Larry Bushart Jr. was just freed from a Tennessee jail cell after spending more than a month behind bars — .

The high-profile arrest of the 61-year-old retiree and former cop — which made waves in free speech circles — has all the hallmarks of  in 2025: 

• A chronically online progressive turns to Facebook to troll his MAGA neighbors about President Donald Trump’s seemingly lopsided response to school shootings compared to the murder of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk
  
• An elected, overzealous county sheriff intent on shutting him up
  
• A debate over the limits of the First Amendment — and the president’s broader efforts to silence his critics

 also calls attention to a series of recent Tennessee laws that carry harsh punishments for making school shooting threats and place police officers on campus threat assessment teams working to ferret out students with violent plans before anyone gets hurt. 

In Bushart’s case, the sheriff maintained that his post referring to the president’s reaction to a 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa, constituted a threat “of mass violence at a school,” apparently the local Perry County High School. The rules that ensnared Bushart have also . His is likely to be next, Bushart’s lawyer told The Washington Post.

In the news

Updates in Trump’s immigration crackdown: Federal immigration officers chased a Chicago teacher into the lobby of a private preschool Wednesday and dragged her out as parents watched her cry “tengo papeles!” or “I have papers.” The incident is perhaps the most significant immigration enforcement act in a school to date. | 

• Proposed federal rules would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to collect iris scans, fingerprints and other biometric data on all immigrants — including, for the first time, children under 14 years old — and store it for the duration of each individual person’s “lifecycle.” |  

• On the same day Cornell University notified an international student that his immigration status had been revoked, Google alerted him that federal authorities had subpoenaed his personal emails. Now, the institution won’t say whether federal authorities had tapped into university “emails to track [students] as well.” | 

• In California, federal immigration officers shot a U.S. citizen from behind as he warned the agents that students would soon gather in the area to catch a school bus. The government says the shots were “defensive.” | 

• ‘Deportation isn’t a costume’: A Maine middle school principal is facing pushback for a federal immigration officer Halloween costume, complete with a bulletproof vest that read “ICE.” | 

• In Chicago communities that have seen the most significant increase in immigration enforcement, school enrollment has plunged. |

• Also in Chicago, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to hand over use-of-force records and body camera footage after trick-or-treaters were “tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween.” |

A bipartisan bill seeks to bar minors from using AI chatbots as petrified parents testified their children used the tools with dire consequences — including suicide. Some warn the change could stifle the potential of chatbots for career or mental health counseling services. | 

• A Kentucky mom filed a federal lawsuit against online gaming communities Discord and Roblox alleging the companies jeopardized children’s safety in the name of profit. After her 13-year-old daughter died by suicide last year, the mom said, she found the girl had a second life online that idolized school shooters. | 
  
•  announced it will bar minors from its chatbots, acknowledging safety concerns about how “teens do, and should, interact with this new technology.” | 

A jury awarded $10 million to former Virginia teacher Abby Zwerner on Thursday, two years after she was shot by her 6-year-old student. Zwerner accused her former assistant principal of ignoring repeated warnings that the first grader had a gun. The  to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. | 

‘Creepy, unsettling’: This family spent a week with Grem, a stuffed animal with artificial intelligence designed to “learn” children’ s personalities and hold educational conversations. | 

A judge ordered the Trump administration to release federal funds to California school districts after it sought to revoke nearly $165 million in mental health grants as part of a broader crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion.  The grants funded hundreds of school social workers and counselors. | 

In 95% of schools, active-shooter drills are now a routine part of campus life. Here’s how states are trying to make them less traumatic. | 

A lawsuit against a Pennsylvania school district alleges educators failed to keep students safe after a 12-year-old girl was attacked by a classmate with a metal Stanley drinking cup. | 

‘Inviting government overreach and abuse’: The Education Department was slapped with two lawsuits over new Public Service Loan Forgiveness rules that could bar student borrowers from the program who end up working for the president’s political opponents, including organizations that serve immigrant students and LGBTQ+ youth. | 

ICYMI @The74

Emotional Support

Matilda plots her escape.

Shortly after starting my career as an assistant professor, my dean received a troublesome email from a former public school superintendent. The influential educational leader was demanding my dismissal. My sin — I advocated for pension reform. Fortunately, I had a dean who understood what academic freedom was, and, though I did not yet have tenure, said I was free to make arguments, conduct research, write and talk about academic issues even when those arguments challenged the dominant paradigm. 

There were no grounds for firing me simply because I believed — and could demonstrate — that the state’s teacher pension system was underfunded and unfair.

Academic freedom is granted to professors by their employers not as a matter of right, but as a good practice for facilitating the advancement of knowledge. It is necessary for the pursuit of truth. And tenure, formalized job protections for academics, can serve a valuable purpose. Yet, too many teachers and professors seem to have lost the plot. They see academic freedom as license to say whatever they like without repercussions. They fail to recognize that rights also confer responsibilities.

First and foremost, as those entrusted with educating the next generation, teachers and professors have an obligation to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the positions they hold. They must steward the trust of parents and society by honoring the fact that education is not their private playground, but a public responsibility. Academic freedom does not mean K-12 teachers can close the classroom door and teach whatever they like.

Nor does it mean that a college professor can inject ideas into the classrooms that are not called for by the course description or syllabus. Imagine if a physics professor decided to lecture on gender ideology instead of Newton’s laws, or claimed that gravity was merely a social construct. Educators are not entitled to use required courses as platforms for whatever ideas strike their fancy. Their content must align with the approved curriculum and the professional standards of their discipline. To abuse the classroom in such ways is not an exercise of freedom, but a betrayal of a sacred trust.

Second, educators at all levels must be committed to the pursuit of truth and open dialogue. This means that both students and professors must be free to ask difficult, even unsettling, questions. In his book No Adult Left Behind: How Politics Hijacks Education Policy and Hurts Kids, political scientist Vladimir Kogan asked, “Is the loss of democratic control sometimes necessary to do what is right for kids?” In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner famously asked whether legalized abortion contributed to the decline in crime during the 1990s. These are controversial questions — but they are legitimate. They can and should be investigated and debated. Too many educators today, however, are not interested in the pursuit of truth; they are interested in propagating only their truth. When education becomes a vehicle for ideology rather than inquiry, it ceases to be education at all.

Finally, teachers and professors have a responsibility to form the character of their students. This requires cultivating habits of intellectual humility, honesty and respect for human dignity. When educators glorify acts of violence or trivialize evil, particularly while in the classroom, they betray this calling and corrode the moral foundations upon which genuine education rests. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an of and college professors reveled in his murder, making vile comments online. When rightly challenged on these disgusting statements, they used their rights as a shield. They claimed they were protected by academic freedom or the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees. And maybe they are. That may be up to the courts to decide.

Regardless, in posting such comments, they forgot their responsibilities as educators. Teachers and professors, like all citizens, have free speech — they can publish articles, write blogs or stand on a streetcorner and say what they want. But academic freedom does not entitle them to a paycheck, especially from a government institution. Nor does it entitle them to conscript students into hearing their personal views in courses those students are required to take. Educators who celebrate murder have demonstrated they do not have the moral framework for the positions they hold.

Our rights as citizens have corresponding responsibilities. We have the right to vote, so we have the responsibility to educate ourselves on the issues and candidates. We have the right to religious freedom; therefore, we must honor the freedom of others to believe or not believe differently. We have the right to free speech, so we have the responsibility to avoid deliberate falsehoods, slander or reckless speech that undermines civil discourse. This same framework extends to those entrusted with the title of teacher or professor, especially those who serve in public institutions.

Preserving the integrity of schools and universities means recovering a proper understanding of the responsibilities that come with the rights of educators. Academic freedom is indispensable, but it was never meant to be a license for recklessness, indoctrination or moral corruption. 

It is a trust extended to those tasked with forming minds and shaping citizens. When teachers and professors embrace that trust with seriousness — seeking truth, modeling virtue and respecting the boundaries of their calling — education flourishes. When they abandon it, both students and society pay the price.

Right-wing political operative Charlie Kirk was discussing one of the most divisive topics in contemporary U.S. politics — school shootings — when a bullet pierced his neck. 

Before he was gunned down on a Utah college campus, the 31-year-old activist built a reputation as a free-speech absolutist whose provocative, pull-no-punches commentary made him an icon for many young conservatives and a villain to liberal college students who sought to shut him up.

Now, it’s his critics who find themselves on the receiving end of censorship as the Trump administration endorses a doxxing campaign against people who’ve engaged in online “hate speech” and educators face consequences at work for critical social media posts. For students, it’s a fraught environment that offers new First Amendment risks, experts told me this week.

“Somebody silenced Charlie Kirk, and that person probably wanted less speech,” said Adam Goldstein, the vice president of strategic initiatives at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “So if our reaction to that is to start silencing each other, then we’re doing the work of assassins for them.”

