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jilv - Jewish Institute for Liberal Values

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(EP17) 9/8/23- Pushing Back Against "Critical Zionist Studies"

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(The Center Square) - California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond hosted an online seminar featuring a series of speakers, including California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber, to discuss the importance of establishing an ethnic studies curriculum.

"Ethnic studies is truly a transformational experience where people get balanced truth, and it gives students a sense of who they are and who their peers are," said Weber, who also founded the Africana Studies Department at San Diego State University. "I am a strong advocate for ethnic studies curriculum - and there's a reason people don't want to discuss it-but we must insist that we not only discuss it, but that they teach it to our children, and they teach the correct information."

AB 101, which was passed in 2021 and sponsored by Thurmond, requires that California public high schools offer ethnic studies courses by the 2025-2026 school year, and that a one-semester long ethnic studies course must be taken to graduate by the 2029-2030 school year. A California Senate report from 2021 estimated AB 101 will cost an inflation-adjusted $374 million per year, or at least $3.8 billion in its first 10 years.

California's ethnic studies program remains a highly contentious topic, with the first draft of the state model curriculum generating over 100,000 negative comments from parents and other stakeholders in the education system, according to the Hoover Institute. In this first draft, the opening paragraph drew significant attention, and said, "Ethnic Studies courses operate from the consideration that race and racism have been, and continue to be, profoundly powerful social and cultural forces in American society. These courses focus on the experiences of African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanas/os and Latinas/os, Native Americans, and other racialized peoples in the US."

In the second, updated draft called "Liberated Ethnic Studies," the introduction included the statement that "protesters direct their anger at buildings that represent a political system that continues to dehumanize Black bodies by placing more interest in buildings and corporations than in equity and social justice. ... It is time for educators to focus institutional reform efforts on the interests of Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) youth disenfranchised by racist policies and suffering from unresponsive educational systems."

When Salinas Union High School district adopted the Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum, roughly half the district's majority-Hispanic students were failing the course, which included a "privilege quiz" that required students to rank themselves based on their level of marginalization.

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California hosts statewide seminar pushing $4 billion ethnic studies curriculum

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(The Center Square) - California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond hosted an online seminar featuring a series of speakers, including California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber, to discuss the importance

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(Don Boomer / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The Carlsbad Unified school board approved the district's first-ever ethnic studies class last week, but not without removing mentions of institutional racism and "white Eurocentric dominant culture" from the course description after several people complained about them.

The conflict in Carlsbad Unified, a suburban North County district with about 11,000 students, is yet another battle brewing over how schools are teaching kids about race and racial inequality.

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Starting in 2025, all California high school students will have to take an ethnic studies class to graduate. As school districts create new courses to meet that requirement, parents, students, politicians, teachers and interest groups are fighting over what such courses should look like and how concepts and histories of race and ethnicity should be taught, leading to clashes like the one that erupted in Carlsbad.

Carlsbad High School teachers created a film ethnic studies course as part of a number of new offerings for freshmen who would enroll in the school's Film Academy, district officials said.

The intention is for students to scrutinize stereotypes and cultural appropriation in film, efforts to overcome that racism and the emergence of new voices in film as a result, said Robert Nye, Carlsbad's assistant superintendent for instructional services, at a board meeting Wednesday.

(Don Boomer / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

According to the original course materials, students will examine films that portray Black, Latino, Native American and Asian American people, ranging from "The Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind" to Spike Lee's work and recent movies like "In the Heights" and "Crazy Rich Asians."

But when the course was first placed on the school board consent agenda for approval at a meeting last month, several community members urged the board to reject it.

Many of them took issue with the course description's mention of institutional racism and White supremacy. The description had listed "essential questions" for students to answer, such as: "How did Hollywood studios use African Americans (sic) stereotypes in the film industry to establish and sustain the white Eurocentric dominant culture in America?" Another question asked, "What contributions to the film industry did African Americans make in spite of institutional racism?"

Critics dispute the existence of institutional racism or a White-dominant culture and consider them to be political theories, rather than established facts.

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Board trustee Elisa Williamson said at February's meeting that the course description should instead pose questions in a more open-ended manner that does not rest on the existence of institutional racism as a fact.

"I would ask that those be looked at very carefully as well to make sure that, if it's a theory, that it be asked as a theory ... rather than having students be placed in a position of needing to answer a question that they don't believe is accurate," Williamson said.

Nye has noted that in accordance with district policy, Carlsbad's classes are designed to encourage critical thinking on controversial issues and have students make their own conclusions, rather than telling them what to believe.

"When we walk into classrooms, what we want to see teachers encouraging are those critical thinking skills," Nye told the board Wednesday. "We see that every day with our teachers."

(Don Boomer / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Multiple parties have recruited parents and locals to give public comments to the Carlsbad board for or against the course.

One was Carlsbad City Councilmember Priya Bhat-Patel, who in a late February email blast asked parents to give public comments at the school board's next meeting to express support for the course. She labeled its critics "extremists taking over our school boards" and said heeding their demands would yield a watered-down course that "ignores what really happened to marginalized people."

"As a person of color and a local elected official, I am greatly concerned about the importation of far-right ideals that teach our kids a false, rose-tinted history," she wrote. "To see this extremism be utilized to strip down an engaging, 21st century class is a reminder that the work to find true acceptance is never complete."

On the other side is the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, a 3-year-old San Diego-based group that has been helping community members organize against school districts' ethnic studies and racial equity efforts it argues divide people based on their race. In recent months it has also become involved in opposing ethnic studies in Poway Unified, encouraging Ramona Unified's review of social studies materials and complaining about books focused on race and gender in Oceanside Unified.

In an email to supporters last month, the group's president, Frank Xu, condemned the Carlsbad course as divisive "woke" propaganda, calling it "more concerned with Marxist concepts" of struggle and oppression than with appreciating ethnic groups' cultures and contributions.

Another group that worked with the foundation and rallied people to oppose the course is a Carlsbad group of parents that fought to reopen schools in the early days of the pandemic.

As of this month, the group has renamed itself the Carlsbad Education Alliance. Its mission now is to get transparency and accountability from the district for parents and to increase the focus on academic performance, said Scott Davison, its director. Davison, a district parent who helped Let Them Breathe fight school mask mandates in court, ran unsuccessfully for the Carlsbad school board last year.

Davison said ethnic studies should be about telling "positive, affirmative stories" and understanding other people's cultures - not about "why you should blame White people for creating a racist country."

Ethnic studies educators say talking about institutional racism is not about blaming individual people but rather is about analyzing the ways in which people of color, as a whole, are disadvantaged in nearly every aspect of society, from housing to health to education.

At the February meeting, a divided board voted to return the course to district staff for editing.

On Wednesday, district staff brought back a revised course description. They changed "white Eurocentric dominant culture" to "dominant culture." The question "What contributions to the film industry did African Americans make in spite of institutional racism?" was changed to read "What early contributions to the film industry were made by African Americans?"

"One of the things we took away from Feb. 15 was a desire that some of the central questions be worded in a more open-ended manner," said Superintendent Benjamin Churchill.

The revisions were enough to satisfy all five board members, who voted unanimously to approve the new description.

The description still mentions references to systemic racism that are quoted from California's model ethnic studies curriculum, which is an optional but recommended guide for districts who are developing ethnic studies courses.

When Carlsbad trustee Gretchen Vurbeff questioned those references, Nye said the class itself won't use the term, and the references are there just to show the class aligns with the state's model curriculum.

"We're not using those terms 'systemic racism' in the course that we're teaching," Nye said.

Ethnic studies educators have said that discussions of systemic racism are integral to what they teach.

According to California's model curriculum, one of the goals of ethnic studies is to "critique empire building in history and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, and other forms of power and oppression."

In addition to celebrating the successes and cultures of people of color, the model curriculum accepts institutional racism as reality and says ethnic studies should "connect ourselves to past and contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice and ... build new possibilities for a post-racist, post-systemic-racism society."

(Don Boomer / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Professor Alberto Pulido, who chairs the ethnic studies department at the University of San Diego, said complaints like those lodged against Carlsbad's film ethnic studies class are unfortunate and a reaction to White people losing the majority in many communities as they grow more diverse.

"It's sad that people are afraid of that, because it comes down to the truth," Pulido said.

Pulido said institutional racism can't be denied as a fact when, for example, looking at racial disparities that pervade K-12 education.

Black and Latino students are more likely to attend schools in low-income and under-resourced communities and to have less experienced teachers and are less likely to be enrolled in honors or AP courses. They have long trailed behind their White and Asian peers in graduation rates, test scores and many other metrics of school success.

"We know there's institutional racism because not all school districts are equal based on ZIP codes," Pulido said. "That's institutional racism; I don't care what you want to call it."

Board trustee Kathy Rallings was the only one to vote in February against revising the course description. Rallings, who is a consultant for the California Teachers Association, said it's up to educators, not board members, to build the curriculum.

She said she's satisfied with the new course description because it was vetted by Carlsbad educators. Just because the description doesn't explicitly mention institutional racism as a discussion topic doesn't mean the concepts of it won't ultimately be discussed in class, she added.

Students have to learn about systemic racism and identify it by name in order to succeed in life, Rallings said.

"We can't try to sugarcoat it, because that's not real and truthful," she said. "It's not a theory that happened in the past. It's actually happening right now, today."

The film ethnic studies course will be offered to Carlsbad High School freshmen starting in the spring of 2024.

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Amid ethnic studies fight, Carlsbad Unified scrubs 'institutional racism' mention

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California's model curriculum says such courses should 'connect ourselves to past and contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice' to build a 'post-systemic-racism society'

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As the country reacted to the murder of George Floyd and several unarmed Black men and women at the hands of those sworn to protect and serve, a surge of conversations around "who matters" resurfaced, not only in our larger social conversation, but also in discussions of schools and curriculum.

Educators across the country are tasked with helping young people to reach their full potential. An important part of reaching that potential is tied to their sense of identity, their development of a positive racial identity, and a sense of belonging to their cultural and racial groups. North Carolina students can develop positive racial identities through curriculum offered by ethnic studies (ES) courses, which are currently not present within the Department of Public Instruction's standards and graduation requirements.

Let's start by demystifying what ethnic studies actually is. For more than a century, the question of educating non-white students has been critiqued by many scholars. In the 1960s, education scholars developed a field of study known as ethnic studies as a way of offering a more equitable education to students who have historically been marginalized and excluded from the content taught in schools.

Ethnic studies primarily centers its coursework on the four most historically marginalized groups in the United States: African Americans, Latinxs, Native Americans, and Asian American/Pacific Islanders. Building a positive cultural identity and a sense of pride are the primary goals of ES curriculum.

By participating in these classes, students explore race relations and ethnic identity in the U.S., examine the history of racial subjugation and white supremacy, gain tools to empower themselves as change agents for their communities, and are exposed to a curriculum which amplifies the voices of communities of color. These classes place value on the wealth of cultural knowledge - an awareness of the behaviors and values that are learned, shared, and practiced by a particular group of people - that students bring with them into a classroom.

What is the need?

The statewide and nationwide student populations have been diversifying for several years. According to the Racial/Ethnic Enrollment in Public Schools Report, by fall of 2017 more than 50% of students enrolled in public schools in America were students of color, largely Black and Latinx populations. Specific to North Carolina, student demographics show that 50.3% of students enrolled in public schools as of 2016 were students of color, a result of not just a growing Latinx population, but also an influx in the Asian, Indian, and refugee populations in the state.

Our state is becoming more diverse while efforts are also being made to try and further silence marginalized voices and impact the way in which historical facts are taught in North Carolina, especially those dealing with issues of race. In many school systems, curriculum has been built upon information deemed important to the dominant, white middle-class culture. If only certain cultures are included, what must school be like for those students whose cultural backgrounds do not align?

Ethnic studies courses create a space for the knowledge of marginalized students and their cultural groups to be centered. No longer should students sitting in North Carolina classrooms be made to feel invisible or unimportant. If given access to ethnic studies courses, all students will be exposed to multiple viewpoints and perspectives. This will allow all North Carolina students to begin to see themselves as producers of knowledge instead of mere consumers of it.

California as a model

States across the country are beginning to recognize the need to be intentional in supporting students as they develop their cultural identity.

A model ethnic studies curriculum developed by the California Department of Education utilizes the topics of identity, colonization, Latinx presence in the US, media, hegemony & oppression, social movements, and systems of power to guide the curriculum. Students in these courses will be able to write their own oral histories, learn about the push and pull factors of immigration, examine the societal contributions of Latinxs, examine news and media narratives, and learn about successful social movements organized by people of color. With each activity, students will be empowered in who they are, learn about others, and feel more closely connected to their own cultural group.

The benefits for students enrolled in ethnic studies courses not only include positive racial identity development and a more complete understanding of national history and culture, but also overall school experience improvements: increased literacy skills, higher academic achievement, increased attendance, lower drop-out rates, and increased interest in teaching careers and higher education.

Our schools cannot continue to be places which marginalize students through the exclusion of their representation within curriculum, policy, and teaching practices. Classroom content and practices should be tailored to the students who are being educated.

Upon graduating from a North Carolina high school, students need to be equipped with both a stronger connection to their own heritage, as well as a strong understanding of cultures and communities represented throughout the state if we are truly preparing them to be 21st century learners in a globalized society. As schools move toward making educational experiences for all students meaningful, student-centered, and culturally responsive, required enrollment in an ethnic studies course would meet that need.

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Perspective | After California, our time is now: Making ethnic studies a graduation requirement in North Carolina

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North Carolina students can develop positive racial identities through curriculum offered by ethnic studies courses.

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Asian Americans are gathered at the City Hall to protest anti-Asian racism following the Atlanta Spa shooting, in New York City, New York, on March 27, 2021.

Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

On July 7, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed HB 0376 - the Teaching Equitable Asian American History Act (TEAACH Act) into law, making Illinois the first state in the nation to mandate the teaching of Asian American history in K-12 public schools. Championed by Illinois State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz and State Sen. Ram Villivalam, and co-sponsored by Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Chicago and members of various community organizations and educational institutions, the legislation responds to the call for inclusive curricula as a strategy for addressing the spike in anti-Asian racism and violence in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the legislation is more than that. As an educator at a public university where I serve as a founding director of Global Asian Studies, an academic program that was a product of an almost two-decade, student-led movement to create an ethnic studies program, this legislation uplifts the student demand for learning about Asian American histories and reaffirms that Asian American students' communities and lived experiences matter. It recognizes how ethnic studies allows students to engage with their education while affirming their sense of belonging in academic spaces; a suturing that directly leads to student success.

Following Arizona's on the teaching of ethnic studies in 2010, the Illinois TEAACH Act reflects ongoing statewide efforts in the nation since then to address the importance of ethnic studies in K-12 curricula such as in , , , Connecticut, Washington, , Washington D.C. and California. The TEAACH Act specifically pushes for the inclusion of a unit of Asian American history while highlighting the of experiences for this community.

University of Illinois Chicago students like Cyril Dela Rosa remind us of the importance of recognizing the "large plurality of Asian American students in Illinois" and the diversity of this category, as well as the intersectionality of race, gender, ethnicity class, sexuality, religion and many other aspects of identity that shapes our experiences as Asian Americans. This is also at the core of why it is important to disaggregate Asian American racial data so that we can see such plurality, as well as resist the false "model minority" frame that has often projected this community as one that is not in need of resources.

In fact, specific communities within this larger category of "Asian American" are shown to experience the largest income inequality. It is also a community that has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 . Disaggregating the Asian American racial category likewise requires being attentive to the specificities of histories and politics of every community, not simply conflating Asian American with Pacific Islander experiences, for example.

Related Story

To confront anti-Asian violence, we must unearth buried histories and stop erasing "imperfect victims" from our memory.

Importantly, the Illinois legislation uplifts the importance of reframing the narrative of exceptionalism that is often used to articulate the representations and experiences of Asian Americans, recognizing the complexities of the positionality of Asian Americans within the U.S. racial imaginary, as poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong powerfully describes.

This narrative of exceptionalism materializes in the longstanding view of the "model minority" myth that has falsely depicted Asian Americans as a monolithic category of high-achieving and economically mobile individuals, but also has been used as a racial wedge to forge an anti-Black agenda. It also materializes in how anti-Asian racism and violence in the aftermath of the pandemic have been interpreted by the public as an anomaly, when in fact, it only reveals a much longer history of anti-Asian violence that is a product of white supremacy in this country.

This understanding is at the core of what critical race theory offers - a lens for seeing the roots of racial violence. As abolitionist teacher, writer and scholar Dylan Rodríguez rightly points out, "anti-Asian violence is an expression of the white nationalist domestic warfare totality, not a momentary exception to it." It is a form of violence that has advanced white nationalism by targeting minoritized communities.

But perhaps the dual position that Asian Americans occupy in the U.S. racial matrix as both the "model minority," and in times of economic or public health crises, the "yellow peril," contributes to differences in how Asian Americans experience this violence. Yet as so many others have pointed out, there is nothing new about the anti-Asian violence we have witnessed, given that the long history of racism directed at Asians dates back more than a century - from the 19th century Chinese Exclusion Acts, the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, the deportation of Cambodian Americans, the murder of Vincent Chin at the height of economic nationalism, the post-9/11 racial profiling and violence directed at Muslim and Sikh communities, and the gendered violence committed by the U.S. military overseas, to name just a few targets.

Thus, to teach about Asian American history is to teach against white supremacy including histories of slavery, settler colonialism and Orientalism, specifically centering the in this analysis. To teach about Asian American history is also to resist the narrative of exceptionalism that often presumes Asian American communities are a "quiet" and passive body who are disengaged from social movements or activist work.

In fact, this is a community who have long resisted, and done so by forging cross-racial solidarities - whether it is the alliance between Filipino-American labor organizer Larry Itliong and farmworker champion Cesar Chavez during the Delano Grape Strike, the multiracial and student-led coalitions that launched the Ethnic Studies movement in the 1960s, various Afro Asian solidarities, or the current campaign for a National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

To be sure, it is important to teach about the varied economic and social contributions of Asian Americans. However, more than ever, to teach this history means resisting the twinned frame of liberal multiculturalism and heritage education, instead emphasizing critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and abolition as frameworks for understanding Asian American experiences and identities while seeing their connections and solidarities with other communities.

It is important to remember the sentiments of University of Illinois Chicago students like Meenakshi Parihar, whose experiences in the post-9/11 U.S. remind us of the presence of Islamophobia within Asian American communities. This is coupled with taking note about how the curricula we develop must center an anti-racist, decolonial and liberatory pedagogy if we are to teach about the root causes of social inequalities and notice what happened with the ethnic studies model school curriculum that passed in California, which abandoned these critical frameworks, and instead, privileged politicians and lobbyists in determining the curriculum's content.

As the country grapples with understanding the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Indigenous and communities of color, anti-Asian violence, police brutality and racialized capitalism, the passage of Illinois's TEAACH Act is a , but more importantly, a necessary corrective, and an opportunity to rewrite and remake how we teach U.S. history from a framework of social justice and a robust understanding of diversity.

Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Illinois Becomes First State to Mandate Teaching Asian American History in K-12

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The TEAACH Act is an opportunity to remake how we teach U.S. history from a framework of social justice and diversity.

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A California professor who has been accused for years of faking her Native American heritage after once slamming white women for "opting to become Indian" will retire from her teaching position after negotiating an agreement with the school.

University of California, Riverside ethnic studies professor Andrea Smith's teaching career at the university will come to an end in August 2024, according to a separation agreement reported on by the New York Times. The retirement comes after 13 faculty members filed an August 2022 complaint claiming Smith had lied about her Cherokee identity and violated academic integrity.

But as part of the agreement signed in January, the university won't probe the faculty complaint and Riverside will pony up as much as $5,000 for Smith toward any legal costs tied to resolving the complaint, the Times reported.

The university never conducted a formal inquiry after the complaint was lodged, but had informal talks with Smith, Insider Higher Ed reported, also citing the agreement.

"The negotiated separation agreement brings a timely conclusion to Professor Smith's continued employment with the university," a school spokesperson told the Times.

"Investigations of a tenured faculty member for alleged misconduct have potential for litigation and appeals, and can unfold over the course of years."

Smith will retire in a year, according to the reported on agreement.

UC Riverside

Smith will be allowed to teach until she leaves, keep her retirement benefits and have an honorary emeritus status, but it won't be listed on the university's directory, the Times reported.

Smith previously rebuked claims that she was faking her identity in a 2015 statement even though she was not enrolled with the Cherokee Nation.

"I have always been, and will always be Cherokee," she said.

"I have consistently identified myself based on what I knew to be true. My enrollment status does not impact my Cherokee identity or my continued commitment to organizing for justice for Native communities."

While some Native scholars were pleased to see Smith on her way out, they were bothered she wouldn't be investigated by the school.

The University of California Riverside said the agreement would avoid a potentially lengthy legal battle.

UCR

"She deflects, angles and wriggles - and here it is again," Harvard professor Philip Deloria told the Times. Deloria and Smith were colleagues when the two previously taught at the University of Michigan.

Smith ironically once wrote in a 1991 essay that white feminists "often want to dissociate themselves from their whiteness. They do this by opting to 'become Indian.'"

"In this way, they can escape responsibility and accountability for white racism," she wrote. "Of course, white 'feminists' want to become only partly Indian."

Professor Andrea Smith

Smith's identity came under a microscope in 2008 after she was rejected for tenure at the University of Michigan, though she soon landed at Riverside, the Times reported.

One of the professors who filed the most recent complaint told the newspaper he raised the issue because fake identity claims hurt tribal communities.

"Identities are one of the last things we have that are precious and that we have control over," said ethnic studies professor Gerald Clarke, who is part of the Cahuilla Band of Indians.

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California professor Andrea Smith to retire without university probing claims she lied about Native American identity

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The professor previously rebuked claims that she was faking her identity in 2015, even though she was not enrolled with the Cherokee Nation.

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As graduate students, we urge Columbia to departmentalize ethnic studies

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Around this time of year in 1996, a group of over 200 students and community members courageously protested on the steps of Low Library and in Hamilton Hall to demand an ethnic studies department at Columbia. Students engaged in a 15-day hunger strike for ethnic studies, in spite of threats from both the Columbia administration and the New York Police Department.

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Louisiana parents, teachers raise concerns about critical race theory in social studies standards - Louisiana Illuminator

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Louisiana parents and teachers raise concerns about critical race theory in social studies studies standards.

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(Daily Signal) - Parents in the pandemic era have asserted themselves with new vigor for the sake of their children. Parents no longer presume that the zoned public school is the right fit, or that...

(Daily Signal) - Parents in the pandemic era have asserted themselves with new vigor for the sake of their children. Parents no longer presume that the zoned public school is the right fit, or that the school puts students first.

Nor do parents presume that most teachers wish to reproduce the values of the community. Since 2020, Americans' satisfaction with K-12 education has plummeted.

Their skepticism is warranted: All too many schools seek to undermine, destroy, and rebuild American society in a revolutionary, neo-Marxist image.

Outrageous? Yes. Believable? Yes, as documented by the stories in a new Pacific Research Institute book. " The Great Parent Revolt: How Parents and Grassroots Leaders Are Fighting Critical Race Theory in America's Schools," by Lance Izumi and co-authors, provides a dozen accounts from around the country.

Many parents will be able to see themselves in these stories. The point is to inspire more parents to advocate for a high-quality education that doesn't divide students by race, ethnicity, and other characteristics in order to tear apart American society.

By that measure, this book admirably succeeds. What the parents in these stories have done is not so difficult, and organizations of concerned parents are now all over the country, ready to empower and equip newcomers.

Polls consistently show that when people learn what critical race theory is, they generally dislike it. But if you come to this book thinking that the only problem is CRT, be prepared to learn that the real situation is worse. The book focuses significant attention on critical race theory, but the bigger culprit is critical theory generally, with its roots in a Marxist binary of class warfare.

Indeed, many American schools are focused not merely on the oppressed-oppressor binary regarding race, but also regarding sex and the usual list of identities. If you are "oppressed" in multiple ways (for example: a black overweight gay woman), then congratulations, you have intersectional oppression (described in Chapter 3). The various categories of the oppressed commonly are expected to act in solidarity to smash and rebuild American society, culture, and government.

So, I recommend lingering on the treatment of ethnic studies in chapters 2 and 8-this field is not merely "a Trojan horse for CRT," the authors note, but problematic in additional ways-such as its frequent antisemitism.

In the proposed California curriculum, notably, critical ethnic studies or liberated ethnic studies is the dominant branch of the subject. Proponents of this "militant" doctrine teach an extreme version of the victim-oppressor binary: They all too often dismiss leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. for being too "docile"; they reject math, capitalism, private property, and sometimes even money as oppressive; and they call for completely reworking society.

Ironically, one parent notes: "Critical or Liberated Ethnic Studies has predetermined outcomes. They're not teaching kids to think critically."

Even so, it is fair that this book focuses primarily on race, because race is the most prevalent victim-oppressor binary. Also, the authors are fully correct to observe that teaching critical race theory means teaching the tenets or principles of CRT; a lesson doesn't need to be titled "Critical Race Theory" to count. Not just ethnic studies but also social and emotional learning and other innocent-sounding pedagogies have become infused with CRT.

The story of Gabs Clark and her son is one of many showing that any alert parent can fight back successfully. If a school compels a student to reveal his personal opinions, forces him to say he's an oppressor because of his race, sex, or religion, and tries to get him to change, he has a good chance of succeeding in court. (Thanks to the Liberty Justice Center for taking her son's case.)

After Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, complained of having too many Asian students and revolutionized admissions to get the numbers down, parent Asra Nomani publicly criticized this racism by Fairfax County Public Schools. Nomani became an activist, founded the Coalition for TJ, and sued the school board with the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation. She won.

With smoking-gun documents that can be found with requests under open-records laws, other parents can win, too. As the judge wrote in the Virginia case, quoting earlier cases, "racial balancing for its own sake is 'patently unconstitutional.'" (The decision is on hold pending an appeal.)

A lawsuit is far from the only option. Exit is another.

The student story of Joshua (not his real name) is one of several chapters showing divisive "diversity, equity, and inclusion" activities in action. Students were to reveal their personal and sexual preferences, and the programming used racial stereotypes to divide students from one another.

Joshua saw what happened to students who spoke out-a "horrific outbreak of screaming"-so he self-censored. Greater education freedom would permit more students to leave hostile environments such as Joshua's.

Another activist, Xi Van Fleet, grew up in revolutionary China and exited that environment, but she sees commonalities with America today. Most notable is the proliferation of "bias reporting" protocols that encourage students to inform on one another to the authorities.

In the bias reporting program at Virginia's Loudoun County Public Schools, students inform on each other anonymously. Van Fleet adds that one study found that 80% of K-12 students "never heard about the Chinese Cultural Revolution," and it shows.

In Rhode Island, Nicole Solas fought back by calling for transparency. She had enrolled her daughter in a local kindergarten, but in 2020 the school went hard into critical race theory. After she wrangled this confession from the principal, she filed about 160 open-records requests for the details.

