Restrictions of this type are particularly concerning because of the principle of academic freedom that applies to teachers in colleges and universities. The entire year can be summarized in a single word: escalation. While none of these copycat bills have become law as of August 2022, several have come close, and more seem likely to be introduced in 2023. For instance, Kentuckys SB 1, which became law in 2022, contains an Orwellian passage requiring that all instruction and instructional materials in public K12 schools be consistent with the following understanding: that the institution of slavery and post-Civil War laws enforcing racial segregation and discrimination were contrary to the fundamental American promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but that defining racial disparities solely on the legacy of this institution is destructive to the unification of our nation.. While there has been a decline in new gag order laws passed from 12 last year to 7 this year, overall, legislative attacks on education in America have been escalatingfast. For example, under the law, public universities in Tennessee may no longer discuss in a seminar or assign for an orientation any material that promotes division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people. This provision could be construed to mean that a historian of the US civil rights era or of the Holocaust cannot include in a course historical sources that might inspire resentment of the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis, each of whom might be considered a class of people, a term that is not defined. One complaint, filed by the conservative America First Policy Institute on behalf of an Iowa student, claims that a planned elective class on social justice in literature would violate that states ban on race or sex stereotyping in education. Rather, they address an entirely different situation, where a teacher is offering biased or factually incorrect instruction. Many still contain elements from the executive order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, but often with significant elaboration. Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools However, under a separate law passed shortly after HB 7, public colleges and universities found to have violated this prohibition may lose access to state financial support.16Florida SB 2524, https://legiscan.com/FL/text/S2524/id/2548804. In a survey of mainly American and British master's and PhD students, those on the right are far more likely to agree that their political views wouldn't fit an academia career. Instead, many of the bills introduced this year would allow unrelated parties who have no direct connection to a school to file suit as well. PEN Americas Free Expression and Education team is hard at work fighting the Ed Scare:" the educational gag orders, book bans, and transparency bills that threaten free expression and academic freedom in the classroom. Bills legislating educational censorship in schools, colleges, universities, and libraries have been on the rise in the past two years, as PEN America has documented previously. It prohibits public universities and K12 schools from subject[ing] any student or employee to training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, [or] inculcates . This seems to be the position of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which has actively steered multiple state legislatures toward this formulation.59Greg Gonzalez, FIRE Continues to Oppose Curricular Bans in Race and Sex Stereotyping Bills, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, July 11, 2022, https://www.thefire.org/fire-continues-to-oppose-curricular-bans-in-race-and-sex-stereotyping-bills/. It also offers a list of remedies that a school may adopt when a teacher has been found guilty of compelling speech. Such requirements may seem harmless, but in practical terms their vague, nonspecific language offers limitless opportunities for activists or administrators to claim teachers are in violation of such provisions.55PEN America, For Educational Gag Orders, the Vagueness Is the Point, April 28, 2022, https://pen.org/for-educational-gag-orders-the-vagueness-is-the-point/. 26 v. Pico (1982), Brennan further elaborated that public schools must operate in a manner that comports with the transcendent imperatives of the First Amendment.4Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. Under both. As Hannah Natanson writes in the, , a key contributing factor to the shortage is some educators sense that politicians and parentshave little respect for their profession amid an escalating educational culture war that has seen many districts and states pass policies and laws restricting what teachers can say about U.S. history, race, racism, gender and sexual orientation, as well as LGBTQ issues., Hannah Natanson, Never Seen It This Bad: America Faces Catastrophic Teacher Shortage,, PEN America v. 