Authorities have accused 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of murdering Kirk for his “political expression.” Prosecutors released a series of text messages Tuesday between Robinson and his roommate and romantic partner in which the suspected killer said he had enough of Kirk’s “hatred,” and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

In the news

A teenager who shot two students at a suburban Denver High school on the same day as Kirk’s murder had “a deep fascination with mass shooters” and TikTok accounts “filled with white supremacist symbolism.” | 

• On the morning of the Evergreen High School attack, the school-based police officer was away from campus responding to a nearby car crash.��

The Uvalde, Texas, school district canceled classes for four days this week after it became the target of a ransomware attack. The district suffered a 2022 school shooting that left 19 elementary schoolers and two teachers dead. Campus security infrastructure, including surveillance cameras, were compromised by the cyberattack, the district said. | 

California reformed its student discipline regime — including a ban on suspensions for willful defiance — in a bid to combat racial and socioeconomic disparities. It hasn’t worked. | 

From ‘homework helper’ to ‘suicide coach’: Parents testified at an emotionally raw Senate hearing Tuesday that their children were driven to suicide by artificial intelligence chatbots, including ChatGPT and Character.AI. Among those who testified are parents suing tech companies alleging their children’s use of chatbots led to harm or death. | 

• Florida mother Megan Garcia’s lawsuit alleges the Character.AI chatbot formed an abusive relationship with her 14-year-old son, Sewell, that drove him to suicide. | 
• “No parent should have to give their own child’s eulogy,” she told lawmakers. “After losing Sewell, I have spoken with parents across the country who have discovered their children have been groomed, manipulated and harmed by AI chatbots. This is not a rare or isolated case.” | 
• In May, a federal judge rejected Character.AI’s arguments that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment. | 
• On the same day as the hearing, OpenAI announced it would add an age prediction feature to its chatbots and tailor responses for younger audiences. | 
• Why parents should talk to their kids about the risks of AI. | 

A new Pew Research Center poll shows overwhelming public support for international students at U.S. colleges and universities, even as they get entangled in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. | 

New laws in 31 states and the District of Columbia restrict students’ cellphone use at school, according to a new analysis by the National Association of State Boards of Education. Yet the group argues the policies “may not address the full range of harms to student safety and mental health arising from risky online behaviors — or equip students with the digital literacy skills they need.” | 

New in Trump’s immigration crackdown: A New York school superintendent flew to Texas and tried to give a cap, gown and diploma to an undocumented student who was detained just weeks before his high school graduation. | 

• ‘Immense fear and terror’: How the militarized surge of law enforcement in Washington, D.C., has taken a toll on the city’s kids. | 
• A Maine congresswoman has called on immigration agents to give a “full accounting” of its decision to arrest a father after he dropped off his child at school. | 
• A man shot and killed by ICE agents during a traffic stop last week dropped his children off at school moments before his death. | 

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has put a hold on new state social studies standards that parents, educators and faith leaders allege impose Christian beliefs on students in violation of the First Amendment. | 

The Green Bay, Wisconsin, school district will require middle and high schoolers to use clear backpacks after a student was arrested for bringing a gun to class. | 

ICYMI @The74

Emotional Support

Everybody say meow to Taittinger, the new cat around the house.

Just not too loudly or she’ll scurry under the bed.

Ritika Shroff had the typical Gen Z experience with social media. At 13, she signed up for Instagram, then Snapchat. Later, she downloaded TikTok and worked her way through other popular platforms.

But in high school, she began to see downsides, feeling pressure when comparing her number of followers, test scores and experiences with those of her peers online.

“They’re doing X, Y and Z with their lives, and I think I got pulled into it,” Shroff said.

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Today, Shroff, a 19-year-old sophomore at American University in Washington, D.C., still sees the benefits of social media, such as allowing her to stay in touch with hometown friends from Des Moines, Iowa, and family in India. While she thinks there should be more rules around social media, she doesn’t think individual state actions, such as a state suing a platform, would make much difference.

“These small things won’t make an impact in the broader landscape,” Shroff said.

More states are hoping to rein in the harm that social media can do to teens’ mental health and privacy by approving laws that require age verification or parental consent, prohibit “addictive feeds” or ban the apps for minors. They also are taking social media companies to court.

But some experts say such efforts won’t make social media any safer. Instead, they fear the moves might infringe on people’s privacy and First Amendment rights — while potentially making the platforms harder for everyone to use.

“This is global media, and trying to regulate it at the micro level … the fear for a lot of people is that we’re going to end up with different rules for different states, which is just going to undercut the whole promise and potential of internet-based media and communication,” said Kevin Goldberg of the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit aimed at protecting First Amendment rights.

Some social media disputes are playing out at the federal level. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a bipartisan federal law banning TikTok, a popular video sharing platform, unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell the app. The ban briefly went into effect before President Donald Trump, who had tried unsuccessfully to ban TikTok by executive order in his first term, signed an executive order it for another 75 days.

But absent other federal action to curb social media’s effects on young people, many states are considering new legislation. In New York, a enacted in June prohibits social media platforms from providing to minors so-called addictive feeds without parental consent. New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, is drafting to enforce the law.

Social media feeds are designed to keep kids scrolling longer and longer to drive up ad revenue, noted state Democratic Sen. Andrew Gounardes, who sponsored the . Kids who are addicted to social media suffer mental health issues, and people who spend more time scrolling tend to struggle to navigate real-life relationships, he argued.

“So social media, for all the positives that might exist, has some real, deeply negative and dark downsides that we are finally seeing manifest, and we have to reconcile it,” Gounardes said.

But tech developers are concerned new state laws could weaken privacy protections for users, take away online mental health resources for marginalized communities and restrict the flow of online information, said Paul Lekas, the senior vice president and head of global public policy and government affairs at the Software & Information Industry Association, a trade association representing the digital content industry.

“The bills are all different, so it’s hard to say that all of them are good or all of them are bad,” Lekas said. “But a lot of concerns come up in a number of these bills.”

Age restrictions

Some research suggests that excessive is worsening young people’s mental health. Teens who spend the most time on social media are significantly more likely to exhibit negative emotions, such as sadness and anger, according to a 2023 Gallup .

A Florida that went into effect this month prohibits kids who are under 14 from having social media accounts. A user who is 14 or 15 would have to get parental consent before starting an account.

Ashley Moody, Florida’s Republican attorney general at the time, agreed not to enforce the law while a alleging it would restrict minors’ freedom of speech plays out. Moody was sworn into the U.S. Senate this week to replace Sen. Marco Rubio, the new U.S. secretary of state.

More measures are expected across the country during 2025 legislative sessions.

A new bill in would prohibit anyone under the age of 16 from creating social media accounts without verified parental permission. A similar bill was introduced in , but with an age limit of 18. A prefiled bill in would set the age at 13.

To verify age, some apps may require all users to upload a photo of their ID. This could be of particular concern for adult users who would have their full legal identity tied to their social media account, said Ash Johnson, a senior policy manager at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a think tank focused on public policy surrounding technology.

Rather than an outright ban on social media accounts for users under a certain age, increasing transparency and accountability measures for social media developers would improve the safety of the apps, Johnson said.

She pointed to California as an example. The state’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act was partially from enforcement by a federal appeals court last year. It would have required companies to ensure that online services likely to be accessed by children are designed to eliminate the risk of harm to them.

Parental controls, Johnson said, also could make it easier for parents to oversee their child’s media presence by deciding what content they can access.

Instagram’s new , for example, automatically place teenage users into an account that limits who can contact them and the content they see — and anyone under the age of 16 will have to get parental permission before changing any of the safety features.

“It would give children a really customizable experience on social media depending on their individual developmental needs,” Johnson said.

A lot of the laws around the country are specifically designed to prevent younger people from either accessing certain content online or entire social media platforms, said Goldberg, of the Freedom Forum. Changing the way in which social media developers control who can and can’t have an account could change what people see on their feeds.

“We’ve seen a lot of this, especially at the state level, which is concerning,” he said. “Many of the laws that we are seeing proposed — and even passed — raise First Amendment concerns.”

States go to court

States also are turning to lawsuits to address social media effects on young people.

In October, attorneys general in California, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia TikTok, alleging violations of state consumer protection laws.

Led by California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta and James of New York, the lawsuits allege that TikTok exploits and harms young users and deceives the public about the social media platform’s dangers.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a similar suit that same month accusing TikTok of violating a protecting children online. The law prohibits digital service providers from sharing, disclosing or selling a minor’s personal information without permission from a parent.

TikTok has disputed the claims, calling them “inaccurate and misleading” in a . The company says its platform is safe for kids and offers time limits and parental controls.

States have also taken aim at Snapchat and Meta. In September, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, filed a against Snap Inc., Snapchat’s parent company, alleging the app’s developers were ignoring reports of sextortion, failing to implement age-verification rules, admitting to features that connect minors with adults and more.

And in 2023, more than Meta, claiming Instagram and Facebook worsened the youth mental health crisis.

The social media companies need to be held accountable, said Julie Scelfo, of Mothers Against Media Addiction.

