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Before Twitter banned thenPresident Donald Trump in response to the January 6 Capitol riot, the platform tried to police his false claims about election fraud by attaching warning labels or blocking engagement with them. A new study suggests those efforts were ineffective at preventing the spread of Trump's claims and may even have backfired by drawing additional attention to messages that Twitter deemed problematic.

Those findings highlight the limits of content moderation policies aimed at controlling misinformation and, more generally, the futility of responding to lies by trying to suppress them. But the researchers think their results demonstrate the need to control online speech "at an ecosystem level," with an assist from the federal government.

The study, published today in Harvard'sMisinformation Review, looked at Trump tweets posted from November 1, 2020, through January 8, 2021, that Twitter flagged for violating its policy against election-related misinformation. Zeve Sanderson and four other New York University social media researchers found that tweets with warning labels "spread further and longer than unlabeled tweets." And while blocking engagement with messages was effective at limiting their spread on Twitter, those messages "were posted more often and received more visibility on other popular platforms than messages that were labeled by Twitter or that received no intervention at all."

Sanderson et al. caution that these correlations do not necessarily mean that Twitter's interventions boosted exposure to Trump's claims, since the explanation could be that "Twitter intervened on posts that were more likely to spread." But the results are at least consistent with the possibility that flagging tweets or blocking engagement with them added to their allure. Either way, those measures demonstrably did not stop Trump from promoting his fantasy of a stolen election.

The problem, as Sanderson and his colleagues see it, is insufficient cooperation across platforms. They suggest the government should do more to overcome that problem.

"Taken together, these findings introduce compelling new evidence for the limited impact of one platform's interventions on the cross-platform diffusion of misinformation, emphasizing the need to consider content moderation at an ecosystem level," the researchers write. "For state actors, legislative or regulatory actions focused on a narrow band of platforms may fail to curb the broader spread of misinformation. Alarmingly, YouTube has been largely absent from recent Congressional hearingsas well as from academic and journalistic workeven though the platform is broadly popular and served as a vector of election misinformation."

Just to be clear: Sanderson and his colleagues don't think it is "alarming" when the federal government pressures social media companies to suppress speech it considers dangerous. The alarming thing, as far as they are concerned, is that the pressure, including "legislative or regulatory actions" as well as congressional hearings, is not applied more broadly.

"Political actors seeking to advance a narrative online are not limited to working within a single platform," study coauthor Joshua Tucker complainsin an interview with USA Today. "People who are trying to control information environments and who are trying to push political information environments are in a multiplatform world. Right now, the only way we have to deal with content is on a platform-by-platform basis."

Megan Brown, another coauthor, suggests that the problem could be remedied if social media platforms reached an agreement about which kinds of speech are acceptable. "Misinformation halted on one platform does not halt it on another," she observes. "In the future, especially with respect to the ongoing pandemic and the 2022 midterms coming up, it will be really important for the platforms to coordinate in some way, if they can, to halt the spread of misinformation."

And what if they can'tor, more to the point, won't? Given the emergence of multiple social media platforms whose main attraction is their laissez-faire approach to content moderation, this scenario seems pretty unlikely. It would require coercion by a central authority, which would be plainly inconsistent with the First Amendment. And even government-mandated censorship would not "halt the spread of misinformation." As dictators across the world and throughout history have discovered, misinformation (or speech they place in that category) wants to be free, and it will find a way.

This crusade to "halt the spread of misinformation" should trouble anyone who values free speech and open debate. The problem of deciding what counts as misinformation is not an inconvenience that can be overcome by collaboration. Trump's claim that Joe Biden stole the presidential election may seem like an easy call. Likewise anti-vaccine warnings about microchips, infertility, and deadly side effects. But even statements that are not demonstrably false may be deemed dangerously misleading, or not, depending on the censor's perspective.

The Biden administration's definition of intolerable COVID-19 misinformation, for example, clearly extends beyond statements that are verifiably wrong. "Claims can be highly misleading and harmful even if the science on an issue isn't yet settled," says Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who urges a "whole-of-society" effort, possibly encouraged by "legal and regulatory measures," to combat the "urgent threat to public health" posed by "health misinformation." Given the many ways that the federal government can make life difficult for social media companies, they have a strong incentive to cast a net wide enough to cover whatever speech the administration considers "misleading," "harmful," or unhelpful.

