Cultural appropriation and microaggressions are common complaints on campuses across the country, including most recently an allegation of cultural appropriation raised after a drum line formed at an event at UC Davis. Now, Miami law professor J. Janewa Osei-Tutu has suggested codifying cultural appropriation claims as copyright violations. It is the type of incredible proposal that is eagerly embraced inside, and largely ignored outside, of higher education.
In her paper “Protecting Cultural Personality” in Race, Racism and the Law, Osei-Tutu calls out various companies for designs or slogans that she views as impermissible cultural appropriation:
“Fashion houses and brands, such as Timbuk2 and Louis Vuitton, have designed and marketed clothing based on traditional ethnic clothing styles or symbols, or named their fashion lines after established cultural groups. This is often done without the knowledge, consent, or involvement of the cultural group. Unlike brands such as Coca Cola, Nike, or Apple, or Taylor Swift, these cultural identities and their corresponding cultural heritages are perceived as belonging to no one and therefore free for anyone to take and monetize.”
The sources that she cites include such claimed violations as Comme des Garçons featuring white models with cornrow wigs as appropriating black culture.
She also cites how protests led to various companies withdrawing products accused of cultural appropriation, including Jeep, which “after discussions with the Cherokee Nation … finally agreed in 2023 to stop using the name “Cherokee” on its iconic vehicle.” That may come as something of a surprise to Jeep, which, after redesigning the line due to poor sales, is marketing the 2026 Cherokees.
Denouncing intellectual property laws as “underinclusive,” Professor Osei-Tutu insists that it is unfair for companies but not cultures to be able to use copyright laws.
There are obvious reasons for this distinction, including the protection of creative and free expression. As is often the case on the left, the regulation of speech is often justified in the name of inclusion or diversity.
Osei-Tutu’s proposal would codify the ambiguous, subjective standards that are now commonly raised in universities and colleges. It would prevent artists and speakers from using common imagery or expressions in product expression and design.
The replication of cultural images or references reflects their influence on our society. They are part of our collective identity. Groups that were once isolated and even suppressed have become valued reference points. As an Italian American and an Irish American, I regularly see the language, foods, and traditions of my culture in society. Even when some make me cringe, I am proud of that influence. These are contributions to a “melting pot” of different cultures (a term itself listed as a microaggression).
For those embedded with identity politics and scholarship, there is no greater threat than notions of cultural assimilation and cross-cultural norms.
Professor Osei-Tutu believes that copyright laws could create a system of enforcement of “cultural personality rights.” With the imprimatur of federal law, cultural appropriation would become more of a recognized and enforceable principle.
She emphasizes that each group can base such claims on its own self-definition:
“The group can be self-defining and it is not necessary for the public to have significant knowledge of the group. It suffices that the public is aware that an indigenous group called the ‘Cherokee’ exists. An awareness and understanding of the accurate representation of the cultural identity is not necessary. The fact that the appropriating entity is sufficiently aware of the cultural identity to adopt and use it for commercial purposes indicates not only recognition of the cultural personality but also of its potential commercial value.”
It is hardly surprising that this theory would gain acclaim and traction in higher education, where faculties run from the left to the far left. Appointments and publications today tend to be the result of a race to the left. Anti-free-speech publications continue to outnumber pro-free-speech publications substantially. Articles that trash the Constitution or call for radical changes to our constitutional or legal systems find eager audiences on faculties and law reviews.
The proposal in this article would blow apart the copyright laws and use them to weaponize claims of cultural appropriation. It would codify the culture of viewpoint intolerance and speech regulation that currently characterizes higher education.
Professor Osei-Tutu brushes aside the pesky problems in introducing such a subjective or self-defining standard into federal law. She writes that the actual details can come later:
“Drawing on a dignity-based version of the U.S. right of publicity, trademark law, and human rights law, this Article has articulated the normative foundations to establish a legal framework for a cultural personality right. This Article focuses on the challenging first step of justifying a new cultural identity right rather than detailing the precise scope and limitations of such a right.”
She also brushes aside the dangers to free speech, which she recognizes but insists “[q]uestions regarding freedom of expression, which go beyond the scope of the current Article.”
Of course, citizens would support such a proposal. However, the hope is that such a change could be added to a list of radical measures to pursue if Democrats retake power. Professor Osei-Tutu also notably calls for international recognition of this right, a pitch that is likely to receive greater support from various international bodies.
If successful, it would also allow any group to effectively control images and references related to their culture: “This ability to control the use of one’s cultural heritage and collective identity by excluding those outside the community is one of the salient aspects of the debates regarding the misappropriation of intangible cultural heritage.”
It is an approach that would Balkinize commercial speech and unleash endless lawsuits against creators and companies.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Jews should copyright “ark,” “wilderness,” “quail,” “manna,” and the number “40.”
The idea is stupid, but on the plus side, my Greek friends would enjoy filing infringement actions against Christopher Nolan director of a new rendition of the Odyssey, and the hapless Lupita Nyongo, an African, admittedly a very good actress but one who foolishly took the role of the most famous Greek woman in history, perhaps alongside Cleopatra.