Scelfo, a career journalist who covered youth mental health for years, said she was disturbed after finding out that more and more young children wanted to commit suicide as social media became more mainstream.

“Social media can connect people for positive things, but it has also been a very convenient conduit for all of the worst forces in society,” Scelfo said.

But tech companies are winning some fights — and going on the offensive.

In addition to the partial block of the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a federal judge has until Feb. 1 another California law designed to protect children from addictive feeds. The Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act would prevent social media platforms from providing minors with “personalized feeds.”

Across the states, companies are challenging dozens of laws restricting social media — and in some cases, they’re winning.

“I think that shows that courts are skeptical that either there’s no proof behind the goals of the legislators or that they’re not being precise enough,” Goldberg said. “So, I’m skeptical. I don’t think this is going to help because there will always be ways for children to access content on the internet or social media — it’s almost impossible to truly enforce.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

These are among the numerous allegations of antisemitism The School District of Philadelphia failed to adequately address in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.  

Pennsylvania’s largest district didn’t demonstrate that it fulfilled its legal obligation to evaluate whether a hostile environment existed in schools and, if so, take the necessary steps to eliminate and prevent it, the office found.

As part of an with the department, the 121,202-student district pledged to issue an anti-harassment statement that will be published on its website and printed or linked to in publications aimed at the school community. It will also provide annual staff training on federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics — and improve its documentation of related complaints.   

A district spokesperson said in a Jan. 3 statement that the school system “strives to create welcoming and inclusive environments that allow our students to feel safe and heard,” and that it takes complaints of bullying, harassment, and discrimination seriously. The district has also been embroiled in several recent controversies alleging that it

As part of its agreement, Philadelphia schools will also provide an age-appropriate program for all 6th- through 12th-grade students to address discrimination: They’ll be taught to identify and report harassment — and will be informed about the disciplinary action that will follow a credible complaint. 

The district will also administer an OCR-approved school climate assessment in which students will be asked about the prevalence of harassment, their willingness to report it and how they believe such cases will be handled. Philadelphia schools will provide the office with its findings and take steps to address any concerns. 

The Department of Education has dropped a flurry of agreements regarding K-12 and higher education discrimination complaints in the weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration. Trump has, on many occasions, pledged to , leaving its fate and that of its civil rights office uncertain. 

Two other higher education cases announced in late December — one focused on the system and the other at — also sprung from the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

The ongoing conflict set off student protests throughout the country, including at some of the nation’s top colleges.

In the case involving five UC campuses, the department found the universities failed to respond promptly or effectively to incidents of harassment based on students’ Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Palestinian and Arab ancestry — and some of them subjected students to different treatment regarding access to campus or university programs. 

The Cincinnati case, which included all such students except for Israeli, found the university misapplied laws governing reports of harassment or more commonly ignored discrimination complaints. 

Another case, this one announced in early January, found likely operated a hostile environment harmful to many student groups, including those of Jewish and Palestinian heritage. was also called out in the new year because its records failed to show whether it considered if nearly 100 harassment complaints — many by Jewish and Arab students — amounted to a hostile environment. 

In addition to numerous antisemitic incidents, the Philadelphia case also includes allegations of harassment against Black students. A Jewish teacher noting the hostility she and Jewish students felt, added that some of her Black students were called slaves and told to pick cotton until their hands bled. “The teacher wrote that they were traumatized and felt sick and asked who was going to help the students,” an OCR filing states. 

The Philadelphia school system also failed to maintain a required list of such complaints: a keyword search on a database where these incidents were supposed to be logged did not include several alleged offenses flagged by those who brought the complaint, OCR found. As part of the agreement, staff will be annually trained to better process, investigate and resolve such cases. 

OCR investigators examined documentation provided by an unnamed complainant, a community organization of approximately 250 Jewish families in the district and an advocacy group. The office also spoke at length with the district’s Title IX coordinator, among others.

Michael Balaban, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, filed a complaint with the district in April 2024. He said he did so to represent the concerns of many Jewish families, who told him they feared retribution if they complained directly. 

Balaban said teachers addressing the war should have presented facts about the Middle East in neutral terms, allowing students to come to their own conclusions. He said he is grateful for OCR’s efforts and hopes the district will move forward with making school a safer environment for all. 

“I’m happy with the work that OCR did,” he told ����Ӱ��. “At the end of the day, the school board has to comply. That is really what we will be watching.”

In one case that sparked controversy, several posters, including those that read, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that critics see as calling for and “This is not war, this is genocide,” were displayed along with the Palestinian flag in close proximity to an Israeli flag in the common area of a school. The principal had the materials removed the morning they were discovered. 

Interviews revealed that a group of students stayed after school in a teacher’s classroom to create the posters. Video footage showed that teacher and two others displayed the materials. A principal later told the educators their actions created a hostile environment and a subsequent report about the incident noted it had a “negative and profound impact on Israeli and non-Israeli staff and students causing feelings of alienation and outrage.”

The teachers were not named by OCR, but and ultimately quit their jobs for trying to make the school a safe space for Palestinian students. 

“The punishment is not because we hung up posters, the punishment is not because we didn’t have parents’ permission after school, they’re going to say that that’s what it is,” one of the teachers told The Intercept. “But the punishment is the fact that these posters are pro-Palestinian, they are anti-genocide, they are anti-violence towards Palestinian people.”

These incidents, along with others, have caused an ongoing furor, one that has played out at raucous school board meetings. One October 2024 session was disrupted when protestors demanded that another pro-Palestinian teacher, . Her supporters said she was being punished for her views; those who complained against her said she made credible threats of violence against Jewish parents. 

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The allegations of antisemitism detailed in OCR’s report, some supported by district documentation, include the following: 

• A teacher, in grading a geography assignment where students were asked to name various countries on a map, crossed out Israel and hand wrote Palestine on a list of possible answers. The school principal sent a note to families acknowledging the incident, stating that it left “students feeling unsupported.” 

• Students drew swastikas and the Hitler salute on a paper left on a classmate’s desk, and called the child “Big nose,” “Rich kid,” and “Cracker.” The student was put in a headlock and thrown into a trash can. The student reported the incidents to a teacher, but no action was taken until their parents notified the principal. The district transferred the student to a new school. 

• The teacher whose supporters rallied for her reinstatement wrote on social media: “Another Educator Misconduct Complaint to the Pennsylvania Department of Education and Another Dismissal. What’s the end goal here? … I guess I can’t expect anything less from Zionist genocide supporters. Zionism is Racism.” Another teacher, showing support for the post, responded with an expletive-filled rant against “all those who are trying to get those of us who speak out against a literal genocide in trouble.”

• The dismissed teacher i by name on social media: “I asked y’all nicely to keep my name out y’all mouth…Y’all been harassing me for almost a year…You can report me to the Department of Education 10 million times… What you want to happen won’t.” The next day, the teacher posted to her public Instagram account, “Blacked owned [gun emoji] shops in or near Philly? Asking for a friend.”

• Another teacher wrote on social media that, “These Zionists are no different from the swarms of white supremacist spectators cheering on the public lynchings of over 3,000 Black people.”

• Another wrote: “Let’s not be confused about this complaint, this is a group of racist white parents trying to get black teachers and staff fired, for fear that their children will learn the truth. (that their parents are racist.)” 

One teacher’s social media accounts were shared by the district with an external law firm so it could conduct an investigation. According to the district, the firm concluded the educator did not engage in discrimination or harassment based on religion or national origin.

The civil rights office said it requested a copy of the firm’s findings, but the district refused, citing attorney-client privilege. Christina Clark, a district spokesperson, told ����Ӱ�� some information was shared with OCR.

Maud Maron, who New York City Schools removed for “derogatory conduct” in June, can now resume her post on lower Manhattan’s coveted District 2 council. She has also been criticized for making anti-transgender comments against students.��

In her ruling, federal judge Diane Gujarati also deemed the New York City Department of Education’s  anti-harassment policy — which was used to remove Maron — “chilled … expression” and likely violates the First Amendment because of its vague language.

The policy, D-210, is so unclear that it prevents “a person of ordinary intelligence – before such person is subject to investigation” from understanding what conduct is prohibited, the judge wrote.

Schools Chancellor David Banks removed Maron for comments made in the New York Post in which she called an anonymous Stuyvesant High School student author a “coward” and accused them of “Jew hatred” for an op-ed accusing Israel of genocide in Palestine in the student paper.

In December, a 74 investigation revealed Maron also said in a private chat that, “there is no such thing as trans kids,” among other disparaging remarks. In response, Banks called Maron’s behavior “despicable” but did not include the anti-trans comments in documents outlining her removal. 

In a text, Maron told ����Ӱ�� Wednesday she was reinstated because, “free speech still means something in this country. The people who voted for me won today because they were also deprived of their voice by the Chancellor’s unconstitutional decision.”

