BY HANK REICHMAN
Have you been compelled to sit through a class that made you, well, uncomfortable? Was it painful to learn there was once chattel slavery right here in the good ol’ US of A? Did you suffer heart palpitations upon being told that race had something to do with it? And what about your kids? Are they being forced to sit in class and be fed “a discriminatory curriculum unbeknownst to parents . . . under the guise of ‘Civic Engagement,’ ‘Social Justice’ and ‘The Sociology of Change’?” Who knows what kind of irreversible harm that might be causing them! Maybe something called Critical Race Theory is to blame. You know, that obscure legal doctrine that a bunch of scam artists and racist politicians have employed to gin up a backlash to, well, almost everything that stodgy, old, frightened Trump supporters might find even mildly disturbing?
Well, if so, did you know that there’s a fancy-schmancy New York City personal injury attorney looking for your business right now?!
This is true! Really!! O’Brien has a website, called Schoolhouse Rights, and an office on Park Avenue in Manhattan (at least that’s what the website says). According to his site, he did indeed “invent” the practice area of anti-CRT lawsuits, but so far it’s not so clear how successful he’s been. His site presents two pieces of evidence for his contention. One is a copy of a November 2020 complaint letter sent to Democracy Prep Public Schools, a charter school in Las Vegas, Nevada, complaining about a “Sociology of Change” course from which the quotes above are taken. A lawsuit was filed in the case in January, but so far there is no resolution.
The site also includes a picture of the cover page of a suit filed in Santa Barbara, California, in 2018 (not clear if O’Brien was the attorney, but I guess that’s what he’s implying). He brags that it was the “only previous complaint related to this issue,” but also acknowledges that it was dismissed for lack of standing.
This would all be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that it’s likely, I fear, to be only the start of a much bigger and potentially more dangerous trend. O’Brien’s efforts, “pioneering” as they may or may not be, predate the rash of “divisive concepts” legislation adopted or under consideration by Republican-dominated legislatures. These are likely to only encourage many more lawsuits and more “sue woke” ambulance chasing by the likes of attorney O’Brien. Even if these suits are, as is likely, often thrown out of court, the chilling effect will undoubtedly be significant.
Still, maybe an appropriate response is humor. One wag on Twitter suggested calling the number in the ad with this plea: “HELP! I fell off an intersectional ladder and my insurance company won’t pay for my rehab until I list my pronouns to a drag queen tech support agent!”
Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and president of the AAUP Foundation; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. His book, The Future of Academic Freedom, based in part on posts to this blog, was published in 2019. His Understanding Academic Freedom will be published in October.
Are college students being indoctrinated in critical race theory? I recently examined the brand-new second edition of Race in Society: The Enduring American Dilemma by Margaret L. Andersen, a major undergraduate text on the sociology of race. Critical race theory comes up exactly once, in a single paragraph that presents it as one of three explanations for some phenomena related to race in media and popular culture. Indoctrination? Hardly.
But however absurd the charges about critical race theory, the idea that students have a right not to be harmed by the ideas they are exposed to is very widespread and dangerous for academic freedom. Any serious discussion of race will include some ideas that some people consider offensive, outrageous, racist, hateful, intimidating, or harmful. As we see here, there are lawyers ready to sue on behalf of white people. And as also noted, legislatures all over the country are passing laws to protect students from unacceptable ideas about race. AAUP needs to stand firm, along with FIRE, for the principle that students and teachers have a right to express their views on any matter relevant to the curriculum regardless of whether others deem these views harmful or otherwise objectionable.
To your question, “What about your kids?”…. Yes, my son, 12 years old at the time, was told to write an essay on 10 ways men can stop oppressing women. He was given this assignment **as a punishment** for sharing a critical insight that challenged the orthodox view of gender being peddled. (He no doubt picked up the insight from his mother who is a gender scholar.) Trust me, the things my son was being taught were embarrassingly oversimplified and the kids were not being encouraged to engage in–indeed, they were punished for–critical thinking. The people teaching knew just enough to be dangerous, as the saying goes. You can try to position me as as you positioned the people you reference in this blog post. You know, maybe I’m just not liberal enough to appreciate feminist views and so I’m overly sensitive or too easily upset by a responsible teacher offering a basic analysis of sexism. Thing is, I’m about as feminist as you can get. So that’s not really what’s going on.
