Academic freedom cases are often murky. This one is clear. A professor criticized a trustee for being "demeaning and rude" to a student. The trustee publicly threatened the professor's job. 2 months later, the president vetoed the prof's contract renewal, effectively firing him.

https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/status/1666206994447884288

Forget politics. This is about students. Wallenberg: "Once they start bad-mouthing students and speaking down to them, that was sort of a line that I felt like I couldn't be silent. That's not how you teach. That's not how you engage students."

Except now, at New College, it is.

Chris Rufo at Stanford just now: "Governance has been delegated too much to faculty…faculty, you're not great at governance…and adminstrators are weak, temperamentally weak, they cave in the face of emotional manipulation. We are trying to restore authority, restore standards." "Boards of governors need to govern, they need to reassert authority, because we are the stewards of the public and of public money. ...The most appropriate model is to say, we the public get to decide how to govern public universities."

Matt Garrett allegedly did a few things that could merit prof. discipline, I write @PENamerica. But by ALSO putting him on charges for numerous instances of protected speech, Bakersfield Coll. muddied the waters. Princeton made the same mistake w/Amy Wax. pen.org/press-release/… @PENamerica The report says Garrett w/violating COVID protocols, cursed at a colleague, threatened a trustee. It ALSO says he should be fired for saying the college wanted "to quiet him", b/c it wasn't true (ha!), and for asking about the charges "not in good faith." thefire.org/research-learn…

Led by Lt. Gov. Patrick, Texas has filed a package of three higher ed censorship bills: SB 16, 17, and 18. If they all pass, they would place TX higher ed under draconian restrictions second only to Florida's. Here's what they would do. 🧵 statesman.com/story/news/edu… Let's start with SB 16. It's a "compulsion" gag order (normally the least restrictive type), but w/a twist: teachers can't compel students to believe that any "social belief" is better than any other. Like, y'know, the belief that slavery & racism are bad. capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/bi…

Gov. DeSantis wants us to talk more about "Western civilization," so let's go back 17,000 years.

When I taught world history, I used to tell my students about the caves of Lascaux, a major milestone in Western civilization. nytimes.com/video/world/eu… For the first time in this part of Europe, there was a culture industry. The Lascaux painters labored for years in the dark to create these images. Others provided them with food. It was a triumph of Western civilization: a society working together to create something lasting.

The worst higher education bill in the country just got worse. Say goodbye to all ethnic studies departments in Florida public colleges and universities if this version of Florida HB 999 becomes law.

https://twitter.com/JoshGellers/status/1634269729912246273

Another way the bill got worse: a total inclusion ban on including critical theory in any general education course. Such ideas may not be mentioned in any gen Ed class, major, or minor, even to disagree with them. Absolute, Soviet-style censorship.

The text of DeSantis' higher education bill has been released. It's as terrifying as the press release suggested it would be. Florida HB 999 would enact the most draconian and censorious restrictions on higher education in the history of this country. flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2… As outlined in the release, the bill would ban diversity statements, make tenure and faculty hiring committees meaningless, and centralize control of core curricula and mission statements in the hands of political appointees. Unexpectedly, it would also ban gender studies majors.

Some facts relevant to this @WSJ editorial:

- Black queer theory is not CRT.

- The Black Lives Matter movement is not CRT.

- Supprorting prison abolition is not CRT.

- Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay "The Case for Reparations" is not CRT.

wsj.com/articles/ron-d… @WSJ It's not all wrong! Kimberlé Crenshaw's essay on intersectionality is in fact CRT, as is most of Angela Davis's work. Strangely, the op-ed does not mention Davis in its list of supposed "CRT" in the AP African American Studies framework. Both readings are listed as optional.

Astonishing report from @RANDCorporation on educational gag orders, based on their own national teacher survey & @PENamerica's report. Takeaways: teachers are self-censoring, & gag order restrictions fall disproportionately on Black teachers. Quotes in 🧵: rand.org/pubs/research_… "About one-quarter of teachers reported that limitations placed on how teachers can address topics related to race or gender have influenced their choice of curriculum materials or instructional practices."

A basic fact about Florida's ban on AP African American Studies: since the creation of the Advanced Placement program in 1952, no state has ever refused to certify an AP course until now. No state has put politics ahead of its students' access to early college credit until now. The AP African American Studies course was developed by a star-studded panel of scholars, piloted in 60 high schools across the country (including one in Florida), and approved by the College Board. Yet Florida's leadership is banning it for every school and student in the state.