The judge’s decision was issued after Maron and two other parents sued the Department of Education, the education council for District 14 and its leadership for allegedly stifling their speech. Gujarti’s decision granted an injunction to stop the DOE from enforcing the anti-discrimination policy via removing council members. Their .

Department of Education officials said Gujarati’s decision makes it more difficult to safeguard children. 

“We are disappointed by a ruling that limits our ability to protect students from harmful conduct by parent leaders. Even prior to the court’s ruling, we began reviewing the applicable Chancellor’s regulation and are preparing to propose revisions and initiate our public engagement process,” said spokesman Nathaniel Styer. 

The department, Styer added, is reviewing the ruling for “next steps” and will continue to support district councils in complying with the law. 

Gujarati’s ruling did not call for the reinstatement of Tajh Sutton, who is the only other parent to be removed from a district council post after a D-210 investigation, because it is a separate case. Gujarati’s ruling stated that there is no proper request before the Court to “identically extend” Maron’s relief to Sutton and therefore “is not addressed herein.” 

Sutton, formerly president of Williamsburg’s District 14 council, was removed after their official X account posted a toolkit for a student walkout for a ceasefire in Gaza.  DOE officials said the materials were “perceived by many community members as anti-Israel and antisemitic.” 

As also reported by the , Sutton moved her district’s meetings online to limit threats – which included being mailed an envelope of human feces and death threats –  which the department later said violated open meeting laws. CEC 14’s official X account also blocked Maron. Both actions were categorized in Gujarati’s ruling as limiting free speech. 

Ultimately, “the judge upheld the right to free speech even if that speech is offensive,” said David Bloomfield, former DOE counsel and professor of education law with Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. 

He added the ruling doesn’t justify the “odious” statements made, rather their right to be said in the first place, and that the system likely knew this was a possibility but would “rather be slapped down by a court than allow [Maron’s] behavior to persist.” 

“The First Amendment guarantees a marketplace of ideas,” Bloomfield said. “When the government intrudes on that, it’s hard to defend.” 

In the first move of its kind, the nation’s largest school district removed two prominent elected parent leaders from community education councils after controversial rhetoric against transgender students and student advocacy for Palestine.

Elected to serve two-year terms on the city’s closest equivalent to school boards, parents Maud Maron and Tajh Sutton were removed Friday from lower Manhattan’s District 2 council and northern Brooklyn’s District 14, respectively. 

Maron appeared in court June 18, seeking an injunction and reinstatement, alleging the Chancellor’s decision was a violation of free speech. The Education Council Consortium, a parent advocacy organization, has demanded Sutton’s reinstatement and criticized the Chancellor for equivalating Maron and Sutton.��

“It is a sad day when New York City Public Schools is compelled to take the actions I have ordered today, but the violations committed by these two individuals have made them unfit to serve in these roles,” Schools Chancellor David Banks said in the Friday press release announcing the removals. 

In closing their statement denouncing Sutton’s removal, the Education Council Consortium said, “it is indeed a ‘sad day’ when New York City Public Schools uncovers a new way to further erode any confidence in this administration.”

A December investigation by ����Ӱ�� previously revealed Maron said in a private chat that, “there is no such thing as trans kids.” Banks categorized her remarks as “despicable” and promised to take action. By March, a petition to remove her from Stuyvesant High School’s school leadership team for “bigotry” amassed more than 700 signatures. In April, the DOE ordered her to cease “derogatory” conduct. 

For months, parents and city leaders condemned Maron for leading a push to re-examine the city’s guidelines for trans students’ participation in sports, and for calling an anonymous student author a “coward,” accusing them of “Jew hatred,” for an op-ed accusing Israel of genocide. 

Across the East River, Sutton was subject to investigation for supporting a student walkout for a ceasefire in Gaza, including posting a digital toolkit and protest chants. In the letter listing his reasons for removing her, Banks said the materials shared by Sutton were “perceived by many community members as anti-Israel and antisemitic.”  

The reported Sutton, then the president and only Black member of District 14 council, had support from many families in her district who believe she was “unfairly targeted” for her advocacy for Palestine and that the DOE did little to safeguard her council against death threats. Sutton said she was also mailed an envelope of human feces. 

In a recent op-ed in the , Maron defended her actions and revealed Banks’s “official” reasoning for her removal pointed to the comments made against the anonymous student author. “But the real reason the Chancellor wants to remove me is because the Democratic establishment in New York City is furious because I know the difference between male and female and am willing to say so in polite company.” she wrote. 

In the letter issuing Sutton’s removal, Banks alleged Sutton violated open meetings laws for moving council meetings online, a decision she maintains was made over safety concerns after violent threats and multiple police reports, for which the DOE offered to provide additional NYPD officers at in-person meetings. 

Sutton told ����Ӱ�� she was never questioned by the DOE’s equity council for the alleged OML violations, only regarding her advocacy. state that videoconferencing or hybrid meetings may be permitted under “extraordinary circumstances,” and do not state that violations may result in removal. 

“If we were so out of compliance, why did you wait until June to remove me?” Sutton said. “Because you were waiting for Maron’s situation to get so hot that you could remove us together, so you could pretend that what I did is equal to what she did.”  

David Bloomfield, an education law professor with Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, believes it was no accident Maron and Sutton were removed simultaneously, and questioned the precedent set for free speech. 

“He seems to be treating them as similar situations and trying to balance the scales by removing a left wing member and a right wing member,” said Bloomfield.

While he did not question Banks’s legal right to remove Maron and Sutton, Bloomfield charged the precedent set is, “precisely what the First Amendment is supposed to protect against, which is the chilling of speech and particularly of political speech.” 

Maron is one of three plaintiffs Sutton, Banks and District 14’s council for violating the First Amendment and suppressing parent voices. She has recently launched a consultancy group called ThirdRail, which promises to “help neutralize counterproductive DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] initiatives” and build “flourishing workplaces where ideas – not ideologies – inspire strategy.” 

A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges a contentious new Indiana law that seeks to push speech and course content in college classrooms toward “intellectual diversity.”

The litigation lodged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana asserts that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The measure was adopted by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb in March.

The law requires all Indiana public colleges and universities institute policies that chill the speech of or compel speech from faculty members, a news release alleged.

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The suit was filed on behalf of two professors at Purdue University Fort Wayne. Steven A. Carr is a professor of communication and the director of the Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. David G. Schuster is an associate professor in the history department.

The Purdue University is the named defendant because the state institution is mandated to enforce the allegedly unconstitutional provisions of the law.

“Although Professors Carr and Schuster both already seek to foster a culture of free inquiry in their classrooms, this does not mean that they believe it is appropriate to provide equal time or attention to all lines of questioning,” the lawsuit said. “They exercise their judgment and academic freedom to determine when further inquiry on a subject is no longer desirable or appropriate, and they have no way of knowing whether this type of in-the-moment-decision-making will subject them to discipline or other employment consequences.”

Professors ‘fearful’ of the law’s penalties

The law in question states professors must be disciplined if they fail to “foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity” and “expose students to scholarly works from a variety of political or ideological frameworks.”

Both plaintiffs assert in the lawsuit that they could be “compelled to speak or prohibited from speaking,” in violation of their First Amendment rights, or risk adverse employment actions — including not being promoted, having their tenure revoked, or facing discipline up to and including termination.

The ACLU of Indiana indicated the professors are concerned the law could require public college and university faculty to give “debunked” theories equal time in their classrooms alongside “rigorously studied academic analysis.”

The lawsuit provides specific examples of course content of concern to the two professors.

As part of his courses examining United States history in the post-civil war period, Schuster teaches about the “culture wars” surrounding the LGBTQ rights movement in the 1990s, according to the lawsuit.

“(Schuster) is aware that some academics teach about this movement as embodying the rise of a ‘homosexual agenda,’ during which, according to them, LGBTQ people were attempting to indoctrinate students and others with ideas about homosexuality,” the complaint said. Schuster does not believe that “divergent perspective” is accurate, however, and instead maintains that teaching such a perspective “would be harmful to his students.”

“He thus does not believe he should be required to teach this perspective, and while he has in the past invited students to discuss this perspective during office hours, he does not devote class time to it,” the lawsuit continued.

Schuster additionally teaches about slavery and its legacy. The lawsuit claims the professor does not believe he should be required to teach any number of “divergent” scholarly perspectives on that subject, either — including that slavery “ultimately benefited African American people,” which was once a dominant view among academics in that field.

Carr separately teaches about the Holocaust through his work at the Institute.

The lawsuit emphasizes that “divergent perspectives regarding the existence and scope of the Holocaust exist,” ranging from denial that the Holocaust occurred, to “revisionist” accounts challenging the scope and causes of the genocide.

“Professor Carr would not teach those ‘perspectives,’ but the language of the statute would appear to require him to do so,” the complaint reads.

Another example referenced in the lawsuit describes a course recently taught by Carr about the eugenics movement — including study of legislation involving forced sterilization passed in Indiana in 1907.