The local school board publicly considered suing Solas, apparently hoping to hide the documents. Instead of fulfilling their public mission, school boards all too often inflate the costs of fulfilling record requests and prevent parents from speaking at meetings.

In fact, the National School Boards Association even enlisted the federal government to declare outspoken parents to be terrorist threats.

Although her local school board ultimately declined to sue Solas, the teachers union did sue her. She fought back with help from the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, and the union withdrew its complaint.

Solas also sued the school district, accusing it of "holding meetings for the district's racial advisory board in secret," in violation of Rhode Island's Open Meetings Act.

Solas' case is rare, though-records requests by parents often work without lawsuits. And another route to transparency is legislation. More and more states require that course materials be posted online or that parents be allowed to review these materials in person.

Another way to get school and school board records is to run for school board and win. Amazingly, many parents are doing just that. Even San Francisco voters recalled (fired) some of their worst school board members.

One political action committee, the 1776 Project PAC, claims to have "flipped" more than 100 school boards or school board seats since 2021, while Moms for Liberty (see below) successfully endorsed dozens of candidates and flipped seven more districts.

These parents now can use their power for good. After Mari Barke won a school board seat in Orange County, California, she held public forums that exposed critical race theory in schools and demonstrated how CRT often is unlawful because it discriminates on the basis of race.

After Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich each won board seats in their Florida districts, they formed Moms for Liberty to educate and empower parents, fight critical race theory, and promote equal opportunity. They also call for high standards instead of the lower standards needed to produce "equity" (characteristically resulting in more similar outcomes by race but worse outcomes overall, as Joshua's story relates).

The hard work by Justice and Descovich has led to about 275 chapters with a total of 115,000 members, by recent count. If a parent isn't sure where to go, Moms for Liberty is one great place to begin (or Parents Defending Education, which also files free speech lawsuits, or other organizations mentioned in the book).

Parents don't have to do all this work alone. Many teachers, for example, do agree with the resisting parents and can be allies and whistleblowers-they are, the book says, "as frustrated as the public about the counterproductive thought indoctrination going on in public education."

Meanwhile, Izumi and the other authors add, "grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other ordinary Americans are also on the front line" defending American freedom and opportunity against critical theory.

Notably, Ryan Girdusky, founder of the 1776 Project PAC, says he also finds support from moderate Democrats who oppose the revolutionaries (often confidentially, because of progressive bullying).

This kind of solidarity will be hard to beat.

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Parents get back in charge of their children's education - The Lion

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(Daily Signal) - Parents in the pandemic era have asserted themselves with new vigor for the sake of their children. Parents no longer presume that the zoned public school is the right fit, or that the school puts students first. Nor do parents presume that most teachers wish to reproduce the values of the community.

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Patrice Frasier teaches Advanced Placement African American Studies, for the first time ever, at Baltimore Polytechnic on September 28, 2022 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Michael Robinson Chavez / The Washington Post via Getty Images

"The far right and MAGA adherents are stoking fear and diminishing our students' freedom to learn and our teachers' freedom to teach," says Becky Pringle, the president of the 3 million-member National Education Association (NEA). But Pringle emphasizes that these right-wing attacks are just one part of what is happening in the field of education.

Teachers, administrators and students, she says, are working hard in many parts of the United States to ensure that history, literature and social studies classes engage in meaningful ways with histories of racism, genocide and slavery, while also creating space for studying and celebrating the work of people of color in the U.S.

In fact, even as educators in Florida battle extreme attacks from Gov. Ron DeSantis, educators in more progressive places are doing exciting work to reshape policy and bring an anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic perspective into public school classrooms across the country.

"It is important to recognize that people are pushing forward," Pringle said. "We know the importance of ethnic studies and know that students need to see themselves in the curriculum. Teachers and students understand why it matters to have a racially and culturally inclusive curriculum, and we are continuing to write lesson plans and push legislation to turn back book bans and other limitations on teaching and learning."

This is not a new position for the NEA, and progressive activists have long promoted the use of diverse classroom materials at every level of study. What's more, they take inspiration from a 1968 student strike at San Francisco State College (which is now called San Francisco State University) that demanded that the school offer Black, Latinx and Asian history classes to enrolled undergraduates. The successful protest remains the longest student strike in U.S. history - lasting four and a half months - and led to the establishment of several ethnic studies programs on campus.

Related Story

Republican lawmakers in Arizona have attempted to ban critical race theory three times so far.

The momentum that sparked the strike has continued more than a half-century later: In March 2021, California legislators passed a bill to make Black studies a high school graduation requirement for every student beginning in 2030.

Other states - among them Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont - have followed suit and have drafted standards of their own to authorize or mandate instruction that goes beyond Eurocentric knowledge. Most took effect in the 2022-23 academic year.

In Colorado, for example, a 2019 law requires history classes "to include the contributions of diverse groups including LGBTQ, Indigenous, Hispanic, Black, Asian and religious minorities." And in Nevada, a law passed in 2021 mandates that the contributions of people of color and people with disabilities be incorporated into history, science, arts and humanities classes. For its part, the Illinois legislature passed the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) Act in 2021, to require all K-12 social studies classes to include Asian American and Pacific Islander history and challenge stereotypes about Asian identity.

Meanwhile, cities like New York have launched pilot programs that zero-in on LGBTQIA+, Black, and Asian American and Pacific Islander history. Rita Joseph, chair of the New York City Council Education Committee, says that the Council feels a sense of urgency to increase diversity and desegregate public schools throughout the five boroughs. "We're also trying to recruit Black male teachers and other teachers of color and are working to ensure that classrooms and libraries have varied books - with boys who want to be mermaids, girls in hijab, and immigrants from Africa - so that every student knows that they are seen and heard," Joseph told Truthout.

The rationale for this has been well established.

Thirty-three years ago, the Saturday Review printed an essay called " The All-White World of Children's Books." In it, author Nancy Larrick wrote that when children do not see themselves reflected in the stories they read, or in the curriculum they're taught, "they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued" by society.

Larrick's message to educators was unambiguous: "Our classrooms need to be places where all the children from all the cultures that make up the salad bowl of American society" can find their reflections. The end result, she wrote, will be a "better understanding of difference and a respect for diversity."

NEA researchers have reached the same conclusion. A 2020 report found that "interdisciplinary ethnic studies, or the study of the social, political, economic, and historical perspectives of our nation's diverse racial and ethnic groups, helps foster cross-cultural understanding among both students of color and white students."

In addition, the researchers reported that students who enrolled in ethnic studies were more academically engaged, developed a stronger sense of self, and graduated at higher rates than students who did not.

Students also benefit when diverse perspectives are brought into non-ethnic studies classes.

Maddox Lima, a first-year student at Skidmore College, recalls that when he was in 10th grade at North Kingstown High School, a public school in Rhode Island, his English teacher had the class read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. "African American history was woven into our discussions," he told Truthout. "We learned about the U.S. after the Civil War, and we looked at the racial constructions that were set up, the way society was organized. The class was interdisciplinary and brought history and social studies into English."

Lima says that he loved the course and was disappointed that this approach was not embraced by other teachers. "Even in World Literature, we just read the assigned texts without examining what they said about the dominant culture or the ways race and gender played out," he said.

Others public schools follow a different model.

Susan Wu, a 9th grader at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, New York, told Truthout that non-European people and events are highlighted in just about every class she's taking, from music, to history, to English. "It makes me feel included as an Asian girl," she said. "My U.S. history class taught us about Hawaiian culture, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and how Islam has influenced America. The books we've read are really interesting, too."

But Wu says she knows that many other students do not share this experience, since many schools do not prioritize learning about different cultures; even within a school, she adds, instruction can vary widely from teacher to teacher.

A Patchwork Nation

Wayne Au, a professor of education at the University of Washington-Bothell and an editor at Rethinking Schools, a 37-year-old quarterly publication devoted to promoting social justice, told Truthout that the right-wing offensive against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; attacks on queer kids; and book bans are happening on both the state and district levels.

"There is a divide between places where teachers have the leeway to teach the truth about history and culture, and places where teachers can't do this even if they want to," Au said. "People have been physically threatened, so there is not always the space for teachers to do anti-racist education. But when states pass legislation that supports multicultural learning, it gives teachers room to create curricula. It also gives them the official backing to do work they know is for the common good. Of course, developing curricula can be complicated and state-approved materials are often safer than we want, but they're a start."

Moreover, teachers can always supplement what the state offers.

The Zinn Education Project, he explains, has helped set up more than 200 teacher study groups in 38 states since 2020. More than 1,000 educators have enrolled. Coursework teaches history they might never have learned and helps them formulate lessons for their students; a 2018 book, Teaching for Black Lives grounds the program. Among the topics covered: COINTELPRO, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the 1921 Tulsa race riots, the school-to-prison pipeline, the Black Panther Party, and other subjects that are typically ignored or given scant mention in mainstream textbooks.

"The study groups also feature the teaching of Black joy," Au said. "We want students to feel good about their hair and bodies. Furthermore, we're showing them models of activism and resistance so that students will understand that they can act and do things differently than their elders."

Nirva Rebecca LaFortune, a parent and former Providence, Rhode Island, legislator, agrees that these are essential messages. "History should always be the history of empowerment," she says. She added that "lessons on Black history should not be restricted to the month of February" or focus exclusively on Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and George Washington Carver, but should include Rosewood, the town that was burned to the ground in 1923 by white racists, alongside other egregious chapters in U.S. history.

Rann Miller, author ofResistance Stories from Black History for Kids and creator of the Urban Education Mixtape blog, has taught and run DEI programs in New Jersey for more than a decade. He told Truthout that his state has passed several laws to mandate the teaching of African American and LGBTQIA+ history. "Our governor, Phil Murphy, has said that he wants New Jersey to be the anti-Florida. It helps to have lawmakers who understand the urgency of this moment for racial and gender justice, especially when it comes to policies around education."

Miller said New Jersey takes its responsibility to teach every child seriously and sponsors a summer institute to train faculty in best practices for supporting equity, racial justice, gender identity and sexuality in class.

Similar training programs are underway throughout the country - for both new and experienced teachers.

"We have to ensure that teacher education programs orient students so that they can teach the complexities of history, race and culture, and understand that their students are multicultural," Au said. "Most teacher training programs are progressive, but it can be hard when a student graduates and then goes to a district where they are expected to comply with a conservative school culture."

That's where the support of progressive colleagues comes into play - whether through publications like Rethinking Schools, or through study groups, conference attendance, or networks of like-minded instructors.

Post-graduate training is also key, even for seasoned teachers. "In my state," Au says, "There is a mandate that schools teach Since Time Immemorial: Tribal Sovereignty in Washington State," a curriculum that was created in 2015 by leaders of 29 tribes.

Although the curriculum has not yet been fully implemented across all grade levels, online trainings have helped non-Native educators become more knowledgeable and comfortable in presenting the lessons offered. In addition to learning concrete information about different tribal histories and cultures, the training addresses the social and emotional impact of Native inclusion on young Indigenous students. "Integrating indigenous history and knowledge can be a matter of life and death for Native youth," an article inCrosscut News reports, helping to derail the high suicide rate among Native kids who feel disconnected and undervalued by mainstream educational programs.

Scott Abbott, assistant director of the Delaware Center for Civics Education, calls equity the centerpiece of education. That said, he adds that ideological agreement alone is insufficient to create schools where every kid can thrive and grow. "Funding matters," he told Truthout. "For states and districts to develop materials they have to be able to purchase supplies." Additionally, funding may be needed for ongoing professional development or coaching to help teachers modify existing curricula and teach new lessons.

"The fact that efforts to diversify and expand multicultural and ethnic studies coursework is happening now - at the same time that some states are cutting diversity funding, banning books, and restricting how history and literature can be taught - is important," Abbott says. "Inclusive curricula that tackle complex historical realities help students analyze the past, pose questions for inquiry and help them make sense of the world. But this should be happening everywhere. It should not be a patchwork."

Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Amid Attacks From Right, Racial Justice Curricula Gain Momentum in Blue States

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As some states rush to restrict what can be taught, other localities are mandating a more inclusive curriculum.

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Pennsylvania State University's main campus. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

After the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, Eric J. Barron joined higher education leaders nationwide in pledging solidarity with protesters seeking racial justice. "It is past time for change," the president of Pennsylvania State University said.

But like his peers elsewhere, Barron faced intense pressure to take actions that would outlast the rhetoric. So, that December, he touted a Penn State commission's proposalto establish a scholarly initiative dedicated to anti-racism. "This is an important recommendation because it goes straight to the educational mission of the university," Barron said in a video town hall.

By the time Barron retired this past spring, Penn State had announced the formation of a Center for Racial Justice and opened a faculty-led search for a founding director. Similar efforts have arisen elsewhere in academia, including a new center at the University of Michigan with an identical name.

Now, though, Penn State's version is dead. Barron's successor, Neeli Bendapudi, canceled the project in late October, avowing a commitment to equity and inclusion but saying it would be "more impactful" to enhance support for existing work on racial bias. The reversal prompted an uproar at the 88,000-student university and beyond: Students of color denounced the cancellation. Hundreds of professors signed a letter of protest asserting a pattern of "broken promises." And Black members of the state legislature deplored decisions they said would move the "needle backward."

The episode underscores how a major university's promises during an intense period of national racial reckoning are vulnerable to the passage of time and changes in leadership. Swap one president for another, and the vision suddenly shifts.

For many on the faculty of this state flagship school, where there was fervor for action in 2020, the cancellation two years later of a plan explicitly tied to racial justice has raised a question: Is the reckoning in retreat?

"We were all very disappointed when it dissolved," said Marinda K. Harrell-Levy, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State-Brandywine, a campus near Philadelphia. Harrell-Levy, co-chair of the committee searching for a director, said colleagues who served on it had received assurances their time would not be wasted. They were "told to believe that this time Penn State was going to get it right," Harrell-Levy said. "And that's not what happened."