And the “sociology of change” course that you mention really was the object of a law suit–by a person of color–after that high school course, which the student had to pass in order to graduate with his diploma, demanded that he share private aspects of his identity and also that he declare an ideological allegiance with the teacher.
Rather than demonizing or dismissing anyone who is troubled by courses or teachers that prioritize some ideology over actual inquiry and critical thinking, perhaps we might ask ourselves if everyone is exercising the self-restraint that the AAUP champions as a professional value, if they show respect for the beliefs of other people, and if they value inquiry over indoctrination. If we are not willing to criticize our fellow teachers who cross a line and engage in unprofessional ways of teaching, we are inadvertently inviting the government and lawsuits to do it for us. I’d rather self-govern, and that sometimes means admitting that some teachers, in some cases, need to change how they’re doing things.
Thank you for considering this point of view.
Reading over my post I do not see any place where I have demonized or dismissed anyone “troubled by courses or teachers that prioritize some ideology over actual inquiry and critical thinking,” And I will readily acknowledge that what you describe happening in your son’s class sounds to me like an example of bad — actually, atrocious — teaching, well deserving of criticism. As for the sociology of change course, I am aware of what is alleged in the case, about which I offered no judgment other than to note that it is apparently the sole example of this self-promoting attorney’s work. It may well also be another outrageous example of atrocious teaching, but that’s not for either of us to decide. As the AAUP put it with respect to higher education back in its 2007 report, Freedom in the Classroom (https://www.aaup.org/report/freedom-classroom), “with more than half a million full-time faculty in four-year colleges and universities teaching more than seven million students, it would seem statistically certain that sometime, somewhere, some instructor will step over the line.” Given how much larger the K-12 sector is, the certainty there is far, far greater.
At the same time, I also think that the kind of ideological ambulance-chasing exemplified by this lawyer’s promotional efforts suggests just one of the highly dangerous pitfalls of the anti-CRT legislation now sweeping the country, which far more than anything in my post truly does dangerously “prioritize ideology over actual inquiry and critical thinking.” I would add that there is nothing in this attorney’s advertisement nor on his website to suggest that he is not as eager to drum up business in a college or university setting as he is in K-12 (maybe even in commercial businesses, too). Moreover, while your admirable call for self-restraint is, indeed, well-taken, it is precisely the obvious lack of self-restraint by this attorney that was the target of my post.
Freedom in the Classroom put the underlying issue well: “Calls for the regulation of higher education are almost invariably appeals to the coercive power of the state. In recent attempts to pass legislation to monitor and constrain faculty in the classroom lies a deep menace, which the architects of the American concept of academic freedom properly conceived as a potential ‘tyranny of public opinion.’ . . . We ought to learn from history that the vitality of institutions of higher learning has been damaged far more by efforts to correct abuses of freedom than by those alleged abuses. We ought to learn from history that education cannot possibly thrive in an atmosphere of state-encouraged suspicion and surveillance.”
I don’t quite understand this response to Hank’s post, either. Maybe it’s because I understand Hank’s comments within the context that we’ve been exploring over the past few weeks, which is the effort to demonize, discredit, and eliminate any thoroughgoing exploration of the roles white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression have played and continue to play in American history and culture. While the focus here is on any meaningful engagement with race, with “critical race theory” functioning in the same way “socialism” was be used to shut down any criticism of unfettered capitalism, feminism is definitely in the crosshairs as well.
Where Hank and I differ is that he finds this ad to be laughably absurd. I don’t. I understand it to be deadly serious. The implicit comparison of the perceived violence being done to a child who presents as White when he is asked to reflect on how that might shape the way he may be perceived and treated is in no way comparable to the actual violence done to a student who presents as Black when he is profiled, stopped-and-frisked, beaten, or murdered because of the way he is perceived. But the goal here is to equate those two “harms.” As a light-skinned Black man, I am all too aware that there are things I have been able to do and say that some of my darker-skinned brothers and sisters probably could not have done or said. It is important to me that I keep this in mind, just as it’s important to me to know that as a cisgendered man there are things I can do and say that not even cisgendered women, let alone transgendered women and men can.