Meanwhile, the companies that refuse to play ball will continue to offer alternatives for people banished from mainstream platforms, as the NYU study demonstrates. Leaving aside the question of whether interventions like Twitter's perversely promote the speech they target, they certainly reinforce the conviction that the government and its collaborators are trying to hide inconvenient truths. They also drive people with mistaken beliefs further into echo chambers where their statements are less likely to be challenged. The alternativerebutting false claims by citing countervailing evidencemay rarely be successful. But at least it offers a chance of persuading people, which is how arguments are supposed to be resolved in a free society.

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Since Platform-by-Platform Censorship Doesn't Work, These Researchers Think, the Government Should Help 'Halt the Spread of Misinformation' - Reason

At a glance.

The UK hopes to walk a tightrope of easing GDPR requirements that stifle innovation and offend common sense without falling afoul of the existing EU-UK data transfer agreement, the Wall Street Journal reports. If successful, the changes are expected to benefit British business, science, and technology. If the European Commission decides the revisions stray too far from EU standards, however, London will need to muddle through developing another data agreement, and organizations may face more complex compliance burdens. The UK is simultaneously hammering out data-transfer arrangements with Washington, Canberra, and eight other nations.

The Guardian spotlights users impatience with hallmark GDPR irritating cookie popups. England will present a test case, the piece says, for how much wiggle room the framework allows, and what diverse shapes data protection can take. Now that we have left the EU Im determined to seize the opportunity by developing a world-leading data policy, commented Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden.

The Record details the effects of Havanas new cybersecurity laws. In addition to establishing an Institute of Information and Social Communication, the legislation requires network providers to deploy gear that can monitor traffic, stop and report cybersecurity incidents, and block the transmission of false information. Cybersecurity incidents are defined to include criticisms of the regime. The laws also bind independent networks and ban unauthorized network equipment. The Record sees more Internet shutdowns along with a national firewall in Cubas future.

The New York Times traces the contours of Beijings trend towards Moscow-style hacking operations. As weve seen, the CCPs pivot to Ministry of State Security (MSS) sponsored cyber operations has correlated with increases in both sophistication and brashness. MSS recruits from universities, the private sector, and cyber tournaments, and looks the other way when the talent mingles crime and espionage. The current setup can be sloppy, with readily traceable online tracks, but onlookers fear Chinas cyber game will only improve in coming years.

Link:
Post-Brexit privacy moves away from GDPR. Havana tightens online censorship. Beijing's cyber contractors and their APT side-hustles. - The CyberWire

The communications system we live in is highly complex, mostly driven by greed and profit, in part semi-public, full of filth I know wed be better off without, and increasingly openly censored and monitored by defenders of accepted good thinking.

Fascist nutcases are spreading dangerous nonsense, while billionaire monopolists are virtually disappearing critics and protesters. Its easy to get confused about what ought to be done. Its difficult to find any recommendation that isnt confused. Different people want different outrages censored and censored by different entities; what they all have in common is a failure to think through the threats they are creating to the things they dont want censored.

A 1975 Canadian government commission recommended censoring libel, obscenity, breach of the Official Secrets Act, matters affecting the defense of Canada, treason, sedition, or promulgating information that leads to incitement of crime or violence. This is a typical muddle. Half of those things were almost certainly already banned, as suggested by their identification through legal terminology. A few of those things probably should be banned, such as incitement of violence (though not promulgating information that leads to incitement of any crime or violence). Of course I would include as incitement of violence a speech by the Prime Minister advocating the shipping of Canadian Peace Keepers to Africa, but the Prime Minister (who would have more say than I) would no doubt have just identified me as commenting on a matter affecting the defense of Canada plus, if he or she were in the mood, Ive probably just promulgated something that will lead to inciting some crime or other, even if its just the crime of more people speaking on matters affecting the defense of Canada. (And it shouldnt matter that Im not Canadian, since Julian Assange is not from the United States.)

Well, whats the solution? A simplistic and surprisingly popular one is to blame philosophers. Those idiot postmodernists said there was no such thing as truth, which allowed that great student of philosophy Donald Trump to declare news about him fake which he never could have thought of doing without a bunch of leftist academics inspiring him; and the endless blatant lies about wars and economies and environmental collapse and straight-faced reporting of campaign promises cant have anything at all to do with the ease people have in distrusting news reporting. So, now we need to swing the pendulum back in the direction of tattooing the Ten Commandments on our foreheads before morality perishes at the hands of the monster relativism. We cant do that without censoring the numbskulls, regrettably of course.

