Oh wow. The Wharton Board of Advisors @Penn has proposed a resolution to punish any student or faculty member that uses hate speech or celebrates murder or genocide. The proposed resolution is vague, and threatens to ban wide swaths of speech. /1 axios.com/2023/12/08/pen…
I understand the impulse. Universities must take hate seriously. But this proposal would be unenforceable & likely backfire against what it aims to achieve.

This is the risk in a fraught political moment -- that institutions overreact and adopt policies that chill speech /2

I wish we saw this more often. The president of Princeton has responded with a resounding defense of academic freedom, after a Congressman called for the University to intervene in a prof's choice of reading materials for a course. 👇 /1
president.princeton.edu/blogs/response…




This is the latest chapter in a dust-up that began in Aug over calls to ban the book 'The Right to Maim' from a course syllabus for being allegedly anti-Semitic. Even Israel's minister of diaspora affairs wrote Princeton about it. The Univ has steadfastly supported the prof. /2

Among the latest crop of supposedly controversial books that need banning in Florida... One person has filed over 700 book challenges in Clay County, Fl, succeeding in getting all kinds of books temporarily & permanently banned. This is the first time I've seen 'Arthur' on one of these lists. @Scholastic

Just to be clear: the Miami Dade district that claims @TheAmandaGorman's The Hill We Climb hasn't been banned & is accessible to all students... has also clarified (when you read the fine print) that students must pass a reading test to read it. /1 washingtonpost.com/education/2023… Librarians will tell you: this is an impediment to students' voluntary inquiry. The decision to place it on a middle school shelf isn't just for guidance as to age-related content. It is to bar students from freely picking it up. This makes the lack of a clear basis for ... /2

Yikes. A year after Central York school district in PA was at the center of a book ban crusade, here it is again, making questionable choices.

As they did last year, students are protesting ongoing book bans in the district-- now they feel intimidated /1 yorkdispatch.com/story/news/edu… On Friday, during school hours, five students were called into a mtg with the superintendent & district leaders where they were "harangued" and spoken to "sternly"... for what?

Apparently for speaking publicly about the district and the bans. /2

Still watching what's going on @ NEW COLLEGE of Florida? Next board meeting is today at 2pm. What will DeSantis allies installed atop the college do next? Faculty & students unsure what will come for tenure, academic courses.
There's numerous threads to watch 👀 🧵 2. Among other issues... trustees today will vote on tenure for 5 faculty who have already been approved by every academic body. Interim president Corcoran has directed them to deny or defer-- an unusual directive that hints at political motives tampabay.com/news/education…

NEW. An updated book ban report for the current school year from @PENamerica shows how new state laws are supercharging book suppression in schools, esp in Florida. 🧵 #FReadom #EdScare #BookBans
nyti.ms/41DFeJC As I told @nytimes: "This is much bigger than you can really count... People need to understand that it’s not a single book being removed in a single school district, it’s a set of ideas that are under threat just about everywhere.” /2
Read and share:
pen.org/report/banned-…

IcYMi. In the flurry of other outrageous news... On top of being first to unconstitutionally censor drag shows, now TN is moving to pass a law introducing felony charges and $100K fines for publishers if they sell obscene materials to public schools 🧵
tennessean.com/story/news/pol… 2. Ofc, TN already has laws against distribution of obscene materials to minors. So why this law? Clearly it's got an ulterior motive: to ban books by threatening or censoring publishers.

Some are so bent on cracking down on drag, LGBTQ books, or teaching about racism, that they are both passing new laws and enforcing existing ones-- even when there's no evidence of violations.

Exhibit A: DeSantis crackdown on A Drag Queen Christmas. /1 miamiherald.com/news/politics-… Undercover cops in the audience determined there were no lewd acts in the drag show, that children were not "exposed" to anything breaking the law. No matter... the Dept of Business and Professional Regulation filed a complaint to strip the venue of its liquor license anyway. /2

A new bill in Texas, SB 1443, looks to take the censorship crusade in schools to another level.
It would ban LGBTQ topics and sex from books in schools, prohibit referrals to websites, ban drag or other forms of performance in school plays, & penalize publishers 🧵/1 The first part of the bill details topics to be barred from all books in schools, incl:
- "any any type of romantic or sexual attraction
between individuals of the same sex"
- "transgenderism"
- "sexual intercourse"
/2
capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/bi…

POP Quiz: How many people does it take to ban a book in Florida?

A: Increasingly... only one.

