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War on Universities, Lawyers & Expertise

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‘A Banner Year for Censorship’: More States Are Restricting Classroom Discussions on Race and Gender​

By Katherine Mangan June 20, 2025

"Teaching social work in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Cassandra E. Simon often assigns readings that describe how the families her students might one day serve have been impacted by more than a century of housing, employment, and education discrimination. The associate professor has encouraged her students to engage in spirited discussions about race, even assigning a project in which they advocate for or against a social-justice issue.

Doing any of those things today, she argues in a federal lawsuit, could get her fired from the state flagship, where she’s taught for 25 years. Last year, the state’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed into law a sweeping bill that restricts what professors can teach about race. If any of their lessons veer into what conservative politicians have deemed “divisive concepts,” faculty members risk being reported, investigated, and potentially fired.

That kind of incursion into the curriculum is growing and prompting a flurry of First Amendment challenges from Simon and other plaintiffs. It’s a line state lawmakers did not cross early on in their push to dismantle DEI efforts, even as universities shuttered offices, laid off employees, canceled scholarships, and called off diversity training. But over the past two years, more than a dozen laws have been enacted that either limit which classes can be taught or imposed restrictions on what professors can say in the classroom, according to a Chronicle analysis of state legislation and a compilation of what PEN America calls “educational gag orders.”

This year especially “has been a banner year for censorship at a state level across the country,” said Amy B. Reid, senior manager at PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program. “The point of a lot of these restrictions is to put people on guard, worried that anything or everything could be prohibited so you really have to watch what you say.”

Some of the chief architects of the DEI-dismantling playbook have insisted that they’re not trying to silence anyone. In a January 26 letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal by Ilya Shapiro and Jesse Arm of the Manhattan Institute, the institute declared that “Conservatives Have No Interest In Censorship.”

“By ending practices such as identity-based discrimination and compulsory, politically coercive diversity statements,” these laws “protect the rights of professors and students to engage freely on all topics, including race,” they wrote."

Anyone wants to read the rest of this firewalled article let me know and i'll post more.

 
donbosco said:

‘A Banner Year for Censorship’: More States Are Restricting Classroom Discussions on Race and Gender​

By Katherine Mangan June 20, 2025

"Teaching social work in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Cassandra E. Simon often assigns readings that describe how the families her students might one day serve have been impacted by more than a century of housing, employment, and education discrimination. The associate professor has encouraged her students to engage in spirited discussions about race, even assigning a project in which they advocate for or against a social-justice issue.

Doing any of those things today, she argues in a federal lawsuit, could get her fired from the state flagship, where she’s taught for 25 years. Last year, the state’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, signed into law a sweeping bill that restricts what professors can teach about race. If any of their lessons veer into what conservative politicians have deemed “divisive concepts,” faculty members risk being reported, investigated, and potentially fired.

That kind of incursion into the curriculum is growing and prompting a flurry of First Amendment challenges from Simon and other plaintiffs. It’s a line state lawmakers did not cross early on in their push to dismantle DEI efforts, even as universities shuttered offices, laid off employees, canceled scholarships, and called off diversity training. But over the past two years, more than a dozen laws have been enacted that either limit which classes can be taught or imposed restrictions on what professors can say in the classroom, according to a Chronicle analysis of state legislation and a compilation of what PEN America calls “educational gag orders.”

This year especially “has been a banner year for censorship at a state level across the country,” said Amy B. Reid, senior manager at PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program. “The point of a lot of these restrictions is to put people on guard, worried that anything or everything could be prohibited so you really have to watch what you say.”

Some of the chief architects of the DEI-dismantling playbook have insisted that they’re not trying to silence anyone. In a January 26 letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal by Ilya Shapiro and Jesse Arm of the Manhattan Institute, the institute declared that “Conservatives Have No Interest In Censorship.”

“By ending practices such as identity-based discrimination and compulsory, politically coercive diversity statements,” these laws “protect the rights of professors and students to engage freely on all topics, including race,” they wrote."

Anyone wants to read the rest of this firewalled article let me know and i'll post more.

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Disturbing. The argument seems to boil down to it is not censorship if the topic is about race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or gender identity Because we are just protecting people from hearing something upsetting (?)
 
nycfan said:
Disturbing. The argument seems to boil down to it is not censorship if the topic is about race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference or gender identity Because we are just protecting people from hearing something upsetting (?)
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I think the underlying operative question is “does this problem require the assumption of responsibility by the white people in power?” If yes, bury it, hell, make it illegal.
 
donbosco said:
This could be trouble — not that accrediting organizations as they currently exist aren’t a huge pain in the ass anyway.

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That conservative states would help to form a new college accreditation body that would give them leverage over universities and/or allow them to opt out of the current accreditation bodies was utterly predictable.

That North Carolina is a participant in the process saddens me greatly.
 
SnoopRob said:
That conservative states would help to form a new college accreditation body that would give them leverage over universities and/or allow them to opt out of the current accreditation bodies was utterly predictable.

That North Carolina is a participant in the process saddens me greatly.
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It’s a bad look - NC was the last to secede - reckon we’d be earlier now-a-days?
 
CFordUNC said:
He didn't cave. The new incoming Board of Visitors, comprised of Glenn Youngkin appointees, which begins on July 1 next week, had the numbers to fire him. They would not have the numbers to do so on June 30.
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Thank god Youngkin will be out of office by January and hopefully a Democrat - Spanberger - will take his place.
 
BlooVooDoo said:
I think he should have made them fire him. It’s the principled position and may be better for the University re: the DoJ investigation.
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Yeah, I hear ya. I honestly don't know what to think, and go back and forth on whether or not he should have made them fire him. On one hand, I believe in taking a principled stand. On the other hand, if the firing was going to be inevitable in a matter of days anyway, perhaps the resignation allows the political hacks on the BOV and the Youngkin administration to feel that they've got their pound of flesh and to not pursue further punitive action toward the University as it pertains to withholding of federal funding. Personally, I'd be very skeptical that this makes the Trump DOJ do anything but come back for more, but we shall see.

I think that, whether you are Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, we should ALL be against federal overreach and authoritarianism. The federal government has absolutely no place to effect personnel changes at universities, corporations, etc.
 
SnoopRob said:
That conservative states would help to form a new college accreditation body that would give them leverage over universities and/or allow them to opt out of the current accreditation bodies was utterly predictable.

That North Carolina is a participant in the process saddens me greatly.
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SACS has always tried to protect academic freedom and faculty being in control of the curriculum. I doubt either of those things will be priorities for this new accreditation body.
 
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