Students, too, are frustrated.Jada Okundaye, 21, a senior from Laurel, Md., who is majoring in social and health policy analysis, said she is upset about the reversal of a key element of the university's response to calls for social change after Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police. "This wasn't something on the back burner," she said. "This was already in the works. For them to cut it off like that, it's a big slap in the face."

Around the country, other universities have taken a different approach.

Boston University opened a Center for Antiracist Research in June 2020. Since then, Georgetown University has launched a Racial Justice Institute, Temple University a Center for Anti-Racism, and Rutgers University an Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. Some of those efforts were in the works before 2020. Experts also cite longer-established hubs of scholarship such as the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, founded in 2003; the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, founded in 2012; and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, founded in 2017.

A common thread among these is a mandate for social engagement and confronting racial prejudice. The Boston University center depicts itself as "a collaborative research and education effort across multiple disciplines to build a world where racial equity and social justice prevail." Ibram X. Kendi, its founding director and author of the 2019 book "How to Be an Antiracist," cited as an example of its initial work a project to track racial and ethnic disparities in the effects of the covid pandemic. "We're laser-focused on building a center that can partner with others to address the crisis of racism," Kendi said.

After Floyd's killing sparked a national protest movement, Penn State was thinking big. Barron convened a commission of faculty members, administrators and others to study racism, bias and community safety. Separately, Black professors were pressing university leaders to diversify the faculty and address racism they encounter at the main campus in State College and more than 20 satellites across Pennsylvania.

Black professors push a major university to diversify and confront racism

Barron's commission recommended, among other things, "an anti-racist scholarly research center or consortium" to support teaching, research and programs across the university. "This reflects a trend that we're seeing around the nation," Clarence Lang, dean of liberal arts and co-chair of the commission, said at the video town hall with Barron on Dec. 9, 2020. Lang said the idea would harness the expertise of faculty members across the university who were already engaged in research on race, inequality and social change. There would be "synergies" in the collective effort, he said. "This could be a venue that would be a destination for scholars around the nation."

Behind the scenes, Barron conferred with Penn State's Board of Trustees. A document circulating through email among trustees in early 2021, first reported by the news site Spotlight PA and obtained by The Washington Post from a person in university leadership, suggests that the overall strategy was drawing intense internal scrutiny despite a public show of consensus. The person who provided the unsigned document, labeled "confidential" and "trustee input," spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retribution. The document did not express opposition to the center, and the unnamed author agreed with the goal of "adequate support for anti-racist scholarship."

But it also asserted that the university should not lose sight of other academic priorities: "[W]e believe that in addition to advancing scholarship that speaks to our differences, the university should be dedicated to scholarship that celebrates the positive accomplishments of western civilization and the United States in a way that could serve to inspire and unite all of us." Other passages in the document raised questions about " critical race theory " - an academic framework for analyzing laws and policies that perpetuate systemic racism - and "whether teaching America's exceptionalism remains a core objective at Penn State."

The Post could not verify who wrote or endorsed the document.Emails The Post obtained suggest the document sparked debate within the board,with one member contending it contained "racist rhetoric."

Matthew W. Schuyler, chair of the board, did not dispute the document's authenticity. But he said it was not presented to the board and did not represent the board's views at the time. Trustees weigh in on matters in various ways, he said - through phone calls, emails and discussions. "We take all that we hear into account, and we make decisions," Schuyler told The Post.

Schuyler said the board has been steadfast in support of core principles. "If you want to be a part of Penn State, you should feel like you belong at Penn State," he said. "Period, full stop." But, he added: "How we get there is a subject of great discussion."

From slavery to Jim Crow to George Floyd: Virginia universities face a long racial reckoning

The board showed no public sign of disagreement or skepticism when Barron forged ahead with the plan. Nor was there public indication of controversy over the proposed center among state leaders in Harrisburg.

In February 2021, he wrote to the community that Penn State "will financially support the development of an enterprise dedicated to anti-racist, anti-bias pedagogy and scholarly research and is committed to attracting an outstanding leader for this effort."

In September 2021, the university unveiled the name of the Center for Racial Justice and declared it would align with Penn State's strategic plan. The school said the center would lead "cross-disciplinary, cross-methodological research activities across Penn State's 24 campuses."

In March 2022, the university announced the search for a founding director.

Then, in May, Bendapudi took over from Barron.

Raised in India, Bendapudi was president of the University of Louisville from 2018 to 2021 and is the first woman and first person of color to lead Penn State. At Louisville, she advocated a "Cardinal Anti-Racism Agenda" in 2020 after Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who lived in that city, was shot and killed during a police raid. Taylor was an emergency room technician in a university-affiliated hospital.

By last summer, the Penn State faculty committee looking for the center's director had met with a search firm. "We had thoroughly discussed the types of candidates we would look for," Harrell-Levy said. Outreach to prospects was beginning.

But Bendapudi was raising questions as the university faced budget difficulties.

The new president, in a recent telephone interview, said she was convinced that a new center was not necessary because many faculty members are already focused on racial justice. She said she wants to concentrate on existing initiatives, to help Penn State develop its own academic talent. "I've often thought of institutions as leaky buckets, where we don't invest enough in the people who are already here," she said. "So they leak away. They go elsewhere, while we try to bring something else new in." She added: "My very, very strong commitment continues to be anti-racism."

At the same time, Bendapudi said, she wants to close racial gaps in graduation rates, promote career paths for staff and faculty members from underrepresented groups, and improve the campus climate for people of all backgrounds. She pledged to create dashboards to monitor progress on those fronts. Money saved from canceling the center - an estimated $3.5 million over five years - will be steered into diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the university said. "I'm holding myself accountable to outcomes," Bendapudi said.

Bendapudi also pledges to "inventory" Penn State's DEI projects. Barron's commission two years ago recommended much the same thing.

She denied getting any pressure from trustees to scrap the center. "Not in the least," she said. She also dismissed any suggestion that the name of the center was too liberal or provocative for a public university in a political battleground state. "That had nothing to do with the decision in the least," she said. "I am very committed to racial justice, and we will talk about that."

In short, she agreed with her predecessor's ends, but in this case not his means.

Schuyler said the board backs Bendapudi's agenda on diversity and equity and will not second-guess her decisions. "She has 100 percent support," he said.

Bendapudi announced the cancellation of the center on Oct. 26, two days after protests erupted in State College over a planned event featuring the founder of the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence. The university had abruptly nixed the Oct. 24 event amid fears it could take a dangerous turn. Critics said Penn State bungled the situation. Many were also outraged that the announcement of the center's demise occurred so soon after the tense showdown over the Proud Boys.

"The university's recent actions appear to undermine, dilute and divert from the racial and social justice initiatives championed by professors, administrators and students on campus in recent years," the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus said in a statement on Nov. 15. The caucus could wield significant clout in 2023 in the narrowly divided state legislature.

More than 400 members of the faculty, tenured and untenured, representing engineering, education, meteorology and many other disciplines, signed a letter that lamented the cancellation. "This recent backsliding adds to a long list of broken promises on issues of racial justice by Penn State, going back decades," the letter said.

Lang, the dean of liberal arts, said in an interview he welcomes Bendapudi's push to aid existing projects. Among them, he cited an Africana Research Center focused on Africa and its diaspora and a Center for Black Digital Research focused on the history of Black organizing. That center's co-director, P. Gabrielle Foreman, was recently awarded a "genius grant" in a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. "These things would not exist or persist without university support," he said, a point he said has been made repeatedly behind the scenes.

In retrospect, Lang told colleagues in a letter on Nov. 7, Barron seemed captivated by a desire to recruit a "superstar" public intellectual to found the Center for Racial Justice. That person would have been furnished with a staff and budget, Lang said, diverting resources and attention from people at Penn State "who already had distinguished themselves through anti-racist scholarship, teaching, service, or advocacy." Lang, in the letter, called the land-a-superstar approach "mainly performative."

Barron declined to be interviewed. "Universities across this country can and should do more to support both diversity and inclusion on their campuses and to focus the real strength of universities - the scholarship of research and teaching - to explore and understand racism and thereby influence national activities and policy," he wrote in an email. "Both efforts are underfunded and so differences of opinion will occur as to what should be the priorities."

College faculty are fighting back against state bills on critical race theory

Many professors say Penn State made the wrong choice and is generating the wrong kind of headlines - for abandoning a scholarly initiative with racial justice built into its name. "This is a moment when the United States is really wrestling with the legacy of race and racism in this country," said Josh Inwood, a professor of geography, who served on the search committee with Harrell-Levy. "This is where we need to be investing time and resources. That's for me why the center matters."

Inwood noted that Temple University held a grand opening in Philadelphia for its Center for Anti-Racism a little more than two weeks after Penn State's center was scuttled. "Why does Temple get this, but we don't?" he asked. "We have an obligation to be engaging in work that is transformative, and we're missing out."

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How Penn State abandoned a big pledge on racial justice

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New president Neeli Bendapudi scrapped the effort in its late stages in favor of promoting existing anti-racism work, drawing outrage from students and faculty.

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Beware the Spread of ‘Liberated’ Ethnic Studies in California – and Beyond

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In 1969, three years into China’s ruinous Cultural Revolution, disaster struck: my father, a construction manager, became a victim of the Marxist class struggle, which pitted one group against a

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Two Pennsylvania lawmakers are championing a bill that would require the state's children to learn Asian American and Pacific Islander history and culture in their classrooms.

The goal is to combat a rise in racist crimes against people of AAPI descent with a more inclusive education.

Democratic state Sens. Maria Collett and Nikil Saval recently introduced Senate Bill 839.

"We had been approached by Asian American organizations in our districts, who have experienced the effects of anti-Asian violence, anti-Asian American hatred, xenophobia, bigotry, which has been widely remarked on," said Saval, the first person of South Asian descent elected to the Pennsylvania legislature.

There is also a sense among lawmakers that the political wind is at their backs.

Several states , including neighboring New Jersey, have passed laws requiring the instruction of robust AAPI studies courses.

"We want to make sure that everyone in our community sees, recognizes, and shares in the value of our AAPI community members," Collett said.

More than 4% of Pennsylvania's nearly 13 million residents are of AAPI descent. Asian American and Pacific Islanders have a deeply rooted history in the city of Philadelphia and the surrounding region.

"Establishing curriculum that centers the major contributions of marginalized peoples and people whose histories have in turn been marginalized, would be a major achievement," Saval said.

In Montgomery County, nearly 9% of Collett's constituents are of AAPI descent.

"This would be an initiative to have the [state] Department of Education create a curriculum that would include AAPI people, history, contributions to American society - it would provide AAPI related materials to the board, it also would commission a study by our state Board of Education to see how school districts in Pennsylvania are teaching the AAPI curriculum," Collett said.

JACL Philly president: New AAPI bill is a 'long time coming'

Rob Buscher, president of the Japanese American Citizens League of Philadelphia, welcomed the piece of legislation and called it a "long time coming."

"I think, for a lot of Asian American communities that realized a lot of the hate comes from fear of the unknown and given the lack of context within our K through 12 curriculum, it's no surprise that so many Pennsylvanians have such misconceptions about who Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are," Buscher said.

Buscher served on former Governor Tom Wolf's Advisory Commission on Asian American Affairs in 2016. He said commission members had conversations with the state Department of Education, but the political landscape then made a shift "impossible."

State Rep. Patty Kim has introduced companion legislation in the Pennsylvania state House, which the Democrats narrowly control.

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Pa. legislators want state to require Asian American and Pacific Islander education

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State Sens. Maria Collett and Nikil Saval introduced a bill to include Asian American and Pacific Islander curricula in Pennsylvania schools.

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Julia Silverman | The Oregonian/OregonLive

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Portland schools want to ensure new history textbooks provide diverse perspectives

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Portland Public Schools is in the final stages of a social studies curriculum update for 6th through 12th graders, which will roll out districtwide in the fall. Such a refresh is supposed to occur every seven years but hasn’t happened in Portland since 2008.

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The Seattle school district is planning to infuse all K-12 math classes with ethnic-studies questions that encourage students to explore how math has been "appropriated" by Western culture and used in systems of power and oppression, a controversial move that puts the district at the forefront of a movement to "rehumanize" math.

The district's proposed framework outlines strands of discussion that teachers should incorporate into their classes. One leads students into exploring math's roots "in the ancient histories of people and empires of color." Another asks how math and science have been used to oppress and marginalize people of color, and who holds power in a math classroom.

Another theme focuses on resistance and liberation, encouraging students to recognize the mathematical practices and contributions of their own communities, and looking at how math has been used to free people from oppression.

Seattle's proposals land as schools all over the country are discussing the role ethnic studies should play in their curricula. In most places, if schools offer ethnic studies at all, it's usually in a stand-alone course in high school. But increasingly, schools and districts are starting to sprinkle ethnic studies across the K-12 spectrum. Seattle is taking a highly unusual approach by weaving the field's multicultural and political questions not just through all grade levels, but into all subjects.

Seattle's four-page framework is still in the proposal stage. If adopted, its ideas will be included in existing math classes as part of the district's broader effort to infuse ethnic studies into all subjects across the K-12 spectrum. Tracy Castro-Gill, Seattle's ethnic studies director, said her team hopes to have frameworks completed in all subjects by June for board approval.

If the frameworks are approved, teachers would be expected to incorporate those ideas and questions into the math they teach beginning next fall, Castro-Gill said. No districtwide-or mandated-math/ethnic studies curriculum is planned, but groups of teachers are working with representatives of local community organizations to write instructional units for teachers to use if they wish, she said.