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The key innovation here involves enforceability. The Department of Education will then publish a list of these challenges and disseminate them to schools across the state. Educational gag orders are state legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in K12 and higher education. A few more failed because of the vagaries of chance. A hate-filled diatribe is an abuse of a venue, not a simple expression of opinion. A History of Censorship in the United States. School districts found to have violated this law may be subject to additional state control, and superintendents of such school districts may be suspended. This surge in anti-LGBTQ+ speech legislation reflects a growing alignment between different political efforts. And should these bills become law, many teachers may simply avoid any content that could even approach the restrictions laid out in this legislation. Mississippis HB 437 would have denied state funds (e.g. Two lawsuits challenging Floridas HB 7 have already been filed: Falls v. DeSantis (discussed in Section II) and Honeyfund.com v. DeSantis.118Falls v. DeSantis, 4:22cv166 (2022), https://aboutblaw.com/2G4; Honeyfund.com v. DeSantis, 4:22cv227 (2022), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22065949-1-complaint-honeyfund-v-desantis. Over the past two years, the anticritical race theory campaign has displayed remarkable energy and success in targeting classroom discussions of race and sex, as the 19 educational gag order laws passed in 15 states demonstrate. But the energy of the newer anti-critical race theory campaign has helped such bills gain new momentum, becoming law in Florida and proliferating to other states. Legal Analysis: Getting the numbers on college censorship Only one bill out of the 137 introduced so far this year has had a Democratic legislative sponsor. "SB 83 is the longest and most complicated educational gag order ever proposed, and one of the most censorious. We have written previously about the focus of many legislative and policy efforts to curb teaching about racism in American history, many of which include language copied from President Trumps 2020, barring a list of divisive concepts in federal trainings (the Executive Order was revoked by President Biden). But higher education might be the most fractured institution of all., In the interview from his new headquarters in Austin, Dr. Kanelos said that people are self-censoring and not having the kind of vivid discussions that used to be the hallmark of higher education theres just been a kind of flattening., He said this was being felt not just by faculty but by students, who more and more would talk about keeping their head down.. The difference lies in the high ideological skew and transparently political nature of people's work in SSH academic disciplines. For example, Idahos HB 377, which became law in 2021, states that no public university or school shall direct or otherwise compel students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to certain concepts related to sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin. So They Are Starting a New One. Ideas related to race, sex, and gender have continued to be the most common target of educational gag order bills. I do not agree other universities are no longer seeking the truth nor do I feel that higher education is irreparably broken. For example, one of the concepts that HB 7 prohibits faculty from espousing is that an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion. By any reasonable interpretation, HB 7 makes it illegal in the state of Florida for a law professor to articulate arguments in favor of affirmative action in the classroomeven though affirmative action exists and is currently held by the Supreme Court to be constitutional in some forms.27Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), https://www.oyez.org/cases/1979/76-811. Mitchell, Mississippi Representative Wants Cameras in Public School Classrooms, SuperTalk Mississippi Media, January 17, 2022, https://www.supertalk.fm/mississippi-representative-wants-cameras-in-public-school-classrooms/. In Texas, one bill would ban public universities from having DEI offices, and another would prohibit the use of diversity statements in hiring. Such a measure would allow any ideological actor within the state to hold school districts hostage to their political views regarding what schools should and should not teach. A pair of Missouri bills (, ) state simply that K12 schools and colleges must offer courses that promote an overall positive . However, the greatest change this year has been a heightened focus on LGBTQ+ issues and identitiesa development that resulted in the most highly-publicized educational gag order of the year, Floridas HB 1557. Since January 2021, researcher Jeffrey Sachs says, 35 states have introduced 137 bills limiting what schools can. But my study found that this is just the tip of an iceberg of threats to academic freedom. Stanley Kurtz, The Partisanship Out of Civics Act, National Association of Scholars, February 15, 2021, For instance, Texass SB 3, which became law in 2021, states that whenever public K12 school teachers broach a current event or widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs, they must strive to explore the topic from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective., Missouris SB 694 would have required teachers to teach controversial topics from both sides and without showing preference or deference to one perspective., And under Kentuckys SB 1, which became law in April 2022, instruction must be relevant, objective, non-discriminatory, and respectful to the differing perspectives of students., The final type of prohibition found in gag order bills would prohibit educators from including, discussing, or making part of a course certain topics or ideas in the curriculum, regardless of how objective or balanced the discussion is. More than 2,500 different book bans were enacted in schools across 32 US states during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a new . Nov. 8, 2021. Their efforts have been boosted, however, by the loosely knit and much more recent anticritical race theory campaign, whose advocates argue that much of what passes for instruction on LGBTQ+ topics in public schools constitutes a kind of left-wing indoctrination. In other proposed 2022 bills, the legislative text itself has conflated