This line of thinking is dependent on failing to appreciate the point of postmodern criticism. That the greater level of consensus that exists on chemistry or physics as opposed to on what should be banned as obscenity is a matter of degree, not of essential or metaphysical substance, is an interesting point for philosophy students, and a correct one, but not a guide to life for politicians or school teachers. That there is no possible basis for declaring some law of physics permanent and incapable of being replaced by a better one is not a reason for treating a law of physics as a matter of opinion or susceptible to alteration via fairy dust. If Isaac Newton not being God, and God also not being God, disturbs you and youre mad at philosophers for saying it, you should notice what follows from it: the need for everyone to support your right to try to persuade them of their error. And what does not follow from it: the elimination of chemistry or physics because some nitwit claims he can fly or kill a hurricane with his gun. If that idiot has 100,000 followers on social media, your concern is not with philosophy but with stupidity.

The tech-giant censors concern is in part also with stupidity, but its not clear they have the tools to address it. For one thing, they just cannot help themselves. They have other concerns too. They are concerned with their profits. They are concerned with any challenges to power their power and the power of those who empower them. They are concerned, therefore, with the demands and national bigotry of national governments. They are concerned whether they know it or not with creative thinking. Every time they censor an idea they believe crazy, they risk censoring one of those ideas that proves superior to existing ones. Their combination of interests appears to be self-defeating. Rather than persuade people of the benefits of their censorship, they persuade more and more people of the rightness of what was censored and of the arbitrary power-interests of those doing the censoring.

Our problem is not too many voices on the internet. It is too much concentration of wealth and power in too few media outlets that are too narrowly restricted to too few voices, relegating other voices to marginal and ghettoized corners of the internet. Nobody gets to find out theyre mistaken through respectful discourse. Nobody gets to show someone else theyre right. We need to prioritize that sort of exchange, before a flood of misguided good intentions drowns us all.

The promulgating information that leads to incitement of crime or violence bit of that proposed law seems to have had a surprisingly good intention, namely benevolent parental concern with all the action-filled (violence-filled) childrens entertainment on television, the violence-normalizing enter/info-tainment programming for all ages that studies and commonsense suggest increase violence. But can we ban all that garbage, or do we have to empower people who actually give a damn to produce and select programming, and empower families to turn it all off, and schools to be more engaging than cartoons?

The difficulty of censoring such content should be clear from the fact that discussions of it tend to stray into numerous unrelated topics, including the supposed need to censor wars for the protection of, not children, but weapons dealers. Once you allow a corporation to censor damaging news poof! there go all negative reports on its products. Once you tell it to put warning labels over recommendations to drink bleach as medicine, it starts putting warning labels on anything related to climate collapse or originating outside the United States of Goddamn Righteousness. You can imagine whether that ends up helping or hurting the supposed target, stupidity.

Censoring news, and labeling news as factual, seems to me a cheap fix that doesnt fix. Its a bit like legalizing bribery and gerrymandering and limited ballot access and corporate airwaves domination and then declaring that youll institute term limits so that every rotten candidate has to be quickly replaced by an even more rotten one. Its a lovely sounding solution until you try it. Look at the fact-checker sections of corporate media outlets. Theyre as wrong and inconsistent as any other sections; theyre just labeled differently.

The solutions that will work are not easy, and Im no expert on them, but theyre not new or mysterious either. We should democratize and legitimize government. We should use government to break up media monopolies. We should publicly and privately facilitate and support numerous independent media outlets. We should invest in publicly funded but independent media dedicated to allowing a wide range of people to discuss issues without the overarching control of the profit interest or the immediate interests of the government.

We should not be simplistic about banning or allowing censorship, but highly wary of opening up any new types of censorship and imagining they wont be abused. We should stick to what is already illegal outside of communications (such as violence) and censor communications only when it is actually directly a part of those crimes (such as instigating particular violence). We should be open to some limits on the forces empowered by our choice through our public dollars to shape our communications; Id be happy to ban militaries from having any role in producing movies and video games (if theyre going to bomb children in the name of democracy, well, then, thats my vote for the use of my dollars).

At the same time, we need through schools and outside of them radically better education that includes education in the skills of media consumption, BS-spotting, propaganda deciphering, fact-verification, respect, civility, decency, and honesty. I hardly think its entirely the fault of youtube that kids get less of their education from their classrooms part of the fault lies with the classrooms. But I hardly think the eternal project of learning, and of learning how to learn, can be restricted to classrooms.