"Seattle is definitely on the forefront with this," said Robert Q. Berry III, the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. "What they're doing follows the line of work we hope we can move forward as we think about the history of math and who contributes to that, and also about deepening students' connection with identity and agency."

Seattle's framework reflects ideas and practices that NCTM has outlined in publications such as last year's " Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics," Berry noted. That report argues, among other things, for renewed focus on helping students see how math affects the lives of millions, in social media algorithms, polling data, and world finance.

But what some see as leading-edge work, others view as misguided. Seattle's proposed guidelines caused a furor on social media after Rod Dreher, an editor for The American Conservative, blogged about them on Sept. 30. In a Twitter thread dubbed #WokeMath, critics sneered at the district's blend of math and oppression, and zeroed in on parts of the framework that ask, "How important is it to be right?" and "Who gets to say if an answer is right?"

Seattle talk-radio host Dori Monson jumped into the fray on his own blog, asking, "Did you realize when you subtracted one number from another that you were disenfranchising people by using Western math?" Liz Wheeler, a host on One America News, tweeted that Seattle "is now teaching kids as young as Kindergarten that math is racist."

Castro-Gill said that one elementary school has been trying out some of the ideas from the new framework, but she wouldn't name the school "because of the hate and vitriol" on social media.

'Of Course There Are Right Answers'

She said opponents have misconstrued the proposed guidelines, especially the section about right answers.

"Of course there are right answers in math. We're not saying there aren't," Castro-Gill said.

"What we're saying is that there are many ways of reaching conclusions, and that process should include dialogue. If a student got the right answer, we should celebrate that ingenuity and intelligence instead of telling them there is only one way to get to that right answer."

When too many black and Latino students see no place for themselves in math and science, Castro-Gill said, it's important to be explicit about how their own cultures contribute to math and how they can use it to make their communities, and the world, better.

Seattle's new math framework grew out of a 2017 community campaign, led by the NAACP, for more attention to ethnic studies. Its work to blend math and ethnic studies draws on conversations that have been unfolding for decades in the field of ethnomathematics, which focuses on cultural links to math, and in a movement known as "rehumanizing math."

Ethnomathematics, which studies the intersection of math and culture, took shape in the late 1970s, introduced by Brazilian math professor Ubiratàn D'Ambrosio. Leading thinkers in the field now include Linda Furuto at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and Filiberto Barajas-López at the University of Washington's school of education in Seattle.

More recently, some scholars, most prominently Rochelle Gutiérrez at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, have begun advocating for a "rehumanizing" of mathematics, which places dynamics such as race and oppression at the center of conversations about math and culture.

Gutiérrez noted that math organizations that focus on the preparation and oversight of math teachers back key concepts that appear in Seattle's proposed guidelines. The Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators' standards for teacher preparation, for instance, say new math teachers should "understand the roles of power, privilege, and oppression in the history of mathematics education."

"Math education has been very focused on access and closing the achievement gap, around grit and growth mindset. Those ideas are centered around individuals, and ways of thinking they need to adopt. We haven't focused enough on identity or systems of power," Gutiérrez said.

"Students should be able to see themselves in the curriculum, recognize math as a tool for making their lives better, and question what math is, and the purpose of math," she said.

Expanding Inquiry Into the Purpose of Math

A top official at one math organization agreed to talk only anonymously about the new framework to avoid becoming part of the controversy. Starting the conversation with a sigh, he said it's too bad that Seattle blended important ideas with highly controversial ones.

"We all want students of color to be included, believe they can learn math, and see themselves as mathematicians," he said. "It's important for them to learn about great contributions to mathematics from all cultures-Indian and Chinese and Babylonian.

"But you don't need to talk about liberation and oppression and how Western mathematics has somehow taken over. It just turns people off and makes the goal of being inclusive that much tougher."

Other leaders in math education welcomed Seattle's push to incorporate political and cultural questions into math, and some said they'd been including similar questions in their teaching for years.

Berry, of the NCTM, recalls an exercise he did with aspiring math teachers when he taught at the University of Virginia. Berry gave his students a drawing of a square. One half was filled with red dots, and the other half with blue dots. Students had to find various ways of dividing the space, some structured to let the red dots win, and others to let the blue dots win.

"It was a lesson in gerrymandering," Berry said. "It showed how we can create structures with geometry to get the outcomes we want politically. We can construct them for advantage or disadvantage."

Peggy Brookins, the president and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, said she got pushback to culturally sensitive strategies as a high school math teacher in the mid 1980s.

Capitalizing on her school's location near NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Brookins linked her lessons to the astronauts' work. As her students studied exponents and the power of 10, she had them calculate the speed at which rockets left Earth's orbit, and led a discussion of how astronauts of color had struggled to find roles in NASA's programs.

"My principal came and asked me to step outside," recalled Brookins. "He said a parent had called and said he didn't send his daughter to school to learn about black people."

Her principal backed her up, telling the angry parent that there were many private schools in town if he wished to transfer his daughter. But the experience stuck with Brookins.

"I get what Seattle's doing. I get where they're coming from," she said. "People need to realize culturally responsive pedagogy in ways they haven't historically."

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Seattle Schools Lead Controversial Push to 'Rehumanize' Math

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The Seattle school district is planning to infuse all K-12 math classes with ethnic-studies questions that encourage students to explore how math has been "appropriated" by Western culture and used in systems of power and oppression, a controversial move that puts the district at the forefront of a movement to "rehumanize" math.

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Last October, the Emerald reported on a celebration held at Hood Famous for the launching of Filipinx American U.S. History courses in Seattle Public Schools (SPS). But now, following its first academic year as a course, community members are concerned about the future of its development amid a $131 million budget deficit in the district. Tianna Andresen currently teaches the course and is worried about its future.

"With the courses being threatened to be cut, I am honestly not surprised, just because of the trajectory of how ethnic studies has been viewed, and also because they know there's so much power in learning about your own culture and other people's cultures and history," Andresen said.

The Filipinx American U.S. History course focuses on inclusive and liberatory pedagogy and on inviting guest speakers to share their own experiences. The curriculum also includes a family history project, which allows students to learn more about their cultural roots.

"This course is important to me because I have learned so much that I never would have learned otherwise," an 11th grade Garfield High School student said. "I learn about my history and my family history, which makes me feel like I understand who I am and who my family is more."

Andresen also described how role-playing exercises, debates, and mock interviews allow students to express themselves in an active way, even though the course is taught online. Intentionality and self-reflections are also essential components of the course, which encourages students to check in with themselves and their classmates throughout the semester.

"We have really built a small community within the class. We all support and advocate for each other. It's a class where I know I will be heard," an 11th grade Roosevelt High School student said. "Through the course, I have learned and practiced self-advocating and advocating for others. Tiana has created a very welcoming space and doesn't shame us for needing more time on things. This has made me more confident in myself when asking for what I need. Because of my growing confidence, I have started advocating for myself in other classes as well as outside of the school environment."

And students' advocacy has spread to the community too. Students in the course have visited the Filipino Community Center, which hosts various programming for local residents, and the Filipino American National Historical Society, which is home to an intensive archive that documents the diaspora experience of Filipinos in Seattle.

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Future of Filipinx History and Ethnic Studies in Limbo Amid SPS Budget Deficit - International Examiner

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This piece originally appeared in the South Seattle Emerald, republished here with permission. Last October, the Emerald reported on a celebration held at Hood Famous for the launching of Filipinx American U.S. History courses in Seattle Public Schools (SPS). But now, following its first academic year as a course, community members are concerned about the [...]

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Report: ‘Radical roots’ of California ethnic-studies curriculum - JNS.org

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The Golden State spent $55 million in taxpayer funds in 2021-22 on programs that dub police officers “pigs,” California “occupied Mexico” and Jews oppressors.

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Despite a smooth development process over the past year, the Mountain View Los Altos High School District faces both backlash and an outpouring of support for its ethnic studies curriculum, its ethnic studies curriculum, which is currently in its pilot phase at both comprehensive high schools and set to launch in full in the fall.

In 2021, the State Legislature passed a bill mandating that all high school students take an ethnic studies course as a graduation requirement.

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mountain view los altos high school district

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MVLA fires consultant amid ethnic studies curriculum debate

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Despite a smooth development process over the past year, the Mountain View Los Altos High School District faces both backlash and an outpouring of support for its ethnic studies curriculum,

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AUSTIN - A Texas bill would make ethnic studies courses in state public high schools eligible for graduation credit.

House Bill 45 was filed by state Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston. As of Thursday afternoon, 47 other lawmakers have signed onto the bill, including state Rep. Charles Cunningham, R-Humble.

If passed, Mexican American and African American studies courses will be allowed to count toward graduation requirements.

These courses already exist, have been approved by state education leaders, and are taken by some students, but are only available as elective credits rather than qualifying as history credits.

"There's no fiscal note on this, because it's already an elective," Morales added. "It's already of course offered by Texas public high schools. All we're saying is that it should count toward a graduation requirement."

Several state elected officials and community activists spoke to the importance of seeing oneself and one's history reflected correctly and positively in history textbooks.

State Rep. Jarvis Johnson, a Houston Democrat, likened the experience of not seeing oneself in history books to flipping through a yearbook. If one was not in basketball or debate club, they are likely to flip through those pages quickly. But when they reach the page with their photo, they pause.

He added that while African American history is rooted in slavery, textbooks often bypass great African American inventors, providers and producers. The same is the case for Mexican Americans, he said.

"It's important that we have those advisory boards that can tell the true story of what history truly looks like," Jarvis said.

Asian American studies and Native American studies courses have not yet been approved by state education leaders, but lawmakers said the next goal will be to allow those courses to qualify as well.

Lily Trieu, interim executive director of Asian Texans for Justice, told CNHI News that the organization believes that expanding ethnic studies is especially important for students that deal with issues of bullying, so that they may have a strong sense of identity.

"We know that ethnic studies helps students, not just students of color build a better sense of identity, but it helps all students, including white students, to have a better understanding of their colleagues, their peers," Trieu said.

The push for ethnic courses in Texas comes as Florida lawmakers ban A.P. African American courses.

While Texas has not followed suit, top Republican state leaders are working to dismantle Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. In February, Gov. Greg Abbott's chief of staff, Gardner Pate, told state agency leaders in a memo that use of DEI policies was against federal and state employment laws. He added that hiring should only be based on merit, asserting that DEI policies illegally discriminate against certain groups, but did not name any groups.

"Indeed, rather than increasing diversity in the workplace, these DEI initiatives are having the opposite effect and are being advanced in ways that proactively encourage discrimination in the workplace," the memo read.

Since then, the University of Texas system, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech have announced they would not use DEI statements in their hiring practices.

"The issue is not diversity - the issue is that equity is not equality, and DEI hiring practices conflate the two," said Renae Eze, Abbott's communications director.

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Texas bill wants ethnic studies to count in high school curriculum

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AUSTIN - A Texas bill would make ethnic studies courses in state public high schools eligible for graduation credit.

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As Some States Restrict Black Studies, New York City Expands It

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The city will launch lessons about Black and Asian Americans across more schools next year, but some students say there should be more.

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The Mountain View Los Altos High School District faces a lawsuit compelling it to turn over documents in response to a California Public Records Act request regarding its ethnic studies curriculum.

The Deborah Project, a Maryland-based nonprofit law group that represents Jewish and pro-Israel interests, filed the lawsuit after not receiving the documents it requested in February to investigate whether MVLA had adopted an "overly anti-Israel, antisemitic and anti-Zionist teaching program."

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Nonprofit sues MVLA over documents on ethnic studies course

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The Mountain View Los Altos High School District faces a lawsuit compelling it to turn over documents in response to a California Public Records Act request regarding its ethnic studies

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The political uproar over racial and ethnic studies programs in higher education is clouding the reality that few four-year institutions offer a major in Latino studies.

Such small numbers also are the reality with majors in the study of other racial and ethnic groups.

A major in Latino studies is offered by just 89 of more than 2,600 four-year colleges and universities, according to a n e w report by The Latinx Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Further, the majority of those programs, most established after the Mexican American and Puerto Rican student movements of the 1960s and 1970s, are dramatically underfunded and understaffed, with many having one or no core tenure-track faculty in the program, the researchers found.

Just 252 four-year higher education institutions, or 9%, offer an African American or a Black studies major; 52, or 2%, offer an Asian American studies major; 74 or 3% offer a Native American studies major; and 146 or 5% offer a broader Ethnic Studies major, the Berkley research released this month found.

Given those numbers, the turmoil over ethnic studies seems "overblown," said G. Cristina Mora, the study's lead author.

"We are far from having an equitable higher education system that offers the classes and research opportunities on all communities, and at the same time, it's quite ironic that these nascent and vulnerable programs are targeted because they are somehow taking over," she added.

"Lack of investment in Latino studies is really a willful blindness as we move into the future," she said.

Conservative fears over the study of white supremacy's role in the making of the U.S. and its persistence in American institutions have led to campaigns to narrow ethnic studies instruction.

But Latino and other racial and ethnic studies not only tell the stories of respective communities, but also are critical to collecting demographic data, Mora said.

Students in programs with classes on Latino demographics, Mora said, gain better understanding of why some cities are growing at a faster rate than others. Through Latino politics classes, students learn to better understand Latino political trends and how they differ from one state to the next, she said.

Nonetheless, the teaching of accomplishments, histories, demographics, culture and more of Latino, Black, Asian and Native Americans and others has become a magnet for political vitriol and a conservative clampdown.

In Florida - where nearly 6 million or more than a quarter of residents are Latino - a House bill aims to curtail teaching about race and the histories of Latinos and others. The bill is based on the political wish list of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to be a 2024 Republican presidential candidate. Texas has also targeted racial and ethnic studies and their instructors, even though Latinos outnumber every other racial group in the state, including non-Hispanic white people.