compulsion with persuasion or confusion. While none of these copycat bills have become law as of August 2022, several have come close, and more seem likely to be introduced in 2023. status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race. In their response, lawyers for the state of Florida acknowledged this example but argued that the professor could still discuss The New Jim Crow so long as he did so objectively and without endorsement. One bill with substantially similar language, Alabama HB 322, did become law, though it does not contain an explicit age or grade-based prohibition on speech. Inclusion bans have become less commonplace in bills introduced in 2022. . New litigation challenges to educational gag orders also seem inevitable. . It was unclear from the prospective universitys manifesto whether the founders would be able to translate a provocative idea into a viable institution, especially at a time when educational issues are divisive and partisan. Bills in Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah would take a different approach: instituting state-mandated age ratings systems for books, to strictly delineate at what ages students could read about certain topics. The likely consequence is that school districts will avoid stocking controversial material. Finally, lawmakers in 2022 seem to have lost their appetite for regulating speech and conduct in nonschool settings. All rights reserved. The first prohibits all employers, including both public and nonpublic educational institutions, from requiring an individual to attend, as a condition of , certification, licensing, credentialing, or passing an examination,. Similar examples are common throughout discourse on gag orders and illustrate the expansive ways supporters would seek to enforce them. As such, socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States.75Indiana HB 1040, https://legiscan.com/IN/text/HB1040/id/2462805/Indiana-2022-HB1040-Introduced.pdf. This year has also brought a sharp increase in the number of bills targeting nonpublic educational institutions. Another set of ideas targeted frequently by lawmakers in 2022 is speech deemed unduly critical of American history and of the United States today. And the dramatic increase in the number of bills introduced is itself a cause for alarm, reflecting a heightened inclination toward censorship. Kentuckys HB 706, the most extreme private right of action bill, would have given any resident of the state a right to sue, including a domestic business entity residing in the [state] or a foreign business entity that is registered and in good standing with the Secretary of State.98Kentucky HB 706, https://legiscan.com/KY/text/HB706/id/2532276/Kentucky-2022-HB706-Introduced.pdf. Detailed information on many of these bills can be found in PEN Americas Index of Educational Gag Orders, updated weekly. CRT Forward Tracking Project, https://crtforward.law.ucla.edu/. This seems to be the position of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which has actively steered multiple state legislatures toward this formulation. This provision poses a threat to college and university faculty members First Amendment rights. Some include explicit bans on such performances in these settings, while others include prohibitions on drag performances being hosted on public property or with the use of public funds. As Justice Robert H. Jackson declared in his majority opinion, If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in matters of politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word their faith therein.58West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 US 624 (1943), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/319/624/#tab-opinion-1937809. These gag order bills would prohibit schools or universities from compelling individuals to adopt, affirm, or espouse a specific idea. These include West Virginias SB 498, where lawmakers failed by just minutes to meet the end-of-session deadline, and Arizonas SB 1412, where one state senators absence on the last day of the session prevented the bill from becoming law.7Liz McCormick and Suzanne Higgins, Anti-Racism Act Fails in Final Moments of 2022 Legislative Session, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, March 13, 2022, https://www.wvpublic.org/government/2022-03-13/anti-racism-act-fails-in-final-moments-of-2022-session; Arizona Legislature Updates: Lawmakers Adjourn for Final Time after Passing Water, School Voucher Bills, Arizona Republic, June 25, 2022, https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/legislature/2022/06/22/arizona-budget-updates-lawmakers-turn-attention-deal/7707801001/. Librarian gathering in Chicago includes training to battle book bans in such student or employee to believe certain concepts about race, color, national origin, or sex. Most state legislatures meet during the first half of the year; additional educational gag orders could become law before the end of 2022 via special sessions or in the few legislatures that meet year-round. Many people, however, appeared to associate the project with right-wing views, despite the protests of Dr. Kanelos and others that it was about academic repression. ; without it, colleges would be subject to the whims of the legislature, inviting ideological control or politically-motivated incursions over what should be a bastion of open inquiry. Advocates of free expression and education should respond accordingly. Under South Carolinas H 4605, nonpublic schools, universities, and any other place of learning would have lost their state funding, tax-exempt status, and any other state-provided accommodation or privilege for even a single violation.