The Guardian: "US educational authorities must resist ‘anti-woke’ censorship"

Editorial signed by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angela Davis, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ibram X Kendi, Gloria Steinem, Cornel West and others... 

"As academics, artists, advocates, policy-makers and concerned persons from different parts of the world, we emphatically oppose the attacks being waged on educational curricula in the United States and elsewhere against intersectionality, critical race theory, Black feminism, queer theory and other frameworks that address structural inequality. We join the thousands of signatories who have opposed censoring critical content in public and higher education. We also agree with the 30 Black LGBTQ organizations that have denounced the “relentless attacks that have led to book banning, curriculum censorship, politically motivated purges of educators, and an exodus of skilled teachers”.

Here we write as concerned individuals in professions ranging from education and research to policymaking, clinical care, and advocacy who have benefited from and continue to use intersectionality and a family of related concepts in our work. In this letter, we express our concerns about the coordinated and dangerous disinformation campaigns that seek to discredit and censor vital tools such as intersectionality and Black feminism. This strategy has surfaced in conjunction with the recent debacle concerning college-level curriculum for high school students in the United States, but has appeared elsewhere as well.

Since the summer of 2020, an emboldened and well-resourced faction in the United States, and increasingly around the globe, has declared war on hard-fought advances in civil and human rights, social justice and democratic participation. This faction, which includes multiple state legislators and governors, has attacked the democratization of the teaching of US history, attempting to censor concepts that sprang to life out of decades of struggle against racism, sexism, ableism, colonialism and related forms of domination."

Continue reading the editorial online -> 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/08/anti-woke-censorship-colleges-open-letter

A woman holds a sign outside a bookstore where Florida governor Ron DeSantis was signing copies of his book on 28 February 2023. Photograph: Marco Bello/Reuters