BY IRENE MULVEY
At this time, when our nation is confronting deep-rooted racial inequity and having honest and long-overdue conversations about our history, legislators in a number of states have moved to shut down the conversation by restricting teaching about oppression, race, and gender.
The details vary, but generally the bills prohibit teaching or training in public educational institutions about vaguely defined “divisive concepts,” including racism and oppression. Some apply only to K–12 education, while others include higher education. Many include prohibitions on teaching about “critical race theory,” though most of the bills extend far beyond this. While many of the bills in question have not yet advanced, some have been signed into law—and they all have the potential to chill the free exchange of ideas at universities and colleges, and violate core AAUP principles. In some states, college courses have already been cancelled over concerns that they might run afoul of this legislation.
We are taking this attack on teaching very seriously, and are working with a wide coalition of organizations to protect the ability of faculty to teach freely. With three partners, we are releasing a statement today opposing these bills and affirming that Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today. We’re proud that more than seventy other organizations have endorsed this statement. These bills violate fundamental tenets of academic freedom and shared governance, the foundations of higher education.
In addition, the AAUP has developed resources to help members address legislative interference in the teaching of the role of racism in US history and society.
Decisions about curriculum and teaching materials belong in the hands of educators—not politicians. Join in our fight to keep it that way.
Irene Mulvey is the president of the AAUP.
Readers may enjoy an article I just wrote on this subject, in “Dissident Professor:” https://www.dissidentprof.com/8-home/170-what-happens-when-law-schools-embrace-critical-race-theory
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“We are taking this attack on teaching very seriously..”
The banal canard of using the incorrectly applied term “attack” by members of the educracy has become the modus operandi to deflect any type of accountability or criticism by the public in order to keep their cronyism and and unethical practices from the public view.
Created and popularized after the violent depravations of mentally-unstable former faculty member Melissa Click, (who falsified threats against her and made up false claims against Mark Schierbecker having a gun in a failed attempt to draw attention away from her own undeniably violent, criminal actions) the new vogue is to bandy about terms like “attack” and “assault” to thwart legal and public discourse while simultaneously engaging in unethical, and often illegal actions.
Considering parents, who have a legal, biological, and moral obligation, not to mention constitutional right, to raise their offspring in the methods and environments they think best, it is appalling, however unsurprising, that Mulvey and the AAUP would reduce their rights with nefarious false accusations of “attacks.” The irony is even more sickening since her allies in the teacher unions, school boards, and unelected, six-figure educrats have engaged in doxxing, threats, attempts to hack parents, violating opens meetings acts, violating FIOA laws, hiding public records and teaching materials from the public, and now in Rhode Island, outright bribery and quid pro quo to protect their cartel. Real attacks are being made against parents and the public, not big ed bureaucrats that Mulvey’s pedantic whining is referring to.
“…affirming that Americans of all ages deserve nothing less than a free and open exchange about history and the forces that shape our world today..”
This absurd gaslighting/virtue signaling about free and open exchange is rich, considering that the teacher unions/school board allies are hiding classroom materials and violating open meetings law. When they aren’t blatantly violating FIOA laws (and harassment of parents who use them-as is their legal right), it shows an undeniable pattern of using CRT and its tenets as a form of discrimination and recrimination of students and their parents who do not conform to their neo-racist dogma. Indeed, Critical Racist Training, will go down in history as the greatest form of psychological child abuse by civic institutions since the 1980s Satanic Ritual Abuse hoax perpetuated by a bunch of left-wing “researchers” and quacks masquerading as psychology experts.
“Decisions about curriculum and teaching materials belong in the hands of educators.”
No it belongs in the hand of the citizenry and parents-those to whom the teachers and educationalists owe a public and legal duty. It does not belong in the hands of racists cultists who use unethical and criminal methods to impose and conceal it against the will of the taxpaying, voting public.