Manufactured outrage
Ideologues hyperpartisan
Reactionary kickback
Anti-CRT Anti-Critical Race Theory
“”There _is_ a crisis in free speech and academic freedom in publicly funded education, and the crisis is not coddled undergraduate students. It’s increasing political interference with what should be free, relatively self-governing academic affairs. As I mentioned in the book, for years, the Goldwater Institute, a hyperpartison think tank, has been politically marketing all kinds of draft legislation that’s not only in Florida, it’s being adopted throughout numerous state legislatures. And I think it’s very important for listeners to understand that, as you mentioned the K through 12 education. You have these broad slogans now, the idea that students in K through 12 are being ideologically indoctrinated; there’s no teaching going on. Or they’re digesting critical race theory. Or that it’s being forced upon them. Or that they’re being sexualized by the teaching of the full spectrum of gender and sexual diversity in humanity from a fact-based perspective. All these claims were first beta tested about college campuses. So the disturbing thing for democracy, as well as K through 12 education, is that when you have these anti-university messages, they become a good engine for generating these political pretexts. And now we have this historical wave of outright state censorship in these state legislatures. My objection to them is not because it’s primarily from one political party. My objection is that it’s anti-democratic; it’s anti-academic; it puts a brake on basic liberties. And so, there you have, really, a crisis in, if you look at what a lot of scholars describe as K through 12 education, in addition to higher education, these are some of the most democratic spaces in the country, because they are governed by locally elected officials – you can go to your school board (of trustees). But, just like on college campuses, we have provocateurs and propagandists trying to gum up the works of, what, in U.S. culture, are what’s relatively speaking, the most open and self-governing forms of institutional decision making.””
Bradford Vivian, professor in the Department of Communication, Arts and Sciences at Penn State University, author of the book, Campus Misinformation: the real threat to free speech in American higher education
The Majority Report YouTube channel.
