This Alliance for Academic Freedom already published new guidance statement. It called for an end to policies designed to limit the advocacy or discussion of “divisive concepts” in college classrooms.
Posted by President Donald Trump Executive Order 13950 On September 22, 2020, federal workplace training programs that teach, advocate, or facilitate any “divisive concepts” are prohibited. Since then, states have made many similar proposals to exclude the concept of divisiveness, or what is sometimes called “critical race theory,” from government workplace training and public schools. More recently, state colleges and universities have also considered such bans. Prominent among these is the Stop Wake Up Act passed by the Florida Legislature in 2022. Enforcement of the statute has now been blocked by a federal district court on unconstitutional grounds.I have got discussed This question With such legislation exist some length.
We should be particularly wary of public officials imposing restrictions on ideas that can be discussed within universities. The temptation is too great to abuse this power to suppress ideas that incumbent politicians or short-lived majorities perceive as threatening their interests and sensitivities. Conservatives rightly warn that campus speech codes are being used to suppress views that some members of the campus community do not like. Campus speech guidelines imposed by lawmakers or trustees should raise the same concerns, even if the target speech is different. Objectionable ideas on college campuses should be challenged through criticism and debate, not through the tools of censorship.
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We should also be concerned about the precedent this divisive concept ban sets for the future. If the legislature could prohibit students from hearing someone espousing the idea that individuals should be treated disadvantageously on the basis of race or gender in order to advance a goal of equity, or that the idea of merit could be oppressive, they could similarly prohibit any number of other controversial Social, political, philosophical or scientific concepts from a college campus. Future legislatures could also prohibit anyone on a state university campus from advocating the idea that human life begins at conception, or that mandatory vaccination policies are an affront to individual liberty, or that free enterprise has always been the engine of human progress. We maintain that college campuses should maintain a degree of isolation from the political passions of the moment, thereby protecting the realm of free inquiry. We should not hope that enlightened politicians will tolerate good ideas and suppress only bad ones. We should leave the process of sorting the good from the bad to academic inquiry and debate, and to free and open classroom debate.
