historian of Middle Eastern migration at UC Davis | Coming in Dec 2024: UNMENTIONABLES: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class
Aug 3 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
CALIFORNIA educators: state officials are considering a slate of bills this month that, if passed, will dramatically circumscribe our ability to teach histories of Palestine, ethnic studies, and genocide at all levels.
A 🧵on why I oppose SB 1277, SB 1287, AB 2918, and AB 2925.
SB 1287 seeks to bully university students into silence by threatening them if they violate new codes of conduct. Our campuses already have anti-discrimination laws and codes of conduct in place.
This bill targets pro-Palestine speech specifically.
A few days ago I tweeted about cognitive dissonance and Palestine. The tweet got quite a bit of hate, but for the rest of us, here are some thoughts about how teaching Palestine at a *public* university when a *popular* university appears in the quad.
Teaching history necessarily pushes students into confrontation of beliefs, assumptions, stereotypes, sometimes with identities. Being a teacher is 25% about pushing content, and 70% about helping students assimilate new ideas that conflict with old ones (the last 5% is grading).