“He does not believe that he should be required to teach, for example, the ‘divergent’ scholarly perspective that racially based forced sterilization could ever be appropriate or even defensible,” the lawsuit said.

The suit seeks to block the “unconstitutional” portions of the statute to protect the free speech rights of the two professors before the law is set to take effect on July 1.

“SEA 202 puts Indiana’s professors in an untenable position. Through vague language and the threat of harsh sanctions, including termination, the law strips professors of the academic freedom that the Supreme Court has long recognized they have the right to exercise,” said ACLU of Indiana attorney Stevie Pactor in a written statement. “No professor should have to choose between their employment and their First Amendment rights.”

What’s in the new law?

, one of this year’s — was touted by GOP lawmakers as a way to increase “intellectual diversity” in publicly funded college classrooms.

Although faculty and students overwhelmingly contended the proposal would micromanage their institutions and have a “chilling effect” on free expression, the governor , saying it “requires free inquiry and civil discourse programming for new students, strongly encourages academic freedom and protects faculty to express differing viewpoints from their colleagues and university leadership.”

The law makes changes to the institutions’ diversity-oriented positions and their policies for tenure, contract renewals, performance reviews and more. It also establishes new reporting and survey requirements based on “free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.”

Now, Indiana is additionally one of a handful of states that requires boards of trustees to establish diversity committees on campuses.

Under the new law, those diversity committees must make recommendations promoting recruitment and retention of “underrepresented” students rather than the “minority students” specified in current law.

Senate Enrolled Act 202 requires a five-year review process for Hoosier education institutions, as well. Even so, for tenure of faculty members.

The law further requires institutions to establish complaint procedures in which school students and staff can accuse faculty members and contractors of not meeting free-expression criteria. Institutions will have to refer those complaints to human resource professionals and supervisors “for consideration in employee reviews and tenure and promotion decisions,” according to the law. In limited circumstances, complaints could be advanced to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

With just a few hours remaining until the midnight deposit deadline, West Virginia high school senior Sam Dodson thought he knew which university he’d commit to for the fall but second thoughts were bubbling up. Accepted to a number of prestigious institutions, he had narrowed his final choice down to two: Columbia University and Dartmouth College.

There were multiple considerations at play: academic opportunities; social life; Manhattan’s Upper West Side vs. bucolic Hanover, New Hampshire. And over the past few weeks a new one had emerged: the quickly spreading pro-Palestinian campus protests and subsequent arrests for which Columbia was ground zero.

Dodson was one of these students, watching closely as protesters occupying Columbia’s Hamilton Hall were cleared from the building Tuesday by the New York Police Department.. 

“All of that made me wait until kind of the last minute to officially decide,” the track runner told ����Ӱ��.

The class of 2024 has had a high school experience bookended by jarring national news, their freshman year coinciding with school shutdowns and COVID-era virtual learning and their senior year ending amid a volatile movement protesting Israel’s assault in Gaza that has swept up dozens of colleges and brought over 2,000 arrests, according to a tally. As seniors weigh options for their future universities, some are looking to the actions of college student activists and the responses of their respective administrations before making final decisions.

“I do think that all of the turmoil and things that are going on definitely had me reconsidering. It had me having second thoughts about different things and had me, I guess, take second looks at different schools,” Dodson said. “But ultimately I guess I tried to look past anything with that and understand that this is a choice I’m making for the next four years and what I think would be the best experience for me — academically, personally, in terms of just student life. All of those things.”

Dodson’s experiences are reflective of as well. Safa Al-Omari, a senior at NYC’s The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology told she is still deciding between City College and Hunter College. The Yemeni student said she wants to do more research about City College’s response to the protests before she commits.

“Being Middle Eastern, I have a lot of feelings about what’s going on,” Al-Omari said. “I would not want to go to a college that is arresting students based on them speaking for people who are suffering.”

For Sam Dodson’s mom, Sarah, there were also conflicting emotions. “It’s very hard to put the ‘yes’ when you have a lot of … chaos,” she said. While she said her son was drawn to the diversity of perspectives on Columbia’s campus, the more heated elements of the past few weeks have given him pause. At the same time, she emphasized the importance of being in a higher education space where free speech is strongly respected and encouraged. 

“You never want your kid to go to a school that is on the national news because of police involvement, right? It just doesn’t sit really well,” she said. “However, I guess I am under the assumption that there’s going to be resolution … I’m guessing because this is a college platform that they are going to hopefully have more engaging, open conversations so that there can be some sort of — I don’t know — persistence of everyday campus life that is not so inflamed.”

For now, all academic activities on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus — including finals — have been moved fully remote for the remainder of the semester. On May 6, the school to cancel the university-wide commencement scheduled for May 15 and instead focus on school-level graduation ceremonies. The NYPD had been asked to maintain a police presence until two days after the main commencement; it was not immediately clear how the cancellation might impact that.

Sam Dodson, who began his freshman year of high school in hybrid learning, said it would be frustrating if his first year of college classes also goes remote because of campus unrest. On the other hand, “there’s something interesting about being in the center of the news or the center of exactly what’s happening.” 

Students reconsider and recommit

It was about two week after pro-Palestinian students and activists on Columbia’s campus first erected the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that a group occupied Hamilton Hall, a building with a long history of . Hours later, the cops moved in, arresting, 112 people, including 32 who were not affiliated with the university. 

By this point, the movement had spread across the country, including to Dodson’s other contender, Dartmouth, where nearly were arrested this week. About a week and half before that escalation, Columbia hosted its accepted students weekend and Dodson was there. 

He took some time, he said, to wander around campus and speak with protesting students near the encampment. “They were like, ‘Hey, new Columbia students. Come talk to us!’ You know, I guess, they were very like welcoming. They were very much wanting to talk with the admitted students, which I thought was a nice thing.”

While he was disappointed that many of the accepted student weekend activities had been canceled or modified, he was grateful he got to experience the events on campus firsthand and form his own views.   

Around the same time, another high school senior Lila Ellis, who uses they/ them pronouns, was also closely observing the activities on Columbia’s campus. A Jewish student from Massachusetts, they had committed months before to the dual-degree joint program between Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Ellis said that because of their religion, they’re concerned there are certain places on campus they won’t be welcomed. “I think that to just stay away from all secular extracurriculars entirely, is a disservice to myself and to the community as a whole,” they said. “And I’m just thinking about, like, how am I going to balance that while also, you know, recognizing that some spaces don’t want me in them?”

Ellis pointed to the example of a protester outside the gates of campus , “Go back to Poland,” at Jewish students. Recently, a January video of one of the student protest leaders, Khymani James, began circulating in which he said, “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” He has since been barred from campus and released a of apology. 

Notably, as reported by , protests within the encampment were on the whole peaceful and included Jewish students, though others on campus agreed with Ellis that anti-Zionist rhetoric made them feel unwelcomed. 

While Ellis is sticking with their decision to attend Columbia, they did briefly toy with the idea of a gap year or of moving core curriculum requirements around to stay away from the main campus for a while. 

“I really do want to be in this program,” they said, “And it’s just a matter of thinking about ‘How do we make that work with what’s happening at Columbia?’ rather than ‘Can it work?’ Because I think it can work.” 

As Ellis prepares to enroll for classes — especially literature overview courses on Columbia’s campus — they’re considering a number of factors including whether or not the professors taught from the encampment. 

“Hopefully,” they said, “it’s not an issue in the fall, but just thinking about who were the professors who were willing to do that? And is that an environment that I want to be in for learning and for having an open discussion?”

Their father, Andy Ellis, added his own apprehension. All parents, he said, are nervous to send their first child off to college. But the protests on campus, he said, add an extra dimension, especially for a Jewish student. 

Ellis, a graduate of MIT, has spent significant time in higher education. He said he was on a Harvard visiting committee and in an academic center there for the last decade but resigned from both positions in October, “when it became clear that people were ripping off their mask around anti-semitism.” 

He said that if he were a current student on Columbia’s campus, he would be on the front lines of the counter-protests, displaying footage from Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.

“I think I would be that person,” the consultant said, “But I know that Lila is not that person. But I also know that Lila is not going to just duck [their]head and stay completely quiet, but I think find a balanced view. Listening to what Lila said about, you know, ‘find the humanity’ is an amazing, generous take. I’m really proud that I think we’ve created somebody who has a better moral compass than I do because I’m a lot more angry.”

Back in West Virginia and with time to spare before Wednesday’s midnight deadline, Dodson had finalized his decision: He committed to be a member of the class of 2028 at Columbia where he plans to study political science and government. 

“I think it’ll just be interesting,” he said, ”to go from — to take my perspective from this kind of small town area where like, I mean, I’ve met people from other places. I try to read, I try to keep myself exposed to those things, but it’d be cool to actually meet people from all sorts of perspectives and all sorts of backgrounds.”

That means twice as many teachers as are legally barred from discussing what critics call “divisive concepts” have chosen to curtail their own classroom speech.