Sal Sar
Seeing certain people wearing shoes disturbs my sense of justice.
I am sorry for what you are going through.
Apparently, there is an eager political faction that advocates civil rights legislation to prevent anything that anyone feels offends their race or culture is an act of discrimination based on race or ethnicity.
The very idea of seeking trademark or copyright protection for a clothing style or a type of food or a sport sounds like a comedy skit. Critical Race Theory appears to be in serious conflict with Democracy, Equality, and the Rule of Law.
Can’t make it up…
Osei-Tutu needs to stop appropriating Western European culture and return to Africa and embrace African culture and language.
Even Those Who Assaulted Cops Can Tap Trump’s Grievance Fund
This settlement appears more like an agreement between Trump and his administration than a real legal settlement.
Trump won’t get the money, but he will have ultimate authority over appointing a five-member panel deciding how much to dole out and to whom, and there is no requirement this information be released to the public. “This is reimbursing people who were horribly treated,” Trump said this week.
On Tuesday, Blanche told senators there would be “full transparency.”
Already hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants have filed claims for it, my Post colleagues report. Blanche said that people convicted of assaulting law enforcement will be eligible: “Anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they were victims of weaponization.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/19/trumps-extraordinary-18-billion-legal-fund-his-allies/
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The idea here is to create a false history that J 6 rioters were really ‘peaceful protesters’. So the government ‘had to settle’ with them for ‘malicious prosecution’.
It doesn’t get more cynical than this.
Grievance Settlement Might Allow Trump Family To Evade Taxes
The Justice Department has granted President Trump, his family and businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, a potentially lucrative arrangement that could shield the president from significant financial liability.
The provision, quietly inserted on Tuesday as a supplement to a remarkable deal that also created a $1.8 billion compensation fund aimed at benefiting Mr. Trump’s allies, protects the president, his relatives and his businesses from pending audits and tax prosecutions.
The one-page document, signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Mr. Trump, his family members and businesses.
The provision was the latest in a series of maneuvers this week that blurred the all-but-vanished boundary between official department business and the private interests of a president intent on using his power to extract financial gain from the federal government for himself and his allies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-irs-doj-lawsuit-audit.html?smid=nytcore-
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Theoretically this ‘settlement’ could entitle the Trump family to just blow off taxes from here on. But, as the article notes, this ‘settlement’ may not hold up to legal challenges.
Almost all of the J6 defendants were peaceful protesters. And they were all treated very unfairly and unlawfully. At least some of those convicted of assaulting law enforcement were coerced into a guilty plea and didn’t actually do that, or they acted in legitimate self-defense and defense of others after being unlawfully assaulted by Capitol Police, and were convicted by biased judges who refused to consider the evidence that the CP initiated the violence. No one is automatically getting anything; applicants will have to make their case to the trustees, so those (if any) who genuinely don’t deserve anything won’t get.
Consider how many BLM rioters and anti-Trump rioters not only got off scot free but got payouts from Dem-controlled cities. Consider the outrageous payouts to the families of criminals such as Freddie Gray. You never complained about those.
Millhouse, show us an established, mainstream source saying ‘many J 6ers were innocent, peaceful protesters’. And let us remind you that 150 cops were injured that day.
Bulldust. There were no 150 injured cops. And anything you would consider a “mainstream source” is deep deep in the leftist swamp, and directly involved in the persecution of the J6 protesters.
Consider that the vast majority of the J6ers convicted were never even charged with violence. They were convicted of a bogus “obstruction” charge that the supreme court has since denounced as a figment of the Democrat prosecutors’ imagination, and/or of the equivalent of simple trespassing.
Now compare their treatment to that of all the BLM rioters, who were not “mostly peaceful” at all. Or to any of the anti-Trump rioters from the time his 2015 campaign launched until today.
What about the blood libel that went on for months, alleging that the rioters had murdered Brian Sicknick? I notice that you’re no longer leveling that accusation, but how long did it take for you to stop? You certainly were leveling it for at least the better part of 2021.
it was obvious even from the spliced up edited footage that the mass media showed, that most were peaceful.
anyhow 26 feds undercover there, leading the purported crimes, amazing. worse than SPLC
https://oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-releases-report-fbis-handling-its-confidential-human-sources-and-intelligence
What about the cops who beat a woman to death and murdered another?
Dustoff that never happened. You’re a liar.
It did happen
Yes, it did happen.
Liar, fool, idiot…
I have come to dislike Trump but the politicization of law enforcement is a real and bad trend.
26 informants were active on January 6. At what point is law enforcement manufacturing the crime they presume to “fight?”
https://oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-releases-report-fbis-handling-its-confidential-human-sources-and-intelligence
Just wondering if driving a car, watching television, playing basketball, using electricity and a multitude of other issues would be considered as cultural misappropriation by minorities? I don’t believe that they are but, if this Professor is correct, it could be.
