Supporting Students Free Expression

Douglas Soule and Ana Goñi-Lessan
Tallahassee Democrat

Excerpt: To be or not to be on the shelf? That’s the question school districts across Florida are asking themselves as they figure out how to apply a new book challenge law. In Leon County, a media specialist says even The Bard William Shakespeare could be at risk.

HB 1069 took effect on July 1. Malloy says she and other media specialists around the state are interpreting this to mean that districts could be breaking the law if they do not pull media that contains the state’s definition of “sexual conduct.” That media includes many books needed to take the College Board’s Advanced Placement Literature exam and dual enrollment classes.

María Luisa Paúl
Washington Post

Excerpt: A teacher was fired Wednesday by the Waukesha, Wis., school board after she publicly criticized school administrators’ decision to prohibit her first-grade class from singing a song about rainbows earlier this year.

PEN America

Excerpt: The end of June marks the conclusion of most state legislative sessions. One new educational gag order and one higher education autonomy restriction became law in June, with others in Ohio and Texas going down narrowly to defeat.

After reviewing these new laws, we examine an aspect of higher education governance that has increasingly been targeted in legislative censorship efforts and seems likely to figure centrally in next year’s legislative sessions: college and university accreditation.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: A women’s soccer coach at Geneva College, a Christian institution in Pennsylvania, was fired in June for posting messages supporting the LGBTQ community on her Instagram page, Religion News Service reported.

The coach, Kelsey Morrison, identifies as gay but was celibate, allowing her to remain within the university’s conduct code, which forbids “sexual immorality” including “homosexual behavior.” She had coached at Geneva for two years.

Stephanie Saul
New York Times

Excerpt: Kathleen McElroy, who had recently served as the director of the University of Texas’s School of Journalism, was thrilled to embark on a new assignment: running a similar program at her alma mater, Texas A&M University.

Quickly, though, things started to unravel. Dr. McElroy, who once worked as an editor at The New York Times, said she was notified by the university’s interim dean of liberal arts, José Luis Bermúdez, of political pushback over her appointment.

Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder
Washington Monthly

Excerpt: The Supreme Court’s rejection of affirmative action in college admissions will provoke widespread debate. But not in the classrooms of Florida’s public colleges and universities, because the Stop WOKE Act prohibits it. 

That’s why we were happy to submit an amicus brief last Friday to support the plaintiffs—seven faculty members and a student group—seeking to strike down the Stop WOKE Act. The law is subject to a preliminary injunction, pending appeal from Florida. The federal appeals court for the Eleventh Circuit is expected to rule in the next six months.