teaching history 
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3/19/2023
Censoring History Education Goes Hand in Hand with Democratic Backsliding
by Julia Boechat Machado and Ruben Zeeman
Regimes in the Philippines, India and Brazil have recently tried to censor the teaching of history in service of their poltical goals and claims to power. The pushback by scholars in these countries should inspire historians in Florida and elsewhere to resist the political censorship of research and teaching.
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/16/2023
How Textbook Publishers are Censoring the Story of Rosa Parks to Sell Books in Florida
The conservative Florida Citizens Alliance, a group allied with the DeSantis administration, has called for rejection of 28 of the 38 texts its members reviewed. One publisher's editing of the story of the Montgomery Boycott illustrates their power.
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SOURCE: Windsor Weekly
3/10/2023
Virginia School Board Declares there is "No Systemic Racism"
The sponsoring board member suggested that his election victory means that "parents get a voice in how and what their children are exposed to.” A local history teacher disagreed.
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3/14/2023
Statement by People for Black History at University of Tennessee-Martin
The leaders of a student movement to resist Tennessee's restrictions on course content charges that their university's faculty senate has failed to give their petition a hearing.
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SOURCE: WHYY
3/3/2023
Historian and Social Psychologist Discuss How to Confront Difficult Aspects of History
Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Dolly Chugh have an interdisciplinary discussion of why difficult and conflictual elements of history must be taught, and how to enable students and teachers to do it productively.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
3/4/2023
Kimberlé Crenshaw Speaks Out: Education Restrictions Tied to Resegregation
Professor Crenshaw warned that the College Board's decision to alter its African American studies course resembles the pattern of business collaborating with and profiting under white supremacy that prevailed in Jim Crow America.
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SOURCE: WUFT
2/24/2023
UF Faculty and Students Host "Can't Ban Us" Black History Teach-In
“The state of Florida has banned aspects of African American studies within grades K-12 and are now trying to further ban higher education students from learning critical ways to understand how race and racism works,” [historian Paul] Ortiz said.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/17/2023
Who's Afraid of Black History?
by Henry Louis Gates
The protestations of Ron DeSantis aside, American schools today carry the legacy of a massive neoconfederate indoctrination campaign that distorted the meaning of the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, justified racist terrorism, and erased ongoing debates—including among Black Americans—about the meaning of freedom and democracy.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/22/2023
Ron DeSantis is Making History a Political Issue; What does His Book Say?
by David Waldstreicher
Nobody paid much attention to the Florida governor's 2011 book "Dreams from Our Founding Fathers." Maybe we should now—it spells out a justification for a deeply conservative view of the constitution that dismisses the significance of racism in the founding and in the doctrine of originalism.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
2/22/2023
Drawing the Line between Assigning and Endorsing
by Steve Mintz
Controversies about recent books about the history and legacy of colonialism raise questions about what it means to assign – or refuse to – a book for students to read, discuss, and potentially critique, and how provocation works in the liberal model of inquiry.
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SOURCE: Matter of Fact
2/19/2023
Adam Laats Connects Current Course and Book Controversies to Past School Wars
The education historian joins Soledad O'Brien to discuss past controversies over how the past is taught.
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SOURCE: The Root
2/15/2023
New Jersey Announces Increased Adoption of AP African American Studies
Governor Phil Murphy announced that the course will appear in 26 high schools (instead of the current 1), but the move is largely symbolic because of changes made to the course and the tiny percentage of the state's schools adopting the course.
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SOURCE: African American Policy Forum
2/12/2023
African American Policy Forum Announces #TruthBeTold Campaign
The AAPF is launching an interactive project to monitor efforts to ban books, censor classes, and punish teachers, and to offer reader the opportunity to share their valued experiences with antiracist education.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
2/14/2023
HBCUs and the 1950s Red Scare
by Candace Cunningham
South Carolina officials were able to use the purse strings to coerce public HBCU administrators to expel student activists. When private HBCUs became centers of sit-in organizing, state legislators turned to accusations of Communism.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/9/2023
Documents Show Extensive Contact Between Florida Officials and College Board over Past Year
The revelation, first made by the right-wing Daily Caller but confirmed by the Florida Department of Education, calls into question the College Board's claims that it was not influenced by pressure from Florida officials. Scholars question the College Board's commitment to academic integrity.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/3/2023
Will Midwest Governors Challenge Florida's Conservative Education Agenda?
Governors J.B. Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer are hardly beacons of "wokeness" – but they may be key advocates of a political message to parents and teachers that their party will protect the freedom to learn.
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2/6/2023
Historians Mobilize to Fight Back Against Right-Wing Attacks
by Margaret Power
Historians for Peace and Democracy condemns recent legislation restricting the content of history classes and libraries and censoring the freedom to teach and learn about racism and LGBTQ history. The group urges college faculty to join with their local K-12 educators and librarians.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/25/2023
Florida's AP Fight Latest Battle in a Very Old Education War
by Bethany Bell
The state's rejection of the proposed curriculum as "indoctrination" stands on the foundation laid by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to establish the Lost Cause myth as the center of history education in the South for generations.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
1/30/2023
On Florida's Erasure of Black History
by Lynn Pasquerella and Mary Dana Hinton
The Florida AP decision raises a host of troubling questions about what the state hopes to accomplish, with ominous implications for political enfranchisement, democratic deliberation, and civic connection.
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SOURCE: Richmond Times-Dispatch
1/31/2023
Beneath the Surface of Virginia's History Standards
by Edward L. Ayers
Virginia's Department of Education has ignored the guidance of historians and educators in revising the state's K-12 history standards. The example of how political appointees treated the role of African Americans in driving the movement for abolition is a telling example of the inadequate history they want to teach.
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