The finding marked the first time that researchers have quantified what the report describes as a “spillover effect” that causes educators to censor themselves even in communities that have typically supported such discussions, says Ashley Woo, one of the authors. 

A key reason why educators engage in self-censorship, RAND found, is a concern that their instruction — legal or not — could trigger a parental backlash.

“Oftentimes, it’s a really mobilized, very vocal minority of parents in a community,” says Woo. “Not only can parents come up to you and have a verbal altercation, but there’s also this idea that they can threaten your reputation through social media, or that they might be able to go to your leaders and threaten your job. … Even the specter of that can create a lot of anxiety for teachers.”

More than a third of America’s 3 million teachers reside in one of the 18 states that adopted laws restricting educator speech regarding race, gender and LGBTQ people between April 2021 and January 2023. But because some are subject to local policies or edicts prohibiting instruction about certain topics, half teach under some type of restriction. 

Teachers in states that don’t have the laws are just as likely as those that do to say that they are subject to school- or district-level restrictions, the survey found. Some have stopped discussing controversial topics not covered by statutes or policies, such as abortion rights or climate change. Unsure what exactly has been outlawed, others report deciding not to discuss historical figures of color or civil rights. 

Fifty-five percent of teachers who aren’t governed by any state or local limits on speech decided to change their instruction anyhow. Educators who don’t face formal speech constraints but live in conservative communities were more likely to choose not to address social and political topics. About 40% of educators in politically liberal places where no restriction exists reported curtailing their instruction.

“Those are the kinds of communities where probably parents actually want and support those kinds of conversations in the classroom,” says Woo. “These are not voters who voted for the leaders who are putting these kinds of policies in place. These are not communities that want these restrictions in place.”

The survey’s findings jibe with recent research from the free speech organization PEN America estimating that laws the organization deems “educational gag orders” affect 1.3 million K-12 teachers and millions of students. The “spillover effect,” RAND notes, means the number impacted is actually much higher. 

The data is drawn from RAND’s 2023 State of the American Teacher Survey, administered to a nationally representative sample of 1,439 K-12 teachers in January and February 2023. Communities’ political leanings were gauged by voting patterns in the counties where respondents live. 

Regardless of why individual teachers choose to alter their curriculum or other features of their instruction, top factors cited include fear of angering parents, a lack of guidance or perceived support from school administrators and concerns they might lose their jobs or licenses. Some of those surveyed mentioned hearing that educators elsewhere had been disciplined for engaging in controversial discussions. 

Local guidance to teachers sometimes comes in the form of a policy, but often it’s an admonition from a principal: “More implicit than maybe like a formal policy, but it’s still a message that teachers are receiving from their local leaders,” says Woo. “Teachers may take that and be, like, ‘Okay, well, I guess I shouldn’t be talking about that, then.’ ” 

Across the board, 49% named concern that higher-ups would not support them if parents complained as one of their top three reasons for deciding to self-censor. Some teachers said school or district leaders had told them to avoid certain topics because of community pressure, while others said they had received little or no guidance. 

Proponents of restrictive laws say parents need more control over what their children are exposed to in school and that discussion of “divisive concepts” pressures students to adhere to an ideology and tramples free-speech rights of those who disagree. Polling has consistently for limiting instruction about race but disagreement about whether and at what age students should learn about LGBTQ history. 

In many communities in states where there is little political support for curtailing instruction, protesters have brought school board meetings to a halt and threatened to root out educators and curricula aimed at “indoctrination.” Record numbers of board members and other district leaders have quit as a result of harassment.

PEN estimates 1.3 million K-12 teachers and 100,000 public college and university professors are now affected, as are millions of students. 

The analysis traces how proponents of what PEN calls educational gag orders have adjusted their tactics over the last three years. The authors say this reveals both rising public opposition to the laws and efforts by the restrictions’ right-wing backers to steer around political flashpoints. As a result, they say, they expect more — and more draconian — bills in 2024.

“What we have seen this year is that the people who are advocating for these laws are not going to stop because the poll numbers are bad, they’re not going to stop because some parts of the laws have been struck down by the courts, they’re going to continue,” says Jeremy Young, program director of PEN’s Freedom to Learn initiative. “They’re going to continue to evolve these laws in more and more insidious ways.” 

“This is an ongoing crisis,” he adds. “And it will continue until these laws are defeated in the courts or at the ballot box or in the legislature consistently.”

Backers of the measures argue that parents of K-12 students need more control over what their children are exposed to in school and that colleges should not foster discussion of “divisive concepts.” Teaching about race, history, gender and sexual minorities and other topics, they say, pressures students to adhere to an ideology and tramples the free speech rights of those who disagree.

“If we do not act now, I fear we will continue down the path of servitude to a woke agenda from which there may be no return,” Republican state Sen. Jerry Cirino of a 2023 Ohio bill, still under consideration, that would ban speech on a number of topics. “This bill isn’t even law yet, but it’s already served as an agent of change.”

How much of the broader public agrees and is comfortable imposing restrictions on educators varies greatly depending on the topics at issue, the age of the students in question and how the measures are framed, PEN’s analysis found.

The report traces the genesis of the movement to curtail instruction to former President Donald Trump’s September 2020 denunciation of “toxic propaganda,” including classroom materials based on “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times’s and journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s history of race in America. Three months later, the first state bill to curtail what teachers could say about race was introduced in Mississippi.

The vast majority of the speech-restricting measures introduced in 2021 and 2022 focused on stopping instruction involving race and history and “divisive concepts” in K-12 schools and colleges — often targeting both in the same piece of legislation. By contrast, in 2023, no bills simultaneously focused on the K-12 and university levels.

Thirty-nine of this year’s measures were aimed solely at shutting down discussion of LGBTQ people and topics in elementary and high schools. Most are modeled after the Florida law that critics refer to as the “Don’t Say Gay” act. The laws have been cited by people demanding book bans and in the elimination of anti-bullying efforts. 

More bills are expected in 2024, and PEN believes some will go much further. This year, for the first time, some of the proposed measures took aim at individuals’ speech, the report notes, with to prohibit students from disclosing their LGBTQ identity and that would mete out “disciplinary sanctions” or faculty who violate the “intellectual diversity rights” of others by discussing topics such as “allyship, diversity, social justice, sustainability, systemic racism, gender identity, equity or inclusion.”

“So a dean who sends out an email cheering for the new sustainable roof on the environmental sciences building [would be] violating the law because he’s expressing an institutional position on sustainability,” says Young. 

There are practical reasons why the legislation proposed in 2023 and predicted for next year — which in many cases use identical language, suggesting increased coordination across states

— will be harder to fight than the laws previously enacted, he says. Courts are likely to uphold college faculty free speech rights, but so far advocacy groups trying to overturn bans on LGBTQ topics have had a hard time meeting the legal threshold for proving plaintiffs have been harmed.

PEN’s researchers suggest public opinion may be one reason why backers of the bills have changed tactics and appear poised to do so again next year. Polls consistently show that Americans support teaching older students about race and oppose banning books about the topic. A by the American Public Media Research Lab and Pennsylvania State University found just 13 % of respondents believe state lawmakers should have a “great deal of influence” over classroom discussions of race or slavery. 

Some of the same surveys, however, have found much lower support for exposing K-12 students to LGBTQ topics, a much higher partisan divide and disagreement over at what age, if any, such discussions are appropriate. A University of Southern California poll last year found that 80% of Democrats say high schoolers should learn about gay rights, sexual orientation, gender identity and trans rights, while fewer than 40% of Republicans agree. Only about 30% of Americans believe such instruction is appropriate for elementary pupils. 

One of the researchers behind the USC survey, Morgan Polikoff, agrees that public opinion probably played a role in the change of tactics among proponents of limiting educator speech. “I would be surprised if that were not true,” he says. “The pivot is very apparent if you are paying attention.”

Republicans, he adds, are starting to make inroads with Black and Latino voters and as a result may be reluctant to continue to describe race as a divisive concept. 

Polikff also agrees with PEN’s assertion that the bills’ authors changed the way they targeted because public opinion data showed that attempts to curtail what professors may say — a centerpiece of many 2021 and 2022 bills — are wildly unpopular. 

Recent bills propose dismantling faculty unions, senates and other internal groups that protect academic freedom — systems most people have never heard of. For example, a Florida law passed this year weakens faculty hiring and tenure rights and, by decreeing that course content “may not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics,” for some classes and majors to be taught, critics say.

“This new breed of legislation is designed to kick the legs out from underneath university governance and autonomy,” the PEN report explains, “so that the next time the state moves to censor faculty, no one is in position to push back.”

The Assembly’s higher education committee considered a bill Thursday that sets free speech policies at Wisconsin’s public universities and colleges and provides penalties for violating them. Another bill taken up by the committee would eliminate race-based higher education loan and grant programs.

lays out certain provisions that the authors said are meant to help protect free speech and academic freedoms on University of Wisconsin and technical colleges campuses. Under the bill, UW institutions and technical colleges would be prohibited from restricting speech protected under the First Amendment as long as a speaker’s conduct is not unlawful and doesn’t disrupt an institution’s functioning.