State legislatures shouldn't ban DEI departments. But these model bills from the Manhattan and Goldwater Institutes is far worse than that -- more dangerous by a mile than any anti-DEI bill that has actually been introduced in a legislature. Here's why. chronicle.com/article/the-pl… Among other things: these bills would ban a university president from sending an all-campus email saying "Although not required, it's kind to call students by their preferred pronouns." Or: "We stand in solidarity, as allies, with communities mourning George Floyd."

Today, Brett Kavanaugh wrote that human rights questions not mentioned in the Constitution are "for the people and their elected representatives to resolve through the democratic process in the States or Congress."

This idea is "popular sovereignty." It was popular in the 1850s. Sen. Stephen Douglas, popular sovereignty advocate, wanted to put slavery to a vote in every state. "Whenever you put a limitation upon the right of any people to decide what laws they want," Douglas said in 1858, "you have destroyed the fundamental principle of self-government."

This case at @SokaUniv is a terrible attack on academic freedom in higher education. Aneil Rallin, a tenured queer professor of color and an award-winning teacher, faces possible termination for assigning readings three students and a dean didn't like. insidehighered.com/news/2022/05/1… The dean's letter of complaint against Rallin charged that the readings -- works by respected queer scholars -- were "deviant pornography" and "vaguely pedophilic." The course was titled "Writing the Body." Rallin gave trigger warnings for each reading. Nothing to see here.

I've got a new piece in @timeshighered that I think is pretty important. I argue that ed. gag orders are major threats to higher ed accreditation, student financial aid, and early college credit. It's the biggest risk nobody's talking about -- until now. timeshighereducation.com/campus/educati… Seven regional accreditors ensure academic quality in higher ed. All seven signed a statement against educational gag orders last June. Six signed a second statement last month. All seven have policies that preclude "political influence" on university governing boards.

How NOT to advocate for free speech on campus: Oklahoma's new Board of Regents Free Speech Committee does just about everything wrong. Here's why. kosu.org/education/2022… As we explained in 2016, @PENamerica opposes statewide campus free speech committees. They politicize the issue and erode shared governance. College-level faculty committees are best equipped to do this.

But Oklahoma's law manages to make it even worse. pen.org/research-resou…

So @_DanielleJBrown got the goods: a list of the math textbooks rejected for use in Florida because they supposedly included "special concepts" like CRT/SEL. Only... the state board of ed's own scoring says many of them DIDN'T include those concepts. floridaphoenix.com/2022/04/19/vet… According to the state scoring rubric, @MHEducation's Reveal Math textbooks for Grades 3 and 4 scored above the 90th percentile in their compliance with the state standards, AND included no "special concepts." So why did they get rejected? You tell me.

NEW from me and @jzfriedman: The next time someone tells you educational gag orders are a partisan issue, send them this link. 17 conservatives on the record, speaking out against legislative restrictions on the freedom to read, learn, and teach. #EdScare pen.org/conservatives-… Yes, David French and Andrew Sullivan are here. But also: two Republican governors; leaders of the Koch Foundation, the Stand Together Foundation, the Sutherland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Organization for Marriage; and many, many more.

Kentucky becomes the fifth state this year to enact an educational gag order. This one "opens teachers up to criminal charges for teaching history incorrectly." The sponsor says it's an oversight and will be fixed. We'll see. #EdScare courier-journal.com/story/news/pol… KY SB 1 is awful even w/o the criminal charges "mistake." It requires teachers to teach that "defining racial disparities solely on the legacy of [slavery] is destructive to the unification of our nation" and that "America's success" depends on "cooperation among its citizens."

On Friday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee quietly signed HB 2670 into law. It's one of the worst educational gag orders that has become law so far, and it's aimed specifically at higher education. #EdScare wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/Billinfo/… The bill bans any "mandatory training," which would include classroom instruction, that includes concepts that would "promote resentment" of any "class of people." What's a "class of people"? The law doesn't specify, so it could potentially include enslavers, or Nazis.

So this is what it's come to. Kids learning meditation skills = bad. Understanding and empathizing with other people = bad. Using a term like "social emotional learning" that is not universally understood by non-specialists = bad.

Let's talk about this.

Teachers are professionals. That means they learn concepts that non-professionals in their fields don't already know. When I talk to a plumber or welder or mechanic, I expect to hear terms I don't already know. I'm talking to a professional in a field in which I'm not trained.

DeSantis says people like me who oppose "Don't Say Gay" law support "sexualizing kids in kindergarten," "injecting woke gender ideology into second-grade classrooms," and "enabling schools to ‘transition’ students to a ‘different gender’" without parents. miamiherald.com/news/politics-… Of course, DeSantis' comments are nonsense and I don't believe any of those things. But I'm struck by how DeSantis doesn't believe any of the things he hates could be originating WITH THE STUDENTS. Yet that's exactly what teachers tell me is happening.