Growing number of bills undermining the freedom to learn

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Dear Friend,

Today PEN America released a report on an alarming trend mounting across the country to impose legislative limitations on teaching and learning on topics including race, gender, and American history. In the first nine months of 2021, 24 state legislatures introduced 54 bills that would restrict teaching and training in K-12 schools, public colleges and universities, and/or state agencies and institutions. Eleven of those bills have become laws in nine states. These bills reflect raging debates underway in communities across the country that came to a head during last week’s gubernatorial election in Virginia and are dominating discussions in school boards and faculty lounges nationwide.
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This legislative wave followed the mass protests that swept the United States in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and the reckonings initiated to come to grips with the lingering legacy of racial injustice. Efforts to delve into and more thoroughly address the role that slavery, race, and racism play in American society implicate complex questions relating to history, politics, and human relations. Rather than engaging in reasoned debate on these critical issues, the bills and laws documented in our report seek to shut down discourse through legislative fiat. We label these measures “educational gag orders,” a reflection of their censorious effect that imposes viewpoint-based constrictions on what can be discussed in American classrooms. PEN America calls on all those who believe in free speech to oppose these efforts to silence discussion and debate through force of law.

Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach ([link removed]) examines these bills in depth. Many would punish educators, colleges, schools, and districts that dare to cover excluded topics. The report documents how these bills and laws have already had a chilling effect on campuses and in classrooms across the country, on both open discourse and academic freedom, and risk further muzzling vital societal discourse on racism, sexism, and the complexities of American history.
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We encourage you to read the report, as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, professor, and PEN America Trustee Greg Pardlo’s accompanying essay, “Notes on Critical Race Theory,” in which he describes the effort behind these bills “a not-so-veiled attack on academic freedom and free speech broadly," [that] stigmatizes all inquiry around the lived experience of identity and difference."

Join us on Friday, November 19 for Educational Gag Orders: A Virtual Roundtable ([link removed]) , featuring a diverse range of experts who have been tracking these developments. They will react to the report and the concerning issues it raises related to free speech and academic freedom. PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel will be joined by Sumi Cho, David French, James Grossman, Mike Hixenbaugh, Randall Kennedy, and Ashley Hope Pérez. Learn more and register here. ([link removed])

Not only do these intrusive bills censor entire subject areas and aim to deter teachers from engaging in important discussions—they also deprive students of opportunities to ask questions, learn, and grow. These bills could be interpreted to prohibit teachers from citing civil rights leaders, discussing slavery, women’s suffrage, or the gay rights movement, or sharing factual information on events like the Tulsa Race Massacre or the Trail of Tears. We need students and teachers to be able to learn, teach, and debate American history openly, without fear of censorship or punishment.

We hope you’ll read the report, share our findings with your communities, and join us in calling on legislators to withdraw and repeal these bills. ([link removed])

Sincerely,
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Jonathan Friedman
Director, Free Expression and Education
PEN America

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James Tager
Director, Research
PEN America

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