For @MiamiHerald I discuss why and how this is happening & why it's a threat to democracy. @PENamerica @FLFreedomRead #FreeTheBooks /1
miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/… Dig into almost any school book ban in FL, and you find 1 person--or a small group-- filing objections to books en masse, demanding removals. The restrictions on books this vocal minority have gotten are astonishing, precisely b/c they're often enacted without any process /2

You may be surprised to learn that books by @MargaretAtwood @jodipicoult @judyblume @kellyyanghk @johngreen are being determined to have "no serious literary value for minors" in Utah schools.

Latest crop of 44 banned books hinges on that assessment 🧵
stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2… Yes, under Utah's new "sensitive materials" law, librarians are being pressured to ban books that include any of a wide range of sexual content, if -- and, this is key -- if the district determines a book has "no serious value for minors."

Banned book of the day is "And Tango Makes Three" by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.

With its true story of 2 male penguins raising a baby, it's been targeted for years. But we @PENamerica are seeing an uptick in efforts to ban it across FL... #FreeTheBooks In Lake County. the district banned the book specifically b/c of the "Don't Say Gay" law. Note: the law bans "classroom instruction" on gender and sexuality, not library books. No matter. 🤷‍♂️ h/t @FLFreedomRead

https://twitter.com/FLFreedomRead/status/1602661368603230209

Well, it happened. Someone banned a Berenstain Bears book... It's just 1 of a whopping 176 titles that were ordered out of classrooms in a Florida district. The books were part of a large collection to add diverse & inclusive literature to classrooms. They were ordered off shelves in January for extra "review"...

https://twitter.com/PENamerica/status/1600282503205769216

In Escambia, Florida, someone is trying to ban this children's book about Wilma Rudolph, the African-American sprinter who set world records in running and won gold medals at the 1960 Olympics.

What's so "controversial" about it?... The teacher who filed the complaint-- which led to the book being restricted to back rooms and requiring specific parental permission for a student to even see it -- zeroed in on these 2 pages as allegedly breaking new Florida education laws, incl the Stop WOKE act.

Book banning is not just people showing up to school boards anymore. 🧵

In numerous states, new fronts are emerging-- state laws instilling fear in schools, or proposals to wholly defund public libraries.
E.g. New law in UT, HB 374, leading to bans 👇 ksl.com/article/505196… Similar story in MO, with SB 775, that we @PENamerica called attention to last week. Fear of reprisal--and criminal punishment--led to an astonishing array of book bans. We found at least 300 or so, but that's a minimum count. pen.org/spiegelman-atw…

In the race for most draconian school district, Keller ISD in TX is leading. They vote tomorrow on a policy that would ban books with "gender fluidity". This is the district that prev. banned The Bible, graphic adap. of Diary of Anne Frank, among others... dallasnews.com/opinion/commen… The policy would ban books w/ "discussion or depiction" of gender fluidity or which "espouses the view that gender is merely a social construct" from ALL schools. Would surely be interpreted widely against LGBTQ. They want to close minds to the real world.

https://twitter.com/LaneyHawes/status/1591194962544431105

A school board immediately revokes access to a long list of books in response to a thinly-supported objection, usually from 1 person.

Board members don't:
❎ read the books
❎ follow policies
❎ say how long these removals will last

It's called book banning.
📚📚📚🧵 Boards say all the time books are just 'under review'. That's what a board member said last week in Beaufort, SC, where they've recently removed access to 99 books based on a single complaint.

https://twitter.com/emilymayerSC/status/1587610239100223491?t=Z_A6d06FXAXej-DSj3tBRg&s=19

Stop & consider what's happening in Escambia, FL.

116 books are being "restricted" in libraries just b/c one person threw them on a list, parlayed from online reviews.

ZERO due process. No one even READ the books first. 🧵 wkrg.com/northwest-flor… Like everywhere, the "list" is heavily anti-LGBTQ and targets books that deal with contemporary politics, history related to racism. Swept off the stacks into a restricted section based on 1 person's objection using random reviews from the web. Here's all 116:

Today's LGBTQ+ history month-- but it's being censored in schools, esp under Florida's "Don't say gay" law and #EdScare.

One teacher in Palm Beach changed her lesson on Sally Ride - the first US woman to fly in space-- to omit the fact that she was a lesbian.

https://twitter.com/rkesten/status/1576227703404969984

Full story in @washingtonpost from June. Lesson alterations to erase LGBTQ+ history and identities are likely happening across the state.

Coupled with bans targeting LGBTQ+ authors and stories, young people are being deprived of their right to education. washingtonpost.com/education/2022…

So... how bout that national teacher shortage, eh? It's basically everywhere. Some of this is due to long-standing challenges, burnout from the pandemic.. But also undeniable that teachers resigning b/c of rampant politicization, gag orders, book bans, threats, intimidation 🧵 Florida: short 9,000 teachers
news4jax.com/news/local/202…