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Excerpt: A Georgia elementary school teacher has been fired after allegedly violating the state’s educational gag order. Passed in 2022, Georgia’s HB 1084 prohibits teachers from “espousing” certain “divisive concepts” related to race and sex. Katie Rinderle says she read her fifth grade students “My Shadow Is Purple,” by bestselling author-illustrator Scott Stuart, a 2022 book that promotes inclusivity, after purchasing it at the school book fair and having her students vote on what they wanted to read.
Rinderle, a teacher in Cobb County, was believed to be the first teacher fired under the state law.
J.D. Tuccille
Reason
Of all the stupid ideas that have emerged in recent years, there may be none worse than the insistence that unwelcome words are the same as violence. This false perception equates physical acts that can injure or kill people with disagreements and insults that might cause hurt feelings and potentially justifies responding to the latter with the former.
After all, if words are violence, why not rebut a verbal sparring partner with an actual punch? Unfortunately, the idea is embedded on college campuses where a majority of undergraduate students agree that words and violence can be the same thing.
Emma Whitford
Inside Higher Ed
The University of California, Berkeley, suspended lecturerPeyrin Kao without pay for the spring semester because he made pro-Palestinian political comments during class.
Kao, a lecturer in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, participated in a 38-day hunger strike this fall to protest the use of technology in what he called Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He allegedly told students during class that he was undergoing a “starvation diet” and directed them to his website to learn more about why he was striking.
EmmaWhitford
Inside Higher Ed
As promised in a memo from the chancellor earlier this month, some Texas Tech University system faculty members were asked this week to report whether any course they teach “advocates for or promotes” specific race, gender or sexual identities. It is the latest step in a sweeping curricular review focused on limiting discussion of transgender identity, racism and sexuality across the five-campus public system.