Keep in mind that the lawsuit is also being funded by the International Organization of Families, designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the SPLC.
Therefore, I agree with Hank that it is critically important to distinguish pedagogical strategies from pedagogical aims or goals. If you are “about as feminist as you can get,” surely you do not object to your son’s teachers trying to make him aware of how male privilege operates in this society and how he benefits from it. You may disagree, perhaps even sharply, with their strategy. If you’re more of an expert than they are, then perhaps you could share some resources to help them become more effective.
This lawyer is literally trying to make educators civilly liable for asking students to reflect critically on how our social positions — race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. — impact our lives, for better and worse. That is what is at stake here.
To be clear, I think it’s BOTH laughably absurd AND deadly serious.
Yes, I know. But I can only take it as deadly serious. The fact of the matter is that a self-described gender scholar who “is about as feminist as you can get” failed to recognize the humorous absurdity as you were riffing on it and implied that she is part of the ad’s target audience. If the ad plays this well with a gender scholar, then imagine how well it must play with people who are not trained to think critically about things like this.
More to the point: I doubt her son’s teachers — or any teacher, for that matter — would feel free to experiment with different pedagogical strategies if they knew the cost of a controversial assignment could be not just a complaint, but a lawsuit. High school and college administrations may be willing to defend a teacher’s academic freedom against a barrage of complaints, but I think a barrage of lawsuits, even “absurd” lawsuits, would get a different response. There is only so much litigation a district or an institution can afford.
I think this lawyer has astutely identified an untapped market for lawyers willing to file these lawsuits to put pressure “woke” teachers all across the country. And as we all know, there are some deep, deep pockets and plenty of smaller donors willing to contribute to the cause. My bet is that Mr. O’Brien has already raked in quite a tidy sum.
It would not surprise me if some of the contributors learned about his service through a post making fun of it on academeblog.org.
Martha, I completely agree with you that teachers at all levels of education sometimes engage in indoctrination and that it is important to oppose this. No student should ever be required to express views they do not hold or be punished for expressing views they do hold. Students may be expected to explain and justify their views but should feel free, regardless of viewpoint, to contribute to class discussion. I would urge all teachers to include in each course syllabus a statement such as this (which is from a course I taught in adolescent development):
“The study of adolescence raises controversial issues. Topics addressed in this course include race, gender, culture, religion, morality, sexuality, and violence. You have a right to believe whatever you believe and are encouraged to express your views on matters relevant to the course, even if others in the class may be offended or upset by those views. You also have a right to express your disagreement with anything you hear or read and a right to decide whether to maintain or modify your views. Your grade in the class will be based on your understanding and reasoning, not on your opinions.”
David, Martha, You two have changed the subject, it seems to me. The lawyer is capitalizing on the state legislation that bans anything that might make a student “uncomfortable” or feel “shame or guilt” and, further, the context of all of this–both the proposed legislation and this lawyer’s advertisement — is geared to an audience of white people This is a far cry from making a student espouse a view they do not hold. All of this is indisputably designed to discourage and even prevent discussions of historical facts and everyday realities. Do we not talk about the Tulsa Massacre because some white students experience moments of shame when we do? (Do we even consider how incredibly difficult it must be for some Black children to learn about the extent of chattel slavery? These feelings tellingly are not, and never have been, a topic of mainstream discussion.) Should boys be spared from learning about the gendered rates of violent crime? Please get some perspective. The biggest danger in this moment is not “indoctrination” but white authoritarianism that is trying to use the state and the legal system to interfere with educators in order that one version of social reality be admissible in classrooms.
Hello Jennifer, I think the underlying subject that runs through this discussion and previous ones on this blog is whether ideas and concepts can be banned from the classroom because some students find them offensive, upsetting, racist, sexist, hateful, harmful, etc. I think any such ban, whether it comes from the teacher, an administrator, a governing board, or a legislature, is an infringement on both academic freedom and the First Amendment.