Lawmakers introduced the bill after a found that a majority of students who responded said they were afraid to express views on certain issues in class. The committee held a about free speech on campus early this year in response to those concerns, seeking ways the Legislature could help facilitate free expression on campus.

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Coauthor Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said during the hearing before the Assembly’s Colleges and Universities committee that the bill is a response to “serious concerns raised, both by testimony and by those survey results regarding a perceived lack of support for the free exchange of ideas on campuses, self-censorship and a culture of intolerance for conflicting ideologies.”

The bill also prohibits enforcing time, place and manner restrictions on speech, requiring permits or charging security fees for speakers on campus due to content of speech, designating “free speech” zones on campus and sanctioning people and groups for discriminatory harassment unless the speech targets people based on protected class under law and is “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars a student from receiving equal access to educational opportunities or benefits.”

Beyond students, the bill also includes protections for instructors. Under the bill, UW and technical colleges would be prohibited from limiting an instructor’s expressive rights and academic freedom in conducting research, publishing work or lecturing, requiring students to participate in classroom exercises or speaking publicly as a private citizen on matters of public concern.

Republican lawmakers have increasingly expressed concerns that conservative voices and viewpoints are being suppressed on college campuses across the state.

Nedweski cited recent incidents as evidence of speech being curbed including the and backlash from students at UW-Madison campus after was invited by a conservative student group to give a lecture.

Nedweski, pointing to the survey, said that many students aren’t expressing their “authentic thoughts and ideas because they perceive that it may affect their grades or they worry about being socially canceled” and “self-censor, both in classrooms and informal situations, for fear of academic or social retribution.” She said that “supporting people’s rights to express opposing viewpoints is only fair.”

Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) said she thought the conversation needed to consider the difference between speech people don’t like versus speech that is actually getting suppressed. She pointed out that Nedweski focused part of her testimony on students being “socially canceled” and was concerned about whether lawmakers were going too far.

“The way I look at it is, free speech is us, as a government body, saying you can’t do something,” Emerson said. “You saying something and then walking out and your neighbors are like, ‘You know what? I don’t want to talk to you anymore,’ because they didn’t agree with what you said, those are two totally different things.”

The University of Wisconsin System already has that sets out its commitment to freedom of speech and expression, including a few accountability measures. Nedweski said she appreciates that policy, but said the provisions in the bill would serve as the “added teeth” that will make current policies effective.

“What good is having a policy to protect free speech if there are no consequences when there are violations,” Nedweski said. “People see this and they lose confidence in the administration’s commitment to protecting their free speech. That has a negative ripple effect on the perception of campus culture.”

Under the bill, the attorney general, a district attorney or a person who alleges their rights were violated could bring court action against the UW System’s Board of Regents or the technical college district board under the bill.

A UW institution or technical college would be required to pay out the damages, court costs and attorney fees from its administrative expense money, if found to have violated any of the provisions in the bill. Damages, which would be capped at $100,000, would start at $500 for the initial violation plus $50 for each day after the complaint is served that the violation remains ongoing.

Institutions could also lose certain grants administered by the Higher Educational Aids Board and would be required to put a disclaimer about the violation on all admission-related notices for the next four years.

Jeff Buhrandt with the University of Wisconsin System told lawmakers that the university campuses are “very proud of the policy we have in place. It is a national standard,” and that UW System President Jay Rothman sees it as a priority and duty of the system schools to “help our students more effectively communicate with each other.”

Buhrandt said the UW System’s biggest concern is the penalties created by the bill. He said the UW System feels that accountability is at the Board of Regents, with the chancellors and with their annual review, but that they do want to see more reporting.

“We want to make sure that students know that there are avenues for them to report when these things happen,” Buhrandt said. “There haven’t been many reported incidents, and if that’s a flaw in our reporting system, then we have to increase that.”

Nedweski told lawmakers that the bill is not meant to punish the state’s institutions or administrators, but that it’s meant to put pressure on them to follow the law.

The bill also includes a requirement that public universities conduct a biennial survey of students and employees on First Amendment rights, academic freedom, perceived political or other bias at the institution or technical college, and whether campus culture promotes self-censorship, submit the results of the survey to the Legislature and provide students and employees with instruction on academic freedom, due process and First Amendment protections.

Bill would stop consideration of race for higher education loan and grant programs

Lawmakers also considered a bill that would end race-based loan and grant programs in Wisconsin higher education.

  would modify certain programs and requirements — including the state’s minority teacher loan program, minority undergraduate grants and requirements for the Medical College of Wisconsin and Marquette University School of Dentistry — so they apply to economically disadvantaged students only, rather than minority students.

The bill is the latest action by Republican lawmakers to target diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education.

Rep. Nik Rettinger (R-Mukwonago) said the bill is a reaction to the recent that struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions. Rettinger, citing the Court’s finding that the University of North Carolina and Harvard violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause, said that all race-based discrimination is illegal and violates the principles of equal protection.

“It’s time for our state and nation to turn the page and progress forward,” Rettinger said. “In the end, this bill simply brings Wisconsin’s aid programs in line with the Students for Fair Admissions decision. It’s time for Wisconsin’s higher education system to follow the law and treat all students and staff equally.”

In response to a question from Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), Rettinger said the bill is “absolutely” necessary.

Stubbs and other Democrats on the committee pushed back on the assertion that the state needs to cut race-based loans and programs in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Stubbs asked legislative counsel whether the state is currently in violation of the Supreme Court decision. Legislative counsel clarified that the admissions case decision only applied to race-conscious admissions decisions, so race conscious grants and loans are still legally permissible.

“Technically, this bill isn’t necessary because we’re not in violation,” Stubbs said to Rettinger.

Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) said it seemed like the bill was “egging on” and “supporting” the Supreme Court to make additional decisions on the issue in the future.

The bill does not cut the programs, but rather eliminates the consideration of race and replaces any race-related terms for the term “disadvantaged”. It doesn’t define what “disadvantaged” means, but Rettinger said that was purposely done so that entities that oversee the programs had the ability to determine what constitutes a disadvantage — except for race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation and religion.

“This does not mean that we should eliminate aid to disadvantaged individuals. College costs continue to skyrocket and while the debate on the broken system, which continues to charge students exorbitant rates of tuition, room and board, lies elsewhere, the programs we have in Wisconsin to assist in covering the costs and accessing the halls of higher education institutions must follow the law and shift from race-based programs to eligibility based on true financial [need].”

Rep. LaKeshia Myers (D-Milwaukee), who testified against the bill, argued that the programs’ consideration of race takes into account past practices in the US.

“The reason the minority teacher loan program and others are even necessary is because of the need to rectify past discriminatory practices,” Myers said. “To eliminate the phenomenon of race within the context of these programs would be disingenuous. … It is impossible to divorce race from anything in America as race is indelibly linked to the American experience.”

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Georgia’s GOP leadership says fighting against cyberbullying will be a top priority when the Legislature convenes in January.

Sen. Jason Anavitarte, a Dallas Republican, said he plans to file a bill to tackle the issue, but he said the specifics of the plan are not yet hammered down.

“This legislation, when we introduce it, is going to be modeled after some similar states like Louisiana,” he said. “There are some bad examples out there that we won’t be copying because we do want to be sensitive to the First Amendment protection for citizens across the state.”

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���dzܾ��������Բ�’s defines cyberbullying as “the transmission of any electronic textual, visual, written, or oral communication with the malicious and willful intent to coerce, abuse, torment, or intimidate a person under the age of eighteen,” and proscribes a fine of up to $500, a sentence of up to six months or both.

Anavitarte did not point to any specific states as bad examples, but in 2014, New York’s highest court a cyberbullying law on First Amendment grounds, and attempts to eliminate cyberbullying in other states have faced similar hurdles.

“There’s going to be teeth within the legislation itself,” said Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who joined Anavitarte at a Capitol press conference Monday to introduce the planned bill. “That’s not going to be limited to school districts, it’s going to have teeth in it where the people perpetrating these things, we’re going to try to hold them accountable.”

Jones said legislators will partner with school systems and social media companies to craft the bill.

Free speech

Some free speech advocates say schools or districts interfering with a student’s off-campus speech violates the First Amendment.

In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of a Pennsylvania high school student on free speech grounds who was suspended from the cheerleading team after making a profane social media post criticizing her school.

But the justices wrote that schools’ ability to regulate student speech “do not always disappear when that speech takes place off campus,” and listed “serious or severe bullying or harassment targeting particular individuals” as a circumstance in which schools may implement regulation or punishment, even if it takes place off campus, if the speech could cause a disruption on campus.

Parents and victims say cyberbullying can be more pernicious than traditional bullying because it is not limited to school hours, the anonymity of the internet can spur bullies to be more vicious than they would be in person and victims may not even know who is tormenting them. Widespread adoption of social media among tweens and teens has meant bullies can spread mean messages to much wider audiences than schoolground taunts.

