Educators calculate their risks in class as states escalate anti-DEI pressure

  At Miami Norland Senior High School in Miami Gardens, Florida, Renee O’Connor continues to teach students about Ida B. Wells, James Baldwin, and The 1619 Project in her African American history class.  

  She does this despite the ban on teaching the Pulitzer Prize-winning reexamination of African American enslavement and legacy in the state’s public schools, in a state regulation implementing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2022 “Stop WOKE Act.” The law aims to restrict educating children and others about the U.S. legacy of racism in schools and workplaces. 

  O’Connor isn’t defiant. She cites an obligation to her students.  

  “I teach a factual education based on documented proof,” O’Connor said.   

5 growing threats to academic freedom

  The ability to teach and conduct research free from political interference is the cornerstone of higher education and its contribution to the public good. Academic freedom, however, has become increasingly threatened.

  V-Dem Institute, a global research organization that monitors indicators of democracy around the world, determined that academic freedom has “substantially worsened” in the United States in recent years. This is largely due to political and social polarization.

Doesn’t Shelby County have actual problems to address?

  If someone handed you sheets of Census data on Shelby County, it wouldn’t take long to see how fast it’s growing.

  The population jumped 14% between 2010 and 2020. That’s a number most governments would throw an Animal House-type celebration over. But in Shelby, it represented a fall from the 36% growth of the decade before.

  I doubt anyone in Columbiana will complain, though. Growth means a healthy economy; a health economy means an expanding tax base. The median household income in Shelby is $98,000 a year, way higher than the state level of $60,000. Educational attainment is more than double Alabama’s overall rate. Unemployment and poverty are both low.

They want silence around Rosa Parks

  The Rosa Parks statue in Montgomery’s Court Square is not what you expect from a monument. That’s why I love it.

  There’s no pedestal. No stage. Nothing separating the viewer from Parks. It’s a life-sized and human-scaled depiction of a civil rights hero.

  This is no divinely ordained messenger walking in the sky above us. This is a woman going home after a day at work – a dignified, respected citizen with a long track record of activism. She has a plan for the bus ride ahead.

Why GOP lawmakers fear ‘divisive concepts’

  As a kid, I consumed histories and biographies like my peers read comic books. It didn’t matter what era it was. If a story was well-told, I devoured it.

  One of many convictions I’ve developed from that reading: You can’t understand the South of today without understanding the history of this place.