Critics of ethnic studies seem to be "operating on a caricature of what this intellectual study is," Mora said.

Researchers 'alarmed' by academia's slow pace

Mora said she and her fellow researchers launched their study to see if universities have been keeping pace.

The U.S. has some 62 million Latinos whose backgrounds range from those with deep roots in regions that were part of Spain and Mexico before they were U.S. states, to descendants of enslaved people exported to Latin America, to recent arrivals in the country. More than half of the nation's growth in 2020 was driven by Latinos, while the white population numbers have shrunk.

The Latino population's younger makeup means it is providing a steady stream of college-age Americans and will do so for years to come.

That trend is reflected in the increase in Hispanic Serving Institutions, or HSIs, which numbered 571 in 2021-22. HSIs are two- and four-year institutions with 25% or more full-time, enrolled students are Hispanic or Latino. Latino enrollment at all four-year institutions has been increasing over the past couple of decades.

Mora said they expected to find some growth in the hiring of Latino faculty and investment in Latino studies. She said, however, that they were "alarmed" by how flat the trends have been.

Their research also showed that most of the growth of Latino studies programs is happening at private universities. Some of the newer programs appear to be "shell" programs when it comes to staffing and classes. Half of those established since 2000s have none or one faculty member. Often some of the newer programs rely on a lecturer or an adjunct professor to run the program, she said.

The researchers found several programs offered only Spanish-language classes - even though a substantial share of U.S. Latinos don't speak Spanish fluently, according to Mora.

Latino Studies grew out of a community imperative, the result of strikes and demands that academia reflect "our histories and stories, which is the story of all ethnic studies," Mora said.

The first universities to form Latino studies programs were public land grant universities in the West and Southwest with strong investment. But the growth of Latino studies programs stagnated in the 1980s and 1990s and jump-started again in the 2000s, with some new programs in the Midwest, following Latino demographic trends, Mora said.

"We don't suggest that everyone has to major in Latino studies, but we do suggest that Latino studies is a really important course of intellectual understanding that helps all students and all Americans," she said.

"The way I see Latino studies, I see a real opportunity for diverse understandings of where we have come from to better understand where we are going," Mora said. "Latino communities aren't going anywhere. They are just becoming a much more important part of the country."

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Few universities offer ethnic studies majors despite conservative attacks on diversity

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The political uproar over diversity studies is clouding the reality that few four-year institutions offer a major in Latino or other ethnic studies.

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SAN ANTONIO - Texas Rep. Christina Morales, a Houston Democrat, knows her quest to pass a bipartisan bill that would require Mexican American and Black studies to be offered in every school district has gotten tougher. But then, she said, history abounds with Latinos and others succeeding amid seemingly insurmountable barriers.

"My grandparents had the first Latino-owned funeral home and the first Spanish-language radio station in the entire Gulf Coast," Morales said. Her grandmother was part of the League of United Latin American Citizens and other organizations formed to help promote Latino businesses.

Those connections and sense of history helped Morales, whose mother and father had both died by the time she'd reached her mid-teens.

"So many kids in our community ... they need hope in seeing people who look like them and share similar stories of how they overcame obstacles and became leaders in the community," said Morales.

Mexican American and African American studies already are elective courses in Texas, but they are not offered in all of its 1,250 school districts. Currently, 63 districts teach Mexican American studies, and 58 teach African American studies.

The bill reintroduced by Morales would require all districts to offer the courses as social studies options in addition to world history and world geography.

The bill would also allow the courses to count toward graduation credit.

The Texas House voted for an identical bill in the 2021 regular legislative session, and while it won the approval of a Senate committee, it didn't get a vote on the Senate floor.

And the reintroduced legislation is not guaranteed an easy path this session. Texas lawmakers have reconvened amid campaigns in GOP-controlled states, including Texas, to contain or limit teaching on race, and to end programs aimed at diversity and inclusion.

Attacks on ethnic studies and diversity initiatives have become a rallying cry for potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates who hope to rouse their party's right-wing base.

Morales sighed heavily when asked about her confidence that she could get her bill to the governor's desk and signed in such a political atmosphere.

"I know that we have some challenges ahead of us, but in the face-to-face conversations I've had with some members, I do feel there are enough moderates still" to get this bill to the finish line, she said.

Rep. Charles Cunningham, a retired businessman, is the bill's co-author. Cunningham, a Republican who served on the Humble, Texas, school board and was a city council member, took office this year.

Roel Benavides, Cunningham's chief of staff, said Cunningham had a family emergency that made him unavailable for comment Friday.

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott's office did not respond to inquiries on whether he'd support the bipartisan legislation or what form it would need to take to gain his support.

The large majority of the state's Latinos are of Mexican descent, according to the Pew Research Center. The Census Bureau estimated that the number of Hispanics in Texas has surpassed non-Hispanic whites in the state. Texas is the state with the nation's highest Black population - almost 4 million, or about 14% of Texas' total population.

In a news conference this week, lawmakers acknowledged they had a tougher political terrain to navigate.

Rep. Trey Martinez Fisher, who heads the Texas Democratic Caucus, said threats to college campuses regarding diversity and inclusion come with every news cycle, and "everyone seems to be walking on eggshells." Despite "the odds and the headwinds," the legislation is not meant to pit Republicans against Democrats or people of color against one another he said.

"My message here at this podium is to reach out across the aisle and let Republican colleagues know that this is an opportunity for us to stand together as one Texas, 254 counties, 31 million people, ninth largest economy in the world," Martinez Fischer of San Antonio said. "We're a global economy, we need to adopt and accept our global history."

Rep. Ron Reynolds, chairman of the Texas Black Caucus, said passage of the bill could begin to heal the fractures in the state caused by bickering over diversity, equity and inclusion programs and critical race theory, a generally college-level concept whose main idea is that racism is systemic, or embedded, in laws, institutions and policies.

Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who supports the bill, said that Asian Americans had been targeted by laws that would deprive them of their civil rights, which angers the community. Bill SB147, filed for this session, would make it illegal for Chinese citizens to buy property in Texas, including homes.

To explain the anger, "we had to dig deep into our community history" and explain to people that "back in the 1800s, y'all already did this," Wu said at the news conference, referring to the Alien Land Laws. He also referred to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

"Even though those are historic, community-breaking events for us, they are barely footnotes in our textbooks. ... We refuse to be a footnote," Wu said.

'We need to tell a robust story'

Morales told NBC News that before her grandparents, who were born in the U.S., started their funeral business in Houston, Mexican American families had to hold their services in their homes or garages because white-owned funeral homes would not allow them in their establishments.

Morales said her father had died of a massive stroke when she was 11, and her mother had died of kidney failure when Morales was 15. Her grandmother taught her about the funeral business, and when her grandmother died, Morales, at the age of 23, became the owner of her grandparents' funeral home.

Her grandparents' radio station, KLVL, had a show "Yo Necesito Trabajo (I Need Work) and helped many people find jobs.

"One man came to me and said, 'My dad got a job through "Yo Necesito Trabajo" and he ended up putting us (his children) through college with that job,'" Morales said.

"Every (ethnic) community in our state has contributed to the success of our neighborhood, our city and our nation," she said. "We need to tell a robust story when it comes to our history."

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Can a bill to boost Mexican American and Black ethnic studies pass in Texas?

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A bipartisan bill to make Mexican American and Black ethnic studies available in all Texas schools is being reintroduced as legislators are unsure if they'll get support.

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LBUSD to introduce state-mandated high school ethnic studies courses - Signal Tribune

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The Long Beach Unified School District is developing new high school ethnic studies courses to meet state graduation requirements.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration cautioned California public school leaders Wednesday that ethnic studies classes being adopted across the state must not promote "bias, bigotry, or discrimination" against protected groups, which include Jews and Israelis.

The letter followed an advocacy campaign in recent months from Jewish organizations concerned that ethnic studies - a discipline that traces its roots to radical protest movements in the 1960s - not include anti-Israel and "anti-Jewish" content.

Newsom, a progressive Democrat who has touted California's partnership with Israel on water conservation and toured the country in 2008, has found himself navigating a politically fraught issue in ethnic studies, which has pitted even progressives against each other since 2019.

The issue is heating up again as California students head back to class. At the center of the debate are politics surrounding Israel, questions about academic jargon and radical political views in the classroom, and even the definition of the discipline.

Newsom vetoed a bill requiring ethnic studies in 2020 because of concerns surrounding the draft curriculum's anti-Israel content and political orientation, which critics called extreme. After the model curriculum was revised, Newsom signed the bill, known as AB 101, into law a year later.

On Wednesday, the State Board of Education "on behalf of the entire Administration of Governor Newsom" encouraged the use of the revised statewide model curriculum, which was "created over years of rigorous vetting," according to the letter signed by Brooks Allen, Newsom's education policy adviser and the executive director of the State Board of Education.

"Vendors have begun promoting curriculum for [school districts] to use for ethnic studies courses," the letter said. "We have been advised, however, that some vendors are offering materials that may not meet the requirements of AB 101," particularly the requirement that materials "not reflect or promote, directly or indirectly, any bias, bigotry, or discrimination against any person or group of persons" on the basis of a protected category like race, religion, or national origin.

"Accordingly, before any curriculum or instructional materials for ethnic studies courses are selected, we strongly encourage you to closely scrutinize them to ensure that they meet the above requirements," the letter said.

AB 101 requires California high schools to offer the course, which examines race and ethnicity with a focus on the experiences and perspective of people of color, by 2025. From a policy standpoint, the measure earned widespread support in the legislature, benefiting from research showing that ethnic studies improved educational outcomes for students of color. However, the quality of that research has since been disputed.

In 2019, a state committee of ethnic studies teachers and professors - assembled to create the curriculum - published a draft that earned the support of political activists and in certain corners of academia, but was criticized in the press including in the Los Angeles Times whose editorial board called it "jargon-filled" and "all-too-PC."

A host of Jewish groups decried it as containing "anti-Jewish bias" - the draft was sharply critical of Israel, equated the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement to American social protest movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, and included a Palestinian hip-hop lyric about Israel "using the press," which critics deemed potentially antisemitic. The curriculum did not meaningfully discuss antisemitism or the contributions of Jewish Americans.

Since then, the Anti-Defamation League, California Legislative Jewish Caucus, Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area and a host of other local, statewide and national groups have become involved. They've met with state lawmakers, state Department of Education officials and Newsom himself. The Department of Education has received thousands of public comments expressing concern about the curriculum, and Jewish parents have shown up at contentious school board meetings to express their views.

In an interview with J. in 2019, Newsom said the original curriculum would "never see the light of day."

Amid the flood of criticism, the curriculum - known as the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, or ESMC - was thoroughly revised by the Education Department. References to BDS were removed, and two lessons on Jewish Americans - focusing on Jews of color - were added.

But the educators who supervised the original curriculum were outraged by those changes and others. They said that the "critical edge" of ethnic studies had been removed and that the process had been hijacked by "privileged voices," "right-wing political lobbyists" and "conservative members of the Jewish community."

"All mention of Palestine has been erased," according to a statement on the website of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, an opponent of the new version of the model curriculum. "The current ESMC is a watered-down version of multicultural United States history."

Now, groups like the Liberated consortium, an independent educational consulting group formed by supporters of the original draft, and another private contractor called Community Responsive Education (CRE) are heading directly to school districts. Since the law requiring ethnic studies education doesn't dictate what curriculum schools must use - it only offers a model and encourages its use - schools have independence about what version of ethnic studies they teach.

The Liberated consortium, which was sued last year in Los Angeles over alleged civil rights violations, has signed consulting contracts with Castro Valley, Hayward and other school districts.

CRE has contracted with Oakland (for a third grade social studies unit), Pittsburg, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (near Santa Cruz) and others.

"In the last several months, we have determined that there is greater need for statewide organizing around this work," David Bocarsly, executive director of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, told J. on Wednesday. He said that JPAC "has always played the lead organizing role on state level advocacy" and aims "to be proactive, to make sure we see curricula across California schools that we find appropriate."

On June 27, JPAC sent a letter to Newsom, state Attorney General Rob Bonta and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond expressing concern that Jewish communities had "discovered discriminatory content in several school districts" in recent months.

The letter, which was seen by J., was signed by more than 30 Jewish community leaders including Joy Sisisky, CEO of S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, Tye Gregory, CEO of JCRC Bay Area, and Rachel Urman, director of American Jewish Committee's Northern California office.

Speaking to J., Bocarsly cited a controversial curriculum that had been approved in the Santa Ana Unified School District in Orange County and was lambasted by the local office of the ADL.

The course is called " Ethnic Studies: World Geography." A course outline shows that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes up frequently. It states that students will "critique" the 1947 partition "plan by the United Nations to divide Palestine between Jewish and Palestinians [sic] areas."

It also notes that "state sanctioned violence against Palestinians, Rwandans, and Kurds will be placed in their proper context as consequences of European imperial nation-making." And students will be asked, "How has British Imperialism led to violent conflicts over issues of religious spaces, resources, and sovereignty in Palestine?" (The course also includes an explainer video on the "Israel-Palestine conflict" published by Vox that is an effort to present a balanced view of the conflict.)

The ADL criticized the course in May, arguing that its "essential questions are leading" and "portray the Jewish community in Israel as settler-colonizers, rather than providing proper historical context on the Jewish peoples' ancestral connection to the land."

"ADL is profoundly disappointed to see the inclusion of an extremely biased and one-sided view of Israel in the Santa Ana Unified School District's (SAUSD) Ethnic Studies course curricula," a May 5 letter to the SAUSD superintendent said. The course "presents a biased view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an inaccurate representation of the history of the region, and a narrow view of Jewish history."

