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5 Apr, 6 tweets, 3 min read
This proposed ban on "divisive concepts" in Louisiana is by far the most sweeping bill to date. Everything is included. Public AND private, K-12 AND higher ed. It's all targeted for censorship.

legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocu…
With one exception: charter schools. Here you can really see the synergy between the anti-CRT/Woke crowd and the charter school movement. It's an increasingly common partnership.
As for the "divisive concepts" themselves, they're largely the same as the other bills floating around (and before that, Trump's EO), but there are few interesting additions I haven't come across before.
Another bill was introduced last week in Arkansas. This one explicitly exempts educational institutions, which is good. But it does apply to state agencies, contractors, sub-contractors, and grant recipients, so if anything it's even more sweeping.

legiscan.com/AR/text/SB627/…
I always wonder if the conservative sponsors of these bills, which you'll recall target any training/education about the intrinsic difference of one sex compared to the other, realize just how devastating they would be for Christian institutions, were they ever made law.
Ah wait, I misread this section of the Louisiana bill. Charter schools *would* be bound by the divisive concepts section. Mea culpa.

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More from @JeffreyASachs

Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
6 Apr
Not to get too snotty about it, but one of the reasons that my own views on campus politics is so different from others working that beat is because my twitter timeline isn't exclusively filled with Lefties Run Amok. It's also filled with things like this.
Can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I have half a dozen google alerts set up for buzzwords like "professor fired" or "course cancelled". Every day at 10:00am, I get a list of 20-30 incidents. Of those, roughly eighty percent involve allegations of sexual misconduct.
I guess what I'm saying is that depending on where you're sitting or how you get your news, things on campus can look very, very different.
Read 4 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
4 Apr
A group of Jewish students at Butler have written a letter on Angela Davis's deplatforming. Crucially, they insist that no Jewish student played any role in the decision to postpone the event. Not sure how they can know that, but it's what they say.

thebutlercollegian.com/2021/04/letter…
HOWEVER, they do seem to imply that they, the authors, complained to the student government about its decision to co-sponsor and fund the event. Since those complaints could easily have been the cause of the postponement, I'm not sure how their initial claim makes sense.
So there are still some outstanding questions about what happened.

The rest of the letter is a kind of special pleading we often see when national media targets students for snowflakery. "I'm being mocked online, I'm being bombarded with verbal abuse, this is hate speech," etc.
Read 6 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
1 Apr
I’m going to actually agree with @mattyglesias here. Not necessarily about the HoC debate, which I don’t know much about, but his point about how an unwillingness to discuss certain issues in progressive places will often hurt the Left. That’s obviously right.
That’s one reason why while I talk a lot a about rightwing threats to free speech, I reject the idea that it is therefore the “real” threat. Regardless of the merits, that framing just serves as an excuse for the Left to ignore its own problems. It’s an alibi, not an analysis.
It’s also why I was somewhat uncomfortable with @OsitaNwanevu’s response to Yglesias yesterday about how only the GOP is trying to pass laws banning campus speech, not Dems. That is a) not true, eg many state-level Dems have supported anti-BDS bills; and b) risks excusing how...
Read 4 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
31 Mar
What is anti-Semitism? The only true answer is the Augustinian one: If no one asks me, I know. If you do ask, etc. and so forth.

BUT! Two new definitions of the term have recently been released, each meant to serve as alternatives to or elaborations on the IHRA.
The first is called the Nexus Document. It's meant to flesh out the possible relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, clearing up some of the well-known censorious ambiguities in the IHRA.

israelandantisemitism.com/the-nexus-docu…
And here's the Jerusalem Declaration, which positions itself as an outright alternative to the IHRA.

jerusalemdeclaration.org
Read 5 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
26 Mar
A Tennessee rep has introduced a bill that would prohibit public schools from using any textbooks or instructional materials that "promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender issues or lifestyle."

kens5.com/article/news/p…
The bill is necessary, its sponsor says, because such material offends "a significant portion of students, parents, and Tennessee residents with Christian values."
Meanwhile, an old fashioned book purge is taking place right now in @LeanderISD, a school district north of Austin.

Read 5 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
18 Mar
This WSJ editorial on California's Ethnic Studies curriculum is incredibly misleading. I'll explain why in a moment, but first I want to really drive home the torrent of bullshit that critics are directing against the ESMC.

This one is going to be long.

wsj.com/articles/calif…
First, a bit of context. What's being debated right now is the 3rd and final draft of the ESMC. Most of it is boilerplate edu-bureaucrat-ese: This is what ethnic studies is, this is why it's important, this is how we might implement it, etc.

cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/esmct…
The firestorm is all over the contents of Appendix A. That's where you'll find 43 sample lesson plans that schools can adopt to satisfy the ethnic studies requirement. I want to stress that they're just samples. Individual schools are permitted to ignore them if they wish.
Read 30 tweets

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