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Which Is Worse, the Tech Giant Censors or the Stuff You Want Censored? - PRESSENZA International News Agency

Nostalgia is not a new phenomenon in the horror world, and it's not going away anytime soon. Whether we're talking about the genre's ongoing love affair with '80s throwbacks or the increasing number offilms influenced by the '90s, it's easy to see why the appeal of going retro with scary stories has such a grip on us, and I'm not just talking about using the past to erase the plot inconvenience of cell phones. For the right audience, that little warm ache that comes with nostalgia calls to mind a time in our lives when we were perhaps more innocent, more vulnerable, even easier to scare. Put us in that frame of mind, then hit us with the horror, and you've got a recipe for midnight movies that are both spooky and warm and fuzzy.

But there's more to nostalgia in horror than just using the right needle drops and wardrobe choices to pull us back into another time and place. When it's properly wielded, it's not just a charming piece of the background or a way to riff on a classic plot. In the right hands, nostalgia becomes a powerful tool for examination, picking apart not just the horror storytelling of the era in which the story is set, but our own preconceptions about that era. A good nostalgic horror film reminds us of what came before and makes us question it, while also questioning where we are now, as horror fans and as moviegoers.

We're living in a golden age of good nostalgia horror at the moment, whether we're talking about the genre mash-ups of the Fear Street trilogy or the meta deep dive of The Final Girls, but if you're looking for films that scratch that nostalgia itch while also sending a particularly icy chill down your spine, I've got a new double feature for you. It begins in the 1980s with Censor, then leaps into the 1990s with The Last Matinee, both films arriving in front of American audiences this year, and both films that pack serious style, stakes, and narrative smarts into their respective brands of retro horror.

So, what makes them effective? For one thing, both films have their own very specific perspective on the horror viewing experience. Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, Censor takes place in the United Kingdom amid the video nasty panic (when censors were cutting apart and banning gory horror films left and right) of the 1980s, and follows a particular effective film censor (played with icy fire by Niamh Algar) as she begins to unravel after an unsettling recent viewing experience rekindles past traumas. The Last Matinee, directed by Maxi Contenti, moves its action from censor screening rooms and dingy video stores to a fading movie palace in Uruguay in the early 1990s, and follows a small group of characters as they watch (or talk through, as the case may be) a horror film even as they're living out one of their own, thanks to a hooded killer in their midst.

It might seem a small thing, but the attention to detail pulsing through both Bailey-Bond and Contenti's films means that by setting their respective stories in settings directly tied to the act of watching a horror movie, they've invited us to interrogate our own past horror experiences. For me, Censor called to mind not just what it was like to comb my local video store as a teenager, searching for the most gruesome slasher film on the shelves, but what it was like to take that movie home and slide it past disapproving parents. The Last Matinee took me not just to the cool darkness of movie theaters, but to very specific theatrical experiences in rundown auditoriums where the audience was either glued to the screen or completely disinterested in the film itself. If you've ever watched a movie in a theater with only a half dozen other people and felt like you could sense the conflicting energies of every single one of them, then you know the kind of atmosphere this film evokes.

But of course, these are just the setups, the laying of the table for the meal to come, and in both Censor and The Last Matinee, the meal comes with style to spare. Like its title character, Censor spends much of its runtime in reserved, patient contemplation, slowly sliding pieces into place with the practiced, deft hands of a horror scholar building out a thesis not just on the rise of splatter films in '80s horror, but on the prudish response to it. It's a restraint so delicate that you know it can only hold on for so long before it unleashes, and when Censor finally lets it all go, it's devastating. The Last Matinee, on the other hand, goes full-tilt operatic almost right away. There's a reason you can see Dario Argento posters in background shots. This is an homage not just to the most stylish slashers of the 1980s, but to the most brutal giallo films of the 1970s. There are gore shots in this film, which I wouldn't dare spoil here, beautiful enough to make Argento himself weep.

There's a third key ingredient to each of these films, though, that pushes them out beyond stories that simply evoke an effective rush of nostalgia, and that's a thematic resonance that makes the retro appeal linger beyond the style and setting.

Censor is about the ways in which one woman begins to come undone after her job gets under her skin, yes, but it's also about our relationship to screen violence, both individually and in a broader, cultural sense. It's an exploration not just of the video nasty panic's skewed sense of morality and reason, but of our own existential fears about what effective art might do to us, that voice lurking in the back of our minds going "What if our parents were right and this really will mess us up?"

The Last Matinee's own thematic concerns are perhaps a bit more ambiguous, though that feels more like a product of deliberate filmmaking than a missed opportunity. It's hard to dig too deep into what that means without spoiling the whole film for you, but by its very nature making a horror movie about someone who murders people while they watch a horror movie opens up some very interesting doors in terms of our relationship to scary stories and the voyeuristic aspect of violence on a screen.