No members of the Santa Ana school board responded to J. requests for comment.

This is a major development.

CRE, meanwhile, was founded by Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, an ethnic studies educator and a staunch opponent of revisions to the statewide model. In 2021, Tintiangco-Cubales signed onto a letter urging the State Board of Education to reject the changes, saying that "Ethnic Studies guiding principles, knowledge, frameworks, pedagogies, and community histories have been compromised due to political and media pressure."

Among the revisions opposed, according to the letter, was the inclusion of Jewish American Studies under the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) umbrella, stating that this had "no institutional history" and was rooted in "pressure from pro-apartheid Israel interest groups."

Neither CRE nor Tintiangco-Cubales responded to a request for comment.

During a Wednesday forum on combating antisemitism, Thurmond, the state schools superintendent, assured Jewish community leaders and hundreds of attendees that his office has been keeping tabs on school districts. California, the most populous state in the U.S., enrolls nearly 6 million students in more than 10,000 public schools.

"We've actually sent numerous letters to school districts reminding them that there are guardrails in law, that ethnic studies should not create anything that might be antisemitic and should not harken back to any previous version of the model curriculum that was not approved," Thurmond said, adding that if parents or anyone else hears about antisemitism in schools, "we'd like to get that phone call."

The JCRC Bay Area applauded the Newsom administration's latest efforts in a statement on Wednesday. During the legislative process, lawmakers inserted what they called "guardrails" into the ethnic studies law meant to block potentially biased material against Jews or Israelis from being taught - guardrails that Newsom supports.

"We appreciate the commitment that Governor Newsom and the State Board of Education have shown to ensure fair and equitable treatment for Jewish - and all students - in our K-12 public schools," the JCRC statement said. "In the months ahead, JCRC will continue working with leadership statewide and school districts across the Bay Area on ethnic studies implementation.

The Jewish Public Affairs Committee concurred.

"This is a major development," the Jewish Public Affairs Committee said in an emailed press release. "JPAC leads a broad coalition of Jewish organizations across the state who want to see a robust ethnic studies course taught in high schools, ensure it is free from antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and include lessons about the Jewish American experience."

"Governor Newsom answers the call," the release said.

J. covers our community better than any other source and provides news you can't find elsewhere. Support local Jewish journalism and give to J. today. Your donation will help J. survive and thrive!

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Newsom administration warns against bias in ethnic studies

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As the school year begins, the battle over ethnic studies courses in California's public high schools is heating back up.

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MN mandate for ethnic studies is a 'complete takeover' of radical ideology: Katherine Kersten | Fox News Video

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American Experiment senior policy fellow, Katherine Kersten, joined 'Fox & Friends Weekend' to discuss the impact of 'wokeness' in America's classrooms.

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The Palo Alto Unified School District is moving to adopt an ethnic studies graduation requirement starting with the Class of 2029.

The district staff asked the school board on Tuesday night, Sept. 12, for direction on which class to start requiring the course for graduation - 2028, 2029 or 2030.

The board favored going with the Class of 2029, or students who currently are in seventh grade, because according to the board that gives the district good enough time to prepare implementing ethnic studies as a stipulation for graduation.

"I would like this to happen as soon as possible," board Vice President Jesse Ladomirak said. "But I don't feel it's my job to second-guess what the experts are telling us they need to do this well."

Nicole Chiu-Wang, speaking as co-president of the Palo Alto Chinese Parents Club, wants to see the requirement in place sooner than later.

"Every year that we wait we're depriving our students of the opportunity to better understand the world they live in," Chiu-Wang told the board. "Requiring ethnic studies for all our high school students is an important step toward addressing racism in our schools. So please, let's not delay."

The board is expected to approve the new graduation requirement at its Oct. 10 meeting.

District leaders recognize that "our younger generation appreciates diversity," Palo Alto Unified spokesperson George Pinckney said. "Understanding different backgrounds tends to help people appreciate differences."

The district, which currently offers ethnic studies as a one-semester elective course, would still be ahead of the state's timeline for high schools to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement.

In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into state law Assembly Bill 101, which mandates that all public high schools - including charters - offer ethnic studies commencing with the 2025-26 academic year. The bill also requires students to finish one semester of the course to be able to graduate. This condition for graduation must take effect starting with students completing high school in 2030.

Students could meet the requirement in various ways, which include taking an existing ethnic studies course or one that is approved within some other curriculum.

Another possibility is by taking a course based on the State Department of Education's ethnic studies model curriculum, which is a comprehensive guide for schools on how to teach and integrate the subject in their academic framework.

The state leaves the specifics of what is taught in ethnic studies up to the local schools. The course would introduce high schoolers to concepts that they otherwise wouldn't have a chance to study until college.

In response to AB 101, Palo Alto Unified formed the Ethnic Studies Committee, involving social science teachers, instructional leads and administrators, to explore how the district would incorporate the course as a graduation requirement, among other issues.

Nearby, the Mountain View Los Altos Union district has already approved ethnic studies as a graduation requirement starting this school year with its ninth-graders.

The Education Department describes ethnic studies as the interdisciplinary examination of race and ethnicity with a focus on the experiences of people of color in the United States. Among the many themes and topics that this curriculum can cover are a study of Mexican American texts, the implications of imperialism on Southeast Asian war refugees and African American social movements.

Enacting ethnic studies in high schools, however, has met with controversies. Some Jewish groups criticized the state's effort as emphasizing Palestinian oppression while minimizing the Holocaust.

Other groups felt excluded in the ethnic-studies material that the state was developing. Still others have criticized the state's model curriculum as racially divisive, counter to the notion that studying other cultures fosters unity.

Earlier this year, the nonprofit law firm Deborah Project filed lawsuits against Mountain View Los Altos Union and Hayward Unified, seeking public documents related to the districts' ethnic-studies program. The firm, which represents Jewish students in civil-rights cases, is looking for information that could express antisemitic teaching.

At Tuesday's meeting, Palo Alto Unified Superintendent Don Austin sought to distance the district from the controversies.

"What's really important for everyone to hear is that controversy is around some elements of the model curriculum," Austin said. "We are not adopting that. We are taking our existing course. We are modifying (and) beefing it up, but we're also going out to specifically speak with groups that have found exceptions to pieces of the model curriculum."

Ethnic studies took root during the civil-rights era of the 1960s as Black students at what is now San Francisco State University pushed for coursework that recognized African American history. This push culminated in a student strike in 1968 that called for equal access to public education, an increase in instructors of color and a curriculum embracing the histories of ethnic minorities.

In 1969, San Francisco State established the first college of ethnic studies while University of California leaders approved a department at UC Berkeley focused on that field.
Intervention regarding student behavior
At last night's meeting the Board of Education also received an update on the district's efforts to strengthen its program related to student behavior.

Since last school year, the district has been working to bolster the program amid a rise in behavioral issues among students, especially after they returned to campus following the peak of pandemic. But the district sped up that work after a special-needs student attacked two teachers at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School in May.

The district has brought in 12 new behavior-intervention specialists. Each school has a dedicated specialist to help address behavioral concerns involving both general- and special-education students. The experts will also provide support to teachers and staff in this regard.

The district will also hold monthly de-escalation training, in which faculty and administrators will work on skills to prevent, minimize and manage student behavioral challenges.

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Palo Alto Unified prepares to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement

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The Palo Alto Unified School District is moving to adopt an ethnic studies graduation requirement starting with the Class of 2029. The Board of Education favored the move on Tuesday night, Sept. 12.

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On the last day of summer break, Celine Chien stood by a giant wall at Menlo-Atherton High. Paintbrush in hand, the rising junior faced a half-finished mural three times her height - one Celine had designed after taking an ethnic studies class in ninth grade.

On one end, there was a group of Native Americans from the Ohlone tribe, the Bay Area's original inhabitants. On the other, a group of high school students stood together, eyes toward the future. A series of characters filled the gaps in between, from immigrants sprinting toward the Gold Rush, to protesters brandishing Black Lives Matter signs. And toward the top right corner, a student held her fist in the air atop a pile of history books.

That's ethnic studies in a nutshell, Celine says, referring to the course that examines history, power and activism through the eyes of under-represented groups. Like dozens across the Bay Area, her high school adopted the course before a 2025 deadline, when ethnic studies courses will be required for every high schooler in California. The Golden State is the first to mandate the course nationwide - but the adoption has been far from smooth.

"Across the country, ethnic studies is rare, and people of color are under-represented in textbooks," said Mara Cavallaro, who graduated from Menlo-Atherton in 2018 and, two years later, helped bring ethnic studies to her alma mater. "It's frustrating to have to prove or explain the value of ethnic studies and why students of color deserve to see themselves in the curriculum. That's such a basic ask."

In the Bay Area, many school districts have beaten the bill to the punch. Two years before the state deadline, 326 schools in the 10-county region are already offering ethnic studies courses that count toward a student's requirements for admission to the University of California and California State University.

The San Francisco and Oakland Unified school districts were the earliest here to adopt the discipline, rolling it out in 2015 and 2016 respectively. It's already mandated in the state's largest districts, including Los Angeles, Fresno and San Diego Unified. And from the 2015-16 academic year until the 2018-19 one, the number of students enrolled in ethnic studies courses jumped by 150% statewide.

"We get questions like, can I opt out of ethnic studies?" said Lailan Huen, who works in Oakland Unified's Office of Equity. "You can go live in the mountains by yourself. But if you want to live in a place like Oakland - one of the most diverse cities in the world - then no. You cannot opt out of learning to navigate race, identity and power."

For decades, Huen has watched the ethnic studies debate unfold at her front door. The discipline was born just across the Bay Bridge, with San Francisco State's Black Student Union leading the charge in 1968. Two decades later, Huen was a student at an Oakland Unified high school herself - and by 17, she was one of many pushing for ethnic studies in the district. But that didn't happen until 2015, when Oakland Unified passed an ethnic studies policy and later rolled out the course districtwide.

"That really happened because of decades of students organizing in the school district, fighting for ethnic studies and pushing to see themselves reflected in their curriculum," Huen said.

Five years later, students such as Cavallaro found themselves in a similar situation. By 2020, they were confronted by the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, sparking the largest racial justice protests since the Civil Rights Movement. Cavallaro thought that maybe education could help us make sense of this moment.

"Ethnic studies demands that we talk about the histories of oppression and how they manifest today. Imagine living through the summer of 2020 and not knowing about that?" said Cavallaro.

After finishing up her final exams at Brown University, Cavallaro - who was then a rising junior - wrote a petition with Ella Missan, a high school friend, to bring ethnic studies to Menlo-Atherton High. The following year, the Sequoia Union High School District began planning the course's curriculum. And a year after that, ethnic studies was made mandatory for every ninth-grade student.

Ronnie Sanchez, Celine's former ethnic studies teacher, explained the way his course works. First, he uses his students' backgrounds to shape the course curriculum. Then they study migration and how each of the students' families came to the Bay Area. After that, they move to power, dissecting racism, classism and sexism. And then they focus on social movements, especially those that took place in the Bay Area.

Finally, students are asked to make a change of their own through a personal project - one that touches on anything from elevating students' voices to confronting racism at their school. Celine created a program to channel students' concerns to the Menlo-Atherton administration. Soon after, that project helped her become class president. And a year after that, she won a mural competition to bring the design she'd created in ethnic studies to life.

"Ethnic studies really allows us to open our minds and think about how we can solve the issues that we see," said Celine.

Despite that, ethnic studies is far from universally accepted. Just miles from Menlo-Atherton High, two school districts - Hayward Unified and Mountain View-Los Altos Union High - are under fire for their ethnic studies programming, with lawsuits alleging that their curriculums are anti-Semitic. Across the country, ethnic studies has been blasted for much of the same, along with clashes over which groups to include in ethnic studies curriculums and critiques that it divides students into incompatible groups: the oppressors and the oppressed.

It's not the first time such concerns have been noted. When the first draft of the state's ethnic studies curriculum was published in 2016, Jewish groups objected that antisemitism was left out of the document while Israeli persecution of Palestinians was highlighted - despite the fact that antisemitism in the United States was on the rise.

In 2020, Newsom unexpectedly vetoed a bill that would make ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement, stating that the model curriculum was "insufficiently balanced and inclusive." The curriculum was later revised to include the experiences of Jewish, Armenian and Sikh communities and remove content that many Jewish groups found harmful.

In 2021, Newsom approved that version of the model ethnic studies curriculum - one that took five years and four drafts to reach the finish line.

If implemented correctly, the approved ethnic studies curriculum could boost awareness of the challenges Jewish communities face and shed light on the history of the Jewish people beyond just the Holocaust, explained Adriana Lombard, the director of public education at the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area. But since the state's model curriculum is just a guideline, the organization is now working with 121 districts to ensure their curriculums are "bias-free," and that the most divisive topics - such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - are saved for a world history class.

"We want to use this as a learning opportunity," Lombard said, "to repair the harm that's been done and build something stronger."

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Ethnic studies isn't required until 2025. So why is it already a mainstay at these Bay Area high schools?

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Menlo-Atherton high adopted ethnic studies before the 2025 deadline, when it will be required for every high schooler in California. The Golden State is the first to mandate the course nationwide -- but the adoption has been far from smooth.

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From Concerned Jewish Parents & Teachers of L.A. v. Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, decided yesterday by Judge Fernando Olguin (C.D. Cal.).

An unincorporated association, the Concerned Jewish Parents and Teachers of Los Angeles, along with six individuals using the pseudonyms Jane or John Doe ("Doe plaintiffs") initiated this action .... [Their] claims revolve around the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum ("LESMC"), which plaintiffs allege is taught in Los Angeles public schools. According to plaintiffs, the LESMC "denounces capitalism, the nuclear family, and the territorial integrity of the lower 48 states of the United States[,]" and is designed "to expunge the idea of Zionism, and the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel, from the public square[.]" ... With the instant Motion, the Doe plaintiffs seek leave to proceed anonymously....

