A raft of higher-education organizations voiced their “firm opposition” on Wednesday to legislation that they say aims to bar or impede instructors from educating students about racism in American history.
The bills, versions of which have been introduced in at least 20 states, risk infringing “on the right of faculty to teach and of students to learn,” says the joint statement, written by the American Association of University Professors, the American Historical Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and PEN America, and signed by them and more than 85 other groups.
“In higher education, under principles of academic freedom that have been widely endorsed, professors are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject,” the statement says. “Educators, not politicians, should make decisions about teaching and learning.”
The bills’ details differ between states, including if they apply solely to elementary and secondary schools or to higher ed as well. In general, many of them target the teaching or advocacy of certain “concepts” that are deemed “divisive,” including that the United States is fundamentally racist, or that any individual should be made to feel “guilt,” “anguish,” or other forms of distress due to that person’s race or sex.
Those concepts — which the statement calls a “litany of vague and indefinite buzzwords” — stem from an executive order issued by Donald J. Trump, then president, last September. He forbade the federal government and its contractors to conduct training sessions that promote what Trump called racial or sexual “stereotyping” and “scapegoating.” Various higher-ed organizations opposed the order at the time. The AHA called it “neither necessary nor useful.”
That month, Trump had also claimed that college students are being “inundated with critical race theory,” which is a “Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation.” Scholars who work in the field have decried Trump’s description of it as a gross distortion.
Still, Trump’s narrative grew legs. NBC News recently reported that at least 165 local and national groups had mobilized to “disrupt lessons on race and gender,” often by filing lawsuits and crowding school-board meetings. Bolstered by think tanks, law firms, and parent activists, the groups “have weaponized the right’s opposition to critical race theory, turning it into a political rallying point,” NBC reported.
Republican lawmakers have fallen in line, introducing bills in Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and other states that mirror the spirit or the language of Trump’s executive order, The Chronicle previously reported. In Idaho, the Republican governor signed a bill into law that is, in part, meant to prevent colleges from compelling students to “personally affirm, adopt, or adhere” to what the Legislature considers “critical race theory.”
In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, recently signed a bill that, among other things, prevents colleges from teaching or promoting certain “concepts” during training, including that “meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race” or that an individual “should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual’s race or sex.”
In reading those bills, Jim Grossman, executive director of the AHA, recognized what he called an old trick to drum up political support: You ban things that either aren’t or are barely happening, to make them seem more widespread. By treating rarities as if they’re pervasive, lawmakers are creating effective political rhetoric, Grossman said.
The AHA and other higher-ed organizations reject that rhetoric. To Grossman, the goal of the bills is to “inculcate patriotism” by “celebrating the nation’s past rather than understanding it,” he wrote in a recent message to AHA members. Professional historians generally recognize that you cannot teach the history of the United States without regarding racism as a central feature, he said. “It’s just not possible.” Yes, scholars will debate certain aspects of that history, and it’s important for them to be able to do so. But what’s happening in state houses right now, said Grossman, is not about scholarship or scholarly debate. “It is about riling up voters.”
Irene Mulvey, president of the AAUP, agrees. “These are cynical and illegitimate attempts to twist the national conversation for partisan gain,” she told The Chronicle. She said it’s important for college administrators to stand up to such attempts. It’s their job, she said, to educate legislators about the primary academic missions of their institutions, to push back.
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the AAC&U, called this legislative wave another example of the growing infringement of the autonomy of academic institutions. Look at the case of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s stalled tenured bid in North Carolina, she said. Look at a bill, backed by Republican lawmakers in Florida, that would survey the “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” of state institutions by considering “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented,” and would allow students to record lectures, to be used in potential lawsuits. The group’s member institutions are concerned about the shifting landscape of higher ed in which their control over their own governance is slipping, she said.
Already, in certain places, the bills are having an effect. An adjunct professor at Oklahoma City Community College had her fully enrolled course canceled “in light of the new HB 1775 law,” The Washington Post reported. After hearing from a state senator, the Kansas Board of Regents asked its six state universities to list their courses that include critical race theory, the Kansas City Star reported. (The senator told the news outlet that she was not herself concerned about critical race theory but was merely seeking information for her constituents.)
Ultimately, Grossman and others worry about a chilling effect that the bills could have on teachers, in the classroom and on campus, that would detract from the quality of education that students receive.
“A free and open society,” the joint statement says, “depends on the unrestricted pursuit and dissemination of knowledge.” Americans of all ages “deserve nothing less.”