I understand and I expect we would disagree on how to think about free speech in the classroom and instructors’ rights/obligations as the persons responsible for the classroom but, for now, it seems important simply to recognize that the actors you mention are not equivalent with equivalent power to enforce their mandates and with equivalent ramifications when they try. The legislature trying to enforce what does and does not get said in the classroom is state interference, a very serious danger in a democracy. Please see Tim Snyder’s recent NYT piece where he compares these CRT bans to memory laws issued in Russia and Poland in the last few years.
I once argued with a colleague who insisted that the pro-life students in her classes were fine with the availability of abortions as long as those services were not supported by taxes. I insisted that they wanted to make abortions illegal, full-stop. She invited me to her class so that we could settle it once and for all. She even allowed me to describe our argument so I couldn’t accuse her of misrepresenting it.
Guess which one of us was surprised and embarrassed by what her pro-life students said? Hint: It wasn’t me.
This statement misses the point in a similar way.
How does one talk about race without talking about white supremacy? What does one do if a student spends the entire semester arguing that white supremacy is a liberal invention designed to make people who identify as White feel guilty for all they have accomplished? What if students insist that forcing them to think and talk about race is a divisive form of indoctrination?
How does one talk about gender without talking about patriarchy? What does one do if a student spends the entire semester arguing that patriarchy is a liberal invention designed to make those who identify as male feel guilty for all they have accomplished? What if students insist that forcing them to think and talk about gender is a divisive form of indoctrination?
What if students believe that the study of adolescence is un-American and don’t believe any student should be required to take it, especially if someone who looks like you is teaching it?
What if students bring in articles from their favorite news sources, internet searches, and even the President of the United States in defense of their views?
Pray tell, Professor Moshman, upon what grounds of “reasoning and understanding” would you justify giving those students the “A” they would expect?
Hello Mark James and thanks for these 5 sets of questions. With regard to the first two sets, instructors must be free to teach whatever they deem academically justified about race, gender, and anything else. Students have a right to express their own views but they have no right to be shielded from topics or ideas relevant to the course. Instructors decide how much discussion to include and have the authority to ensure all students have the opportunity to participate and keep to the topic of discussion.
Regarding student beliefs about my course, I often had students who took this course because it was required for teaching secondary school and some of them disliked it because it was too theoretical (including topics such as race as a social construct and a matter of identity), but they had to take it anyway.
Regarding sources, an important part of the course was learning to distinguish academic sources from news reports, etc., to look for evidence, and to provide convincing arguments, and students were graded on this.
Finally, I would never give a student an A just because they expected it. Grades were based on exam scores (which required understanding course material and reasoning with it) and papers (which required evidence and arguments).
Once again, you’re assuming that all instructors enjoy the same unquestioned authority in the classroom, and that all areas of research and teaching enjoy the same recognition and protection. I’m asking you to step out of your own experience and imagine these questions from the perspective of a faculty member whose teaching status is precarious, and who teaches a subject that students are encouraged to attack as fundamentally “un-American.”
This is not a hypothetical.
Actually I have lots of experience advising teachers in precarious positions, including high school teachers whose teaching (about history, literature, etc.) is under attack for being un-American, unpatriotic, anti-Christian, etc. Specific advice depends on the situation but I always advise putting policies in writing and including strict respect for the intellectual freedom of all students, which makes the necessary authority of teachers and experts over curriculum more palatable to those worried about indoctrination.
One can only wish it were that simple, David. Thank you for your time.
Thanks to all for the discussion. To end on a note of agreement, here’s a letter I sent last week to the Lincoln Journal Star (not yet published) which is the basis for a longer letter that the Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska plans to send to the University of Nebraska Board of Regents about a resolution introduced by a Republican Regent who is running for governor:
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University of Nebraska Regent Jim Pillen has proposed a resolution opposing the inclusion of critical race theory in the university curriculum. As justification, the resolution asserts (among other things) that “America is the best country in the world” and that proponents of critical race theory “disparage important American ideals.”
Even if the University of Nebraska were an elementary school, it would violate the academic freedom of both teachers and students to base its curriculum on an unexamined conception of America as the best of all countries and to exclude contrary ideas. Despite the claim that the Regents support “open reflection, discussion, study, research, and learning,” what this resolution proposes, at least regarding matters of race, is indoctrination, not education. Passing this resolution would deeply undermine the academic integrity of the University of Nebraska and make it a national laughingstock.