 that the goal was “safeguarding our nation from racial deterioration.”

He praised the U.S.’s 1924 act for barring “idiots, feeble-minded, paupers,” and admired Germany’s compulsory sterilization laws. He became president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. Fantham bore his ideas across the English-speaking world, picking up American and German models along the way.

Behind all these restrictions was a shared fear: that growing numbers of nonwhite people would overwhelm white populations. Eugenicists imagined a race to make babies that whites were losing. They believed democracy itself was a liability, because more nonwhite immigrants could mean more nonwhite votes.

Woodrow Wilson, who resegregated the federal civil service after taking office in 1913, agreed. His intellectual framework was plain. As he wrote in The Atlantic in 1889, only “races purged of barbaric passions” could be entrusted with self-governance.

Whiteness as proof of citizenship

The Afrikaner program reactivates this logic. It treats whiteness as a refugee status and frames a former colonial ruling class as victims. It sits alongside a deportation campaign targeting people the president says are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

The countries that coordinated a century ago to build white nations are doing the same work again, with the same tools.

The majority of people suffering violence in South Africa are Black South Africans. They are not invited to the United States as refugees.

And while the Trump administration builds a race-based welcome for white South Africans, it’s also building a race-based enforcement apparatus.

In September 2025, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo that federal agents could use “apparent race or ethnicity” as a factor when stopping people to check their immigration status. Critics call the resulting detentions “Kavanaugh stops,” after Brett Kavanaugh, the justice who wrote the concurrence.

As justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in dissent, “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job.”

Whiteness is functioning as a credential on the streets of American cities. And white skin qualifies Afrikaners for expedited entry. Darker skin qualifies you for a stop.

John Broich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. US refugee policy for white South Africans is part of a century-long effort to keep some English-speaking nations white – https://theconversation.com/us-refugee-policy-for-white-south-africans-is-part-of-a-century-long-effort-to-keep-some-english-speaking-nations-white-277171

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

“¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!”

Meaning “hurry up, let’s go,” the trademark slogan of Speedy Gonzales was, for generations of children, the first Spanish words they learned.

But by the 1980s, ABC had pulled his cartoons due to concerns that his dress, accent and characters like his cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez, were insensitive toward Mexicans and Mexican Americans. The Cartoon Network followed suit in 1999.

I’ve studied and written about the history of animation, including how characters have been received around the world. Though rooted in a well-intentioned effort at cultural sensitivity, taking Speedy Gonzales off the air was a step too far for many viewers. He was one of the few cartoon characters rooted in Mexican identity, and he’d become a cultural icon across all of Latin America. The ensuing uproar in the wake of his cancellation prompted the Cartoon Network to reinstate the cartoon mouse in 2002.

With Warner Bros. greenlighting a new Speedy Gonzales movie in January 2026, the character’s redemption arc appears complete.

A speedy rise to stardom

“The fastest mouse in all of Mexico” first appeared in the 1953 animated short “Cat-Tails for Two.”

He was redesigned with his iconic yellow sombrero and red kerchief when he starred in his eponymous 1955 film, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

The short film features the general framework for future plots: Speedy helps members of his border community – a place inspired by Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso, Texas – evade the conniving Sylvester the Cat.

It opens with a town of starving mice looking longingly at the AJAX cheese factory through a fence establishing an “international border.” They try to determine who will try to outrun Sylvester, the factory’s guard. One of the mice says that his sister is friends with Speedy Gonzales. (Another pipes in that Speedy is friends with everybody’s sister, signaling Speedy as something of a Don Juan.) After they call on Speedy, he uses his speed and smarts to outrun and outwit Sylvester.

The basic premise also appears in a number of cartoons, from Tom and Jerry to Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote: An antagonist is consistently thwarted by a clever protagonist who avoids increasingly complicated traps and attempts at capture.

Speedy Gonzales is unique, though, in that he was the first cartoon star to be from a Latin American country.

In the 1940s, with the European and Asian markets cut off due to World War II, Disney had turned to the Latin American market. The studio produced “Saludos Amigos” in 1942 and “The Three Caballeros” in 1944 to abide by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, which aimed to leverage diplomacy, trade and cultural exchange to improve relations with Latin America.

Speedy ended up appearing in 45 theatrical shorts. In 1969, Warner Bros. shut down its animation studio, but the character lived on in Saturday morning cartoon anthologies like “The Bugs Bunny Show,” which repackaged older cartoons for younger audiences.

Animation’s racial reckoning

The Cartoon Network pulled Speedy Gonzales from the air at a time when networks and studios were starting to reassess animated characters from earlier eras.

Many early cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse, had been modeled after blackface minstrel characters. Warner Bros.‘ first star, Bosko, was originally patented as “Negro Boy.”

Since racist tropes were ubiquitous in early-20th-century animation, films and shorts like Disney’s “Dumbo,” “Mickey’s Mellerdrammer” or Warner Bros.’ “All This and Rabbit Stew” were either pulled, edited or updated to feature a content warning.

But after The Cartoon Network pulled Speedy Gonzales from the air in 1999, there was unexpected pushback from the Hispanic American community and the character’s Latin American fans. Groups like League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States, declared Speedy a cultural icon and requested that his cartoons return to the air.

Back when Speedy Gonzales was first introduced to audiences, Hollywood had been filming more movies in Mexico and at the U.S.-Mexico border. However, most of these films depicted Latinos as either incompetent or villains.

In this regard, Speedy represented something different. Though the character’s English speech and accent reflected stereotypes – and he was voiced by a white actor, Mel Blanc – the character was ultimately a clever, quick-witted and good-natured protagonist. And the Spanish dubbing of his cartoons in Latin America had removed the stereotypical accent altogether.

Let the people decide

The trajectory of Speedy Gonzales resembles that of another controversial cartoon character: Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from “The Simpsons.”

An Indian immigrant who earned his Ph.D. in computer science in his home country, Apu becomes the manager of a convenience store in the U.S.

Some critics viewed Apu’s depiction as problematic; voiced by a white actor, Hank Azaria, Apu’s exaggerated Indian-American accent and catchphrase – “Thank you, come again” – was routinely mimicked and mocked by viewers of the show. Others, however, saw Apu as the embodiment of the American Dream: He was intelligent, hardworking and morally grounded.

Cultural theorists like Jacques Derrida and Stuart Hall have written about the complexities of how audiences understand – and either resist or embrace – what they read and watch. They ultimately argue that viewers and readers often interpret media however they see fit, regardless of the creators’ intent. For example, many minority groups who are underrepresented or misrepresented in popular culture will nonetheless find their own meaning and inspiration in characters, even if those characters weren’t supposed to represent those groups in the first place.

This happened with “The Goofy Movie.” Some audiences went on to describe the 1995 film as Disney’s first “Black” animated feature, despite the fact that the characters’ race is never mentioned. There were hints, of course: Black R&B singer Tevin Campbell played the movie’s fictional pop star, Powerline, and the themes of fatherhood and generational tensions eerily echo those in the play “Fences,” written by Black playwright August Wilson.

Of course, in the case of a character like Speedy Gonzales, depictions can become more nuanced as cultural norms and sensitivities change. Jorge R. Gutiérrez is set to direct the animated feature. If his work on films like “The Book of Life” is any indication, he’ll be well-equipped to bring cultural awareness to the animated feature – even if Speedy continues to sport his big, floppy sombrero.

Jared Bahir Browsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! Speedy Gonzales set to make his triumphant return to the silver screen – https://theconversation.com/andale-arriba-speedy-gonzales-set-to-make-his-triumphant-return-to-the-silver-screen-278753