Censor and The Last Matinee are, in many ways, very different films, beholden to different kinds of nostalgic aesthetics and concerns, but in the end, they both had the same effect on me because they are both, in some form, about the transgressive nature of the horror genre. Each reminded me what it felt like to be a young horror fan, searching for the limits of my local video store, whispering to my friends about how far these films might take me into realms that the adults in my life might not want me to go. With a couple of decades of scary movies under my belt now, that's a hard feeling to recapture, but the part of me that still relishes the idea of existing in an outsider fandom still chases it, and these films gave it back to me, each in their own way.

Censor is now available on VOD. The Last Matinee arrives on VOD on Aug. 24.

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'The Last Matinee,' 'Censor,' and the power of retro horror done right - SYFY WIRE

Its an attack on the teaching of Black history, womens history, and history around being impoverished in this country anything that will challenge the current status quo.

Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead, associate professor of women and gender studies at Loyola University and president of the National Womens Studies Association

In late 2020, the Idaho Freedom Foundation released two reports condemning college administrators and faculty at the University of Idaho and Boise State for promoting social justice ideology in higher education.

Using red, yellow and green color-coding, the reports labeled academic departments as indoctrination majors, social justice in training majors, and the foundations preferred professional majors depending on how much they emphasized social justice. The list of indoctrination majors included womens, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS), Africana Studies and Latin American Studies.

Not long after, Idaho enacted a ban on teaching critical race theory (CRT) in public schools and universities in the state.

CRT is a legal framework developed in the 1970s and 1980s to examine the ongoing effects of slavery and how racism has shaped U.S. laws and institutions. But Idaho lawmakers used the phrase to refer to discussions of racism, sexism and social justice issues in the classroom. After the Idaho legislature passed the ban on CRT, the lieutenant governor created a task force to review university programs and faculty syllabi for banned content.

Its a pretty intimidating environment for teaching, said Leontina Hormel, a sociology professor and former director of the WGSS program at the University of Idaho. Theyve really created a hostile environment for open thinking.

The current WGSS co-director and English professor Alexandra Teague told Ms., Ive heard a lot of conversations among faculty who are concerned about whether there will be ramifications for their teaching or whether they need to rethink what classes are titled in order to reduce scrutiny on them.

The Idaho ban is part of a conservative wave of bans on discussing social justice issues in American schools and workplaces.

Shortly after condemning CRT on Twitter in September of 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting diversity and inclusion training for federal workers and contractors.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund challenged the equity gag order, describing it as having a chilling effect on free speech and the dissemination of truthful information about systemic and structural inequalities, which undermines workplace equality for people of color, women, and LGBTQ individuals.

On his first day in office, Biden revoked Trumps order, but U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) have introduced in Congress a billcalled the END CRT Actto reinstate the ban.

Meanwhile, conservative states are banning CRT in public schools and universities. In the first six months of 2021, 26 states have tried to limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism in their classrooms, according to an Education Week analysis. These bills often use the exact language of the Trump executive order.

Nine states so far have enacted these bans. Rhode Island, for example, banned teaching of divisive concepts that might make students feel uncomfortable based on their race or sex, and a new Ohio law bans teaching about unconscious bias. A North Carolina law prohibits public schools from teaching Nikole Hannah-Jones 1619 Project, a New York Times series about the ongoing impact of slavery and racism on American society.

At the federal level, Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) has introduced the Saving American History Act to ban federally funded schools from teaching the 1619 Project. These anti-CRT laws restrict how educators can teach social justice issues.

According to Media Matters, Fox News mentioned the phrase critical race theory nearly 1,300 times between February and May of 2021. This coverage characterized CRT as an unpatriotic and divisive form of indoctrination that perpetuates racism against white people.

Smith College professor Loretta Ross argues that while conservative commentators and lawmakers bemoan cancel culture and the supposed liberal threats to free speech on campus, they are at the same time trying to shut down discussions about inequality and injustice in American society.

The Republicans falsely claim that the purpose of critical race theory is to teach people of color to hate white people. They believe that white people are the real victims of reverse racism, said Ross. The attack on critical race theory says we should only teach patriotic education. In other words, only white history should be taught.

Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead, associate professor of WGSS at Loyola University and president of the National Womens Studies Association, says CRT has become a catchphrase for any discussion of how race, class and gender function in society.