A party's "use of fictitious names runs afoul of the public's common law right of access to judicial proceedings ... and Rule 10(a)'s command that the title of every complaint 'include the names of all the parties[.]'" Nonetheless, the Ninth Circuit has "permitted parties to proceed anonymously when special circumstances justify secrecy." In particular, courts may "allow parties to use pseudonyms in the 'unusual case' when nondisclosure of the party's identity 'is necessary ... to protect a person from harassment, injury, ridicule or personal embarrassment.'" See also Roe v. Skillz, Inc. (9th Cir. 2021) ("[T]his Court has made clear that use of a pseudonym should only be permitted occasionally and in 'unusual' cases."). Given the "presumption that parties' identities are public information, anonymity is only proper under special circumstances when the party's need for anonymity outweighs prejudice to the opposing party and the public's interest in knowing the party's identity." ...

As an initial matter, the Doe plaintiffs have not established that they personally fear harm of any kind. None of them filed any declarations in support of the Motion. Nor does the Declaration of Lori Lowenthal Marcus, counsel for plaintiffs, provide any basis, let alone an admissible basis, for the court to credit the Doe plaintiffs' purported fears. The Marcus Decl. states that "[e]ach of the persons who is an individual Plaintiff in this case ... is willing to serve as a plaintiff only if they are allowed to proceed anonymously[,]"and recounts three examples of non-plaintiffs who are alleged to have suffered harm as a result of their beliefs. But a desire to proceed anonymously is not tantamount to a fear of severe harm; nor will the court presume the existence of such a fear simply from a party's desire to use a pseudonym. Similarly, plaintiffs offer no basis for the court to impute the alleged experiences of non-plaintiffs to the Doe plaintiffs.

Nevertheless, even assuming there is some valid basis for the Doe plaintiffs to fear some sort of harm, such fear-especially one as unsubstantiated and unsupported as the one before the court-is plainly unreasonable. As to the Doe plaintiffs who are parents, they contend that the "[d]anger of harassment is particularly great here because the objects of the harassment ... include children[.]"But plaintiffs provide only one example-of a non- plaintiff child-who allegedly felt "humiliated and embarrassed" after being told, "that's not what this is for[,]" when the non-plaintiff child raised the topic of anti-Jewish discrimination during a class discussion about discrimination against ethnic groups. This one example is plainly insufficient. For one, plaintiffs provide no argument or evidence that this student's experience is likely to be shared by the children of the Doe plaintiffs; nor is there any evidence or argument as to whether any of the Doe plaintiffs' children have (or had) the same teacher or even went to the same school as this alleged non-plaintiff student. For another, none of the Doe plaintiffs' children are themselves plaintiffs.

{The court is troubled by the lack and/or insufficiency of the evidence offered in support of plaintiffs' Motion. Plaintiffs rely only on a single, three-page declaration from counsel, as well as citations to various national news articles that report general trends in anti-Jewish violence. Plaintiffs do not offer any declarations from any of the Doe plaintiffs-anonymously or not-and do not make any attempt to identify any specific harm that the Doe plaintiffs might suffer were the Motion to be denied.}

Crucially, though, "[c]ommunity disagreement which results in embarrassment is not enough to support the use of pseudonyms." ... "[E]vidence that a party may face social ostracization, without more, does not establish that the threatened harm is severe." ... Thus, the court is not persuaded that the Doe plaintiffs' fears of community disapproval or social ostracization reasonably constitutes severe harm.

As for the remaining Doe plaintiffs who are teachers or former teachers, plaintiffs argue that "there has been retaliation by defendant [union] UTLA against teachers because of their views on the issues at stake in this case." In support of this contention, plaintiffs state that their attorney was consulted by a non-plaintiff who "made public statements evidencing this person's opposition to UTLA's attack on Israel during the Gaza war in 2021[,]" and who was asked to meet with the Los Angeles Unified School District ("LAUSD") regarding the statements.

Given that the investigation was ultimately dropped and the teacher was not punished-and putting aside the fact that the statement in the Marcus Decl. is inadmissible hearsay-the investigation cannot reasonably be relied upon as evidence of risk of a severe harm. This is particularly true where the specific conduct that incited the investigation-here, the statements and the forum in which they were made-are not before the court and, so, the court cannot gauge whether the substance of this lawsuit is meaningfully comparable to the substance of these statements.

But even assuming, as plaintiffs seem to urge, that the Doe plaintiffs might face some risk to their jobs if the Motion were denied, the Ninth Circuit has "distinguished 'perhaps typical' fears of termination and blacklisting, which many plaintiffs face, from the 'extraordinary' harm required to justify granting anonymity." In short, plaintiffs have not demonstrated a risk of severe harm to the Doe plaintiffs who are current or former teachers.

Finally, the court cannot credit plaintiffs' citations to various news articles that report general examples of physical violence against Jewish people, as these citations do nothing to show a particularized risk of physical harm to the Doe plaintiffs.... See Doe v. Kamehameha School (9th Cir. 2010) ("[P]hysical harm presents the paradigmatic case for allowing anonymity."); see, e.g., Doe v. Lloyd (C.D. Cal. 2022) ("[The] type of case without more particularized concerns and evidence is not enough to conclude that there is a fear of physical harm that rises to the necessary level to warrant maintaining the action with a pseudonym."); Doe v. NFL Enterprises, LLC (N.D. Cal. 2017) ("Plaintiff cites no actual threat of any harm against her specifically.").

In short, the court is not persuaded that plaintiffs have established that the Doe plaintiffs fear severe harm, or that such a fear would be reasonable if it did exist....

Given that the Doe plaintiffs' identities and interests are central to the questions of standing and mootness, permitting the Doe plaintiffs to proceed pseudonymously would hamstring defendants' ability to litigate the case, and require the court to expend limited judicial resources on a case over which it may lack jurisdiction. Thus, defendants would suffer prejudice were the Doe plaintiffs permitted to proceed anonymously.

Finally, plaintiffs argue that denial of the Motion would run counter to the public's interest, because the Doe plaintiffs would decline to pursue the case if they were not permitted to proceed anonymously. However, were the court to credit such an argument, almost every case in which a plaintiff threatens to drop their lawsuit if not permitted to proceed anonymously would require a finding that the public interest favors anonymity. See U.S. v. Stoterau (9th Cir. 2008) ("Such a significant broadening of the circumstances in which we have permitted pseudonymity is contrary to our long-established policy of upholding the public's common law right of access to judicial proceedings, and contrary to our requirement that pseudonymity be limited to the unusual case.") "Federal courts are courts of public record, and the strong presumption is that the public has a right to know who is seeking what in court and whether he or she is entitled to the relief sought." Under the circumstances here, the Doe plaintiffs have not shown that their need for anonymity outweighs "the public's interest in knowing the party's identity." ...

Courts have generally been somewhat more open to pseudonymous litigation in predominantly legal challenges, where the plaintiff's personal credibility is largely not at stake. But even there, the strong presumption is that plaintiffs must sue in their own names, in the absence of a pretty concrete showing of threatened harm. And, as the court noted, courts insist that this threatened harm go beyond the normal risk of social ostracism (or even professional or economic retaliation) that many plaintiffs and defendants routinely face. For more, see The Law of Pseudonymous Litigation.

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Court Rejects Pseudonymity in Lawsuit Over "Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum"

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From Concerned Jewish Parents & Teachers of L.A. v. Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, decided yesterday by Judge Fernando...

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More than 50 Harvard affiliates gathered in Boylston Hall on Saturday for an inaugural organizing summit on ethnic studies, hosted by members of the Harvard Ethnic Studies Coalition.

The summit continues a decades-long push led by students, faculty, and alumni for the creation of an ethnic studies department at Harvard. This year, the movement organized an ethnic studies advocacy week and protested at an ice cream social hosted by Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Organizers said they hoped the summit will re-energize ethnic studies organizing on campus.

Rebecca S. Zhang '26, one of the lead organizers of the summit, said the goal was to develop long-term strategies and concrete goals for organizing.

"The fight for ethnic studies at Harvard has been going on for so long - it's been going on for over 51 years," Zhang said. "But I think that because there's been little long-term strategy created between these years, administration is very easily able to just out-wait a student - wait for them to graduate - and I think that was something that we really wanted to address by creating a long-term strategy."

In 2009, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences began offering ethnic studies as a secondary field - renamed in 2012 to Ethnicity, Migration, Rights - and in 2017, the History and Literature concentration introduced an ethnic studies track.

In 2022, the FAS concluded a three-year ethnic studies cluster hire of three professors - Taeku Lee, Erika Lee, and Jesse E. Hoffnung-Garskof '93.

However, the University still lacks a degree-granting ethnic studies department.

Co-lead organizer Zoha A. Ibrahim '26 said the decision to "reform HESC" came after the fall of affirmative action this past summer.

"Ethnic studies was something that we felt could carry forward the momentum around diversity activism on campus," Ibrahim said.

The summit featured an ethnic studies teach-in followed by a faculty and alumni mixer, a faculty-student strategy room, and affinity spaces, concluding with a "next steps" strategy room.

The teach-in featured HESC founder Juhwan Seo '17, who gave a brief history of the coalition and its origins. Zhang and Ibrahim, who hosted the teach-in, then defined the scope of ethnic studies and described the movement at Harvard.

During the faculty-student strategy room, students and affiliates joined four Harvard EMR professors to brainstorm ways to implement an ethnic studies department.

Organizer Emma H. Lu '26 said the strategy room allowed faculty and students to discuss their goals in the same space.

"Whenever we talk to administration about ethnic studies, they say, 'Oh, well, we would have to look at faculty first'" she said.

The College did not respond to request for comment.

In past interviews with The Crimson, Gay has supported the creation of an ethnic studies department, while deferring to faculty members to decide how to build a program.

"From the beginning, I've underscored the importance of starting by building faculty, getting people here, building that critical mass, and then asking those faculty to come together to envision the best structure for their work," she said in an April 2022 interview. "I have not been shy about saying that my hope is that there will be an undergraduate concentration, and I think the interest is there."

To attendee Jessica Wang '26, having an official ethnic studies program on campus means more than just showing appreciation for cultures and identities.

"This is especially important to me on a personal level, but also on a community level, I feel we have a deep responsibility to the past," Wang said.

Emma E. Chan '26 also supported the establishment of a department.

"It's so important not just for those who identify as ethnic minorities but also for everyone to create a better future," Chan said.

"I'm hoping that we raised awareness today and also fostered a bit of solidarity between different groups," she added.

In terms of next steps, the attendees of the final strategy session planned to expand HESC into an official student organization and to form partnerships with Harvard faculty and ethnic studies movements at other institutions.

Karen S. Medina-Perez, a student at the Harvard Extension School, said the changes will take time.

"I don't think it is going to happen tomorrow," she said. "Everything takes time. But just do something. I hope they listen to us and actually do it."

Zhang said the coalition intends to hold smaller conferences and bring back the summit in following years as needed.

"I am definitely hopeful," Zhang said. "We did start strategizing - that was actually probably one of the other highlights of the summit, our strategy room. It was just so cool to hear everyone's ideas, and I feel like I can really see us doing something important in the next few years."

-Staff writer Joyce E. Kim can be reached at joyce.kim@thecrimson.com.

-Staff writer Camilla Wu can be reached at camilla.wu@thecrimson.com.

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Harvard Affiliates Attend Ethnic Studies Organizing Summit, Hoping to Energize Advocacy | News | The Harvard Crimson

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More than 50 Harvard students and affiliates gathered in Boylston Hall on Saturday for an inaugural organizing summit on ethnic studies, hosted by members of the Harvard Ethnic Studies Coalition.

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The Institute of Race and Ethnic Studies

The Institute of Race and Ethnic Studies oversees the minor in Ethnic Studies. The Institute organizes cultural programming on diversity that includes seminars, speakers, and grant applications.

The Ethnic Studies minor at West Chester University is interdisciplinary in nature, including six focus areas. Students select one of these areas (see below) and take courses in such disciplines as anthropology, education, English, history, philosophy, political science, public administration, social work, and sociology.

The goals are to enhance students' appreciation and understanding of ethnic diversity through ethnic studies courses, seminars, research, scholarly conferences, and cultural programs.

The minor requires 18 credit hours of ethnic studies courses: one core course from ANT 220: Cultures of Ethnic Groups in America, SOC 335: Race and Cultural Minorities, or SWO 225: Race Relations, and five additional ethnic studies course electives (go to course list link for a list of electives). Relevant cognate courses are to be chosen in consultation with the student's advisor.

The focus areas are:

The multi-ethnic studies courses are to be selected from the five other focus areas with no more than two courses in any given area.

There are also special interdisciplinary study opportunities which allow ethnic studies minors to: work on oral histories, participate in planning scholarly conferences and special programs, work on archaeological excavations, participate in internships, and study abroad.

How to apply for the minor:

Students apply for the minor by submitting a request to add a minor through your myWCU account.

Classes are listed by focus. Please contact the Director of The Institute of Race and Ethnic Studies to inquire about classes not included on this list.
Ethnic Studies minor course guide sheet

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The Institute of Race and Ethnic Studies oversees the minor in Ethnic Studies. The Institute organizes cultural programming on diversity that includes seminars, speakers, and grant applications. The Ethnic Studies minor at West Chester University is interdisciplinary in nature, including six focus areas.

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The Bigotry of Low Expectations | Kofi Montzka

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Justice by Learning History | Amy Lesserman