So if I pay some black woman $10 and she says it’s okay then I can wear dreads without fear of the professor?
OK, I’ll agree to this as long as it goes both ways. She calls herself a Professor, which is something white people invented, therefore she must resign immediately. And it doesn’t end there. If she is stripped of everything “white culture” invented, then her options will be very meager indeed.
The Israelite slaves were out of Egypt before the ink was dry on their release papers, but then they had the capacity and acumen sufficient for the task.
Same goes for BDS. If they boycott everything invented by and sold by Israel, they’d be back in the early 20th century.
Were I Jeep’s lawyer, I’d shoot off an email to Prof. Turley asking that he cease and desist from using their trademark as a noun, as in “Cherokees”, lest their name fall into generic usage. Prof. Turley can take a Lincolnesque pose as if he were a rube, but of all people he must be aware that a trademark should always be used as an adjective to modify a generic term.
Ho, ho, ho. And chuckle too.
I prefer Cherokee Nation anyhoo.
Do you know, the US Army names it’s helos after Indians.
Is it okay to use the word balkanize? Have the countries that make up the Balkan States signed off on this?
Democrats just cant help being Nazi, anti-semites.
….
“House candidate Maureen Galindo pledges to send ‘American zionists’ to internment camp”
Controversy-tarred congressional candidate Maureen Galindo this week pledged to transform a site south of San Antonio now used by the Trump administration to detain migrants into an internment camp for “American Zionists.”
“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” Galindo wrote in an Instagram post over the weekend, referring to herself in the third person. “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.”
https://www.sacurrent.com/news/politics-and-elections/house-candidate-maureen-galindo-pledges-to-send-american-zionists-to-internment-camp/
Estovir, look what we found in The San Antonio Current:
The Texas Medical Board has disciplined three doctors ProPublica previously investigated whose patients died after receiving delayed or inappropriate pregnancy care under the state’s strict abortion ban.
Two of the doctors failed to properly intervene as a pregnant teenager repeatedly sought care for life-threatening complications, the board found. The third did not provide a dilation and curettage procedure to empty a miscarrying patient’s uterus, and she ultimately bled to death.
As ProPublica investigated those preventable deaths and five others across three states in the past few years, reporters found that abortion bans have influenced how doctors and hospitals respond to pregnancy complications. Facing risks of prison time and professional ruin, doctors have delayed key interventions until they can document that a fetus’ heart is no longer beating or that a case meets a narrow legal exception. Some physicians say their colleagues are discharging or transferring pregnant patients instead of taking responsibility for their care.
https://www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-news/texas-medical-board-sanctions-doctors-for-delayed-care-in-the-deaths-of-2-pregnant-women/
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It seems that abortion ban in Texas is deadly to women.
Not so fast marplot. Leftist media frequently looks to spin a story to back their ideology. That sounds like the case here. The primary driver of death was more likely a fundamental failure of clinical competency and basic diagnostic triage, not legal paralysis.
That’s not leftist media. That’s the paper Estovir got his Naxi story from.
Which is leftist to the core.
Estovir does not establish what is leftist.
The article was spin to call something a result of abortion law rather than the plain failure of clinical competence and negligent actions.
Abortion is deadly to babies. A doctor asked to remove a dead baby from its mother’s womb should check first to make sure it’s dead. Even if once in a while overcaution causes a mother’s death, far more often undercaution causes a living baby’s death. Of course proper practice is to exercise caution but also pay attention to the mother’s symptoms, and detect whether her life is in danger. That way no unnecessary deaths happen. But even with the best practice, deaths will inevitably occur because it’s impossible for everyone to survive no matter what you do. The question in any given case is whether there was anything that could and should have been done that would have saved the patient.
Yeah, Millhouse, let women die!
Less than 20% of the public wants total abortion bans.
Millhouse represents the American Taliban.
You represent the American nazis, who murder babies.
IRS Was Going To Contest Trump’s Grievance Lawsuit
Lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service sought to contest President Trump’s lawsuit against the agency, recommending several potential defenses in a case that the Justice Department nevertheless decided to resolve by creating an extraordinary $1.8 billion fund that could soon be used to pay Mr. Trump’s political allies.
I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. That memo was provided to Treasury officials in April, and it is unclear if they passed it along to its intended recipients at the Justice Department, according to the people, who spoke anonymously to discuss internal government deliberations.
No lawyers from the Justice Department ever appeared in court to respond to the suit or disputed any of Mr. Trump’s claims, which demanded at least $10 billion from the I.R.S. for not doing enough to prevent the leak of his tax information. The Justice Department instead made a highly unusual deal in the case. In exchange for Mr. Trump dropping the suit, the Trump administration created the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for people who say they were wrongly targeted by the federal government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/admin/irs-trump-lawsuit-deal.html?smid=nytcore-
Remember when the IRS went after the Tea party. For no good reason.
I love appropriating cultures, and having my culture appropriated by others. try to stop it… This is against the spirit of civilization, progress and our county.