Excerpt: By now, it’s well understood that the right’s efforts to restrict classroom discussion are all about marginalizing LGBTQ people under the guise of protecting children. But they also harbor a less obvious aim: to convince parents that kids are under threat in the first place. That mild-mannered teacher over there? She just might be scheming to pervert, indoctrinate and snatch away childhood innocence.
Caroline Mickey, the librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School outside Chattanooga, Tenn., just learned this the hard way, when her idea for a Mother’s Day-themed lesson came under sudden and heavy fire from parents in the area. The vitriol of the attack, and the school district superintendent’s rapid decision to cancel her lesson in response, caught her off guard.
Harvey Silverglate: Freedom of Speech
Excerpt: Lex Fridman, an AI Researcher at MIT and podcaster, interviewed Harvey Silverglate. The video is linked below.
Harvey Silverglate is a free speech advocate, co-founder of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and author of several books on freedom of speech and criminal justice. He is running for Harvard Board of Overseers on a platform of free speech.
Mizzou Faculty Alleges Pressure to Not Seek Tenure
Excerpt: Several University of Missouri at Columbia faculty members within the last three years say leaders pressured them to withdraw their tenure and/or promotion applications, a faculty report says.
A few more faculty members reported being pressured to apply for non-tenure-track positions before they even applied for tenure, the document says. It also says some reported pressure to delay applications for promotion.
Bill would mandate history course, prescribe curriculum at UNC universities, community colleges
Excerpt: Should students at UNC System Schools and community colleges be required to take a course on history and government, irrespective of their majors? Should lawmakers be able to prescribe the curriculum for such a course, rather than campus leaders and faculty?
Those are a couple of the thorny questions sparked by House Bill 96, one of just a handful of higher-education related bills to make the General Assembly’s crossover deadline earlier this month, giving it a shot at becoming law. Critics of the bill, among them prominent history professors, say understanding U.S. and N.C. history is vital, but the course described in the bill and the readings to be mandated will not give students much context for the sometimes-rocky history of our nation.
FIRE statement on Florida’s expansion of the Stop WOKE Act
Excerpt: Earlier today, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Florida Senate Bill 266, which doubles down on the “Stop WOKE Act.”
FIRE opposes SB 266 because, like its predecessor, it is riddled with constitutional defects. The measure inappropriately limits what faculty may discuss in general education classes, no matter how pedagogically relevant it is to the subject matter of the course. It directs government regulators to review instruction for violation of the Stop WOKE Act, currently enjoined in Florida’s public universities by order of a federal court in litigation brought by FIRE, the ACLU, and other groups. This sweeping language opens the door to a wide range of expressive rights abuses.
The Student Protesters Were Arrested. The Man Who Got Violent in the Parking Lot Wasn’t.
Excerpt: When one police officer heard the radio call for backup at a high school campus outside Little Rock, Arkansas, he first thought there’d been a problem at a football game. The indecipherable chanting in the background sounded like roars from the bleachers. But it turned out that the rhythmic rallying call that November night last year was coming from the lobby outside a school board meeting.
The prior two meetings, in September and October, had been held in Conway High School’s huge auditorium, equipped with ample seating and plenty of parking for what had, as of late, been larger crowds. There also had been an unusual amount of conflict.
Medical School Cancels Forum Expected to Criticize Diversity Efforts
Excerpt: The Medical College of Wisconsin cancelled a forum on the “uses and abuses” of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in medicine and science after students and faculty members complained that the forum was not based on science, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The event was to have been sponsored by the Wisconsin Association of Scholars, a branch of the National Association of Scholars, which opposes affirmative action. The speakers were to have been critics of affirmative action: U.S. senator Ron Johnson, a Republican; Representative Dave Murphy, chair of the Wisconsin Committee on Colleges and Universities and a Republican; and John D. Sailer, senior fellow and director of university policy for the National Association of Scholars.
Why Republicans Are Targeting Professors' Job Security
Excerpt: The GOP’s education culture wars have a new target: college professors.
Texas lawmakers are considering a bill that originally set out to completely eliminate tenure at public colleges and universities. In Ohio, lawmakers are weighing legislation that would mandate tenure reviews for professors. This year, at least three more states — North Dakota, Louisiana and Iowa — considered similar measures, although those proposals stalled. This new wave of bills targets a long-standing and common standard of job protection for college and university professors, meant to ensure freedom of thought among academics and insulate them from political attacks.
UW to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion statements for job applicants as Vos threatens funding cuts
Excerpt: The University of Wisconsin will no longer require diversity, equity and inclusion statements from job applicants, UW System President Jay Rothman announced Thursday.
The move comes after Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to cut state funding to Wisconsin's public universities. Specifically, Vos has criticized DEI programming at UW as an attempt to "indoctrinate" students with taxpayer dollars.
The Book-Bans Debate Has Finally Reached a Turning Point
Excerpt: Across multiple fronts, Democrats and their allies are stiffening their resistance to a surge of Republican-led book bans.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the past month have conspicuously escalated their denunciations of the book bans proliferating in schools across the country, explicitly linking them to restrictions on abortion and voting rights to make the case that “MAGA extremists” are threatening Americans’ “personal freedom,” as Biden said in the recent video announcing his campaign for a second term.
Commentary: A Tennessee teacher planned a Mother’s Day class. Then came the MAGA rage.
Excerpt: By now, it’s well understood that the right’s efforts to restrict classroom discussion are all about marginalizing LGBTQ people under the guise of protecting children. But they also harbor a less obvious aim: to convince parents that kids are under threat in the first place. That mild-mannered teacher over there? She just might be scheming to pervert, indoctrinate and snatch away childhood innocence.
Caroline Mickey, the librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School outside Chattanooga, Tenn., just learned this the hard way, when her idea for a Mother’s Day-themed lesson came under sudden and heavy fire from parents in the area. The vitriol of the attack, and the school district superintendent’s rapid decision to cancel her lesson in response, caught her off guard.