I think people confuse critical race theory with culturally responsive teaching. Both of them are CRTs, said Whitehead.

A lot of teachers are being penalizedlosing their jobs or experiencing other punitive action for these types of dialogues, said Jalaya Liles-Dunn, director of learning for justice at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center has received multiple reports of teachers punished for teaching their students about racial injustice, says Liles-Dunn.

Even before the Florida State Board of Education banned critical race theory in public schools state officials were scrutinizing teachers who addressed race in their classrooms. In May, the Florida Department of Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran fired Duval County teacher Any Donofrio for discussing Black Lives Matter in her classes. In early June, the Sullivan County Board of Education in Florida voted to dismiss social studies teacher Matthew Hawn after he led a class discussion on white privilege.

This is censorship, said Liles-Dunn. Its no different than any other dictatorship that is trying to censor a population from knowing the truth so that they can maintain power.

While some anti-CRT laws apply only to K-12 schools, several apply to public universities as well, including in Idaho, Oklahoma and Iowa. In Oklahoma, after politicians passed a law in May banning teachers from making students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex, Oklahoma City Community College canceled Professor Melissa Smiths fully-enrolled course on race and ethnicity because of concerns the class ran afoul of the law.

Our history of the United States is uncomfortable and it should make us uncomfortable and we should grow from that, Smith told the Washington Post. And I tell my kids all the time, get comfortable being uncomfortable. And if I dont make you uncomfortable in class, then Im not doing my job.

Whitehead is concerned about the impact of anti-CRT laws on the ability of educators to teach students to think critically about the world.

This attack on critical race theory has gone beyond a black and white issue with the law. They brought gender into this, and now they are also bringing in poverty, said Whitehead. Its really an attack on the teaching of Black history, womens history, and history around being impoverished in this country. They dont want us to critically engage with anything that will challenge the current status quo.

Another impact of anti-CRT laws is they can further encourage harassment experienced by faculty who teach racial and gender justice courses.

I have two people who stalk my email, said Professor Katie Blevins, a WGSS co-director at the University of Idaho. I have never met these people. They send me deeply disturbing messages a couple of times a weekyou know, incredibly graphic emails. Its disconcerting as a junior female faculty member.

Whitehead worries that anti-CRT laws will negatively impact WGSS departments, where teaching about racial and gender justice is central to the curriculum.

It is a concern because we talk about the way in which women are abused in this countryphysically abused, emotionally and mentally abused, financially abused, said Whitehead. We talk about the wage gap and the subservient position of women.

Many WGSS programs teach the work of Kimberl Crenshaw, a founder of critical race theory who also coined the term intersectionality for analyzing how race and gender intersect in the lives of Black women. Laws banning CRT could put WGSS faculty and programs in the crosshairs of government officials seeking to enforce them, says Whitehead.

CRT-bans in K-12 schools have prompted teacher protests across the nation. The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have pledged to resist the bans. They passed several measures that explicitly support the use of CRT in curricula, and allocated tens of thousands of dollars to those efforts.

Culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history, said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. The backlash [to teaching about race] that you see in these radicalized circles is going to hurt kids.

The African American Policy Forum, BLM at Schools and Zinn Education Project has issued a national call to educators to hold eventsAugust 26-28th to pledge to teach the truth. They have developed a toolkit and are organizing to prepare educators in the impacted states for civil disobedience on October 14thGeorge Floyds Birthday.

University professors are also speaking out against laws limiting discussions of racism and sexism, arguing that these laws infringe academic freedom and open inquiry on university campuses. In June, over 135 scholarly associations issued a joint statement condemning state laws that seek to substitute political mandates for the considered judgment of professional educators, hindering students ability to learn and engage in critical thinking.

Despite efforts to shut down discussions of racism and sexism, Teague says students are more eager than ever to have these discussions.

The students Ive talked to are the most impassioned about the value of having very open discussions, about the value of critical thinking, about the value of the humanities, said Teague. At the end of the semester, her students told her how much it mattered to them to hear voices that were not like their own, how much they were learning about themselves and others, and how crucial that was in a world that so often gets reduced to sound-bite thinking and binaries.

Just at the point when confederate monuments are finally coming down, conservative politicians are trying to erect barriers to students learning accurate and inclusive history of the United States to the detriment of young people, says Liles-Dunn. Education should not be the battlefield for political issues and political agendas. We are using our most vulnerable and our most precious as bait in this fight and its not okay.

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Critical Race Theory Bans Target Feminist Professors: "This Is Censorship" - Ms. Magazine