In a published earlier this year, the Cyberbullying Research Center found that in 2021, 23.2 percent of 13- to 17-year olds nationwide reported experiencing cyberbullying within the previous 30 days, up from 17.2 percent in 2019 and 16.7 percent in 2016.

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Sara Engels is a rising junior at the New College of Florida studying political psychology. She wants to take a class called “Health, Culture, and Societies” this fall but it might not be available under the atmosphere of conservative orthodoxy the DeSantis administration is imposing on public university and college campuses.

The class, you see, addresses the different health outcomes people realize based on their race, class, gender, or ethnicity. That seems to be forbidden under a new state law banning instruction touching on identity politics, systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege.

Carlton Leffler is the equivalent of a senior at the public honors academy taking urban studies and Chinese classes. The first field entails many of the same topics as Engels’ health class; as for Chinese, the law would appear to limit discussion of pivotal historical material about Mao Tse Tung, his “Little Red Book” and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

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Engles and Leffler both are plaintiffs in a new legal challenge to SB 226, one of the anti-“woke” laws that the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature has approved for Gov. Ron DeSantis. All of the plaintiffs, including a third student and two professors, are affiliated with New College but the law applies to public higher education throughout the state.

“The student plaintiffs are adults capable of determining for themselves whether the viewpoints advanced by their various instructors … have merit,” the , filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee, reads.

“In order to know whether the viewpoints advanced by their professors have merit, the student plaintiffs must first have an opportunity to encounter them; that is, they must be permitted to listen to the professors’ instruction in class,” it says.

“The professor plaintiffs are willing speakers and the student plaintiffs are willing listeners. They desire to engage in academic discussion concerning topics prohibited by SB 266.”

Organizing the case is another plaintiff, NCF Freedom, which describes itself as “an independent organization founded to protect and promote the academic mission of New College.”

Sweeping changes

, passed earlier this year, made sweeping changes to higher education governance in Florida, including bans on diversity initiatives or application of critical race theory. The measure also specified that university presidents have the last word on personnel matters, abrogating the contract’s arbitration language.

It followed passage of the “,” or “Individual Freedom,” Act in 2022 to restrict conversations about race and gender in schools and workplaces. A federal judge nearly one year ago.

New College is a public, small honors institution located in Sarasota. As the lawsuit points out, “Historically, New College has had a reputation for welcoming LGBTQ+ students and unconventional individuals of every sort. The landing page for the College’s website proclaims that it is a ‘Community of Free Thinkers, Risk Takers and Trailblazers.’”

The document cites campus organizations including “New College Feral Pigeons;” the “Indigenous Student Union;” and “Queery” — “an organization which ‘serves to maintain New College as a safe place for LGBTQ+ identified individuals and their allies to socialize and engage with the larger community.’”

By contrast, DeSantis hopes to convert the Sarasota campus to “,” referring to the private Christian Hillsdale College in Michigan. He got rid of the sitting board members and including Christopher Rufo, who was behind the anti-CRT (critical race theory) movement. The governor’s board and Corcoran are even promoting as a draw for more conservatively aligned students.

Named as defendants are Manny Diaz Jr., state commissioner of education and a member of the university system’s Board of Governors; Brian Lamb, chairman of the Board of Governors; Eric Silagy, vice chairman of the governors; the 11 remaining governors; the New College Board of Trustees and its members; and Richard Corcoran, interim president of New College.

Academic threat

SB 266 threatens academic fields including gender studies, history, art, English, sociology, and more to the extent they inquire into this country’s complicated political and social histories, the complaint alleges.

“The elimination or curtailment of many AOCs [areas of concentration] or majors directly affects the rights of current and future faculty and students, including the plaintiffs bringing this action. Faculty and students at colleges and universities throughout Florida face the same censorship and the same injury to their rights of free speech and academic inquiry,” the complaint reads.

It adds: “Given its unique status as an honor college, dedicated to the liberal arts and attracting free thinkers from around the nation, New College is uniquely vulnerable to the censorship and pall of orthodoxy imposed by SB 266.”

Furthermore, NCFF risks reprisal against itself and its members because of its support for social justice and diversity, the complaint adds.

The document alleges viewpoint-based discrimination against protected speech in violation of the First Amendment; and that the law is unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause of the Fourth Amendment, in that it fails to sufficiently specify what behavior will draw punishment.

‘Categorical ban on speech’

Additionally, the law is overbroad in that its “categorical ban on speech … is not sensitive to specific speech in context and is not supported by legislative findings of fact which might serve to either justify or narrow the broad scope of the censorship scheme. SB 266 has a strong likelihood of deterring speech which is not properly subject to the law including discussion of almost all controversial historical, political and social topics, many of which are vital to the unimpeded flow of ideas in a free society.”

The complaint also targets new restrictions on tenure protection for faculty, arguing the law will chill free inquiry plus classroom instruction and debate between students in class.

The United Faculty of Florida, which represents university faculty, filed a on Aug. 4 in state circuit court in Leon County over .

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A majority of UW System students surveyed about free speech issues on the state’s campuses said they were scared to express their views on certain issues in class, according to the of a survey released Wednesday.

The , which had previously been because of initial pushback from faculty and administrators, was sent to more than 80,000 students in November. Nearly 10,500 students responded, a rate of 12.5%.

The survey asked students their views on self-censorship, viewpoint diversity and freedom of expression on campus. A majority of respondents said they were not at all or only a little likely to listen to opposing viewpoints on topics including COVID-19 vaccines, abortion and transgender issues.

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While 54% of respondents said they were extremely or very comfortable sharing their views on climate change in class, 44% said they weren’t comfortable or only a little comfortable sharing their views on transgender issues.

Prior to the survey’s release, faculty and staff had expressed concern that the results would be used by Republican politicians to attack the system. But at a news conference Wednesday at UW Oshkosh, System President Jay Rothman said that people shouldn’t be afraid of what the survey found.

“We can’t be afraid of the truth and what the survey shows us, we want to make sure we get ourselves better,” he said. “It is important that our universities continue to be marketplaces of ideas where divergent opinions can be shared and debated and discussed. I think that, at the end of the day, is a bipartisan issue.”

While students responded that they often feel they aren’t able to express their viewpoints in class, nearly 60% of respondents said they feel instructors encourage a wide range of viewpoints during discussions.

At the news conference, Rothman said administrators need to work on making sure students feel they can voice their opinions.

“We have to acknowledge that some students at our universities simply don’t feel comfortable sharing their views in class or elsewhere on campus,” he said. “We need to create a culture that more openly values free expression — and make sure students understand their rights under the First Amendment.”

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Montana State University officials are violating a student’s right to free speech after she questioned her sorority’s “insistence” members identify themselves with preferred pronouns, alleges a lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court of Montana.

The lawsuit also alleges campus officials are infringing on the student’s rights with a no-contact order — one without an end date or due process — after she was allegedly victimized by a fellow sorority member who is LGBTQ.

The student and plaintiff, Daria Danley, is suing Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian, MSU President Waded Cruzado, and Kyleen Breslin, director of MSU’s Office of Institutional Equity.

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“Plaintiff Danley’s protests against the harassment inflicted upon her by an LGBTQ student as well as her objections to ‘preferred pronouns’ constitute speech protected by the First Amendment,” as well as the Montana Constitution, the lawsuit said.

Danley had told a sorority leader she was being stalked by the other sorority member, the lawsuit said. Danley did not file a police report, her lawyer said.

The Greek chapter characterized the concerns she raised to the sorority leader about the alleged stalking and pronouns as “hate speech,” and the sorority and campus punished her, the complaint said.

However, in sanctioning Danley, the lawsuit said MSU officials are illegally silencing speech “that might be deemed offensive to LGBTQ students.”

That’s despite a duty to ensure policies don’t discriminate based on political ideas.

“Defendants Christian and Cruzado breached this duty by allowing a discriminatory policy at MSU that tolerates offensive speech made by LGBTQ students while punishing similarly situated non-LGBTQ students who engage in protected speech deemed offensive to LGBTQ students,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit said a similar alleged violation of free speech by MSU cost the institution a $120,000 settlement.

In that 2017 case, student Erik Powell alleged a free speech violation after he was suspended for being critical of a transgender student to a professor in a private meeting, the complaint said.

“MSU’s vindictiveness toward student criticism of the LGBTQ community is not new,” the complaint said. “ … In settling the Powell lawsuit, MSU was required to expunge the plaintiff’s record of disciplinary marks and pay him.”

Bozeman lawyer Matthew Monforton represented Powell and is representing Danley.

In a brief phone call Friday, Monforton criticized the flagship’s Title IX office. Those offices generally oversee discrimination allegations.

“MSU’s woke Title IX office is punishing victims because they object to preferred pronouns in speech that LGBTQ students found offensive,” Monforton said.

MSU did not respond Friday to an email requesting comment, and neither did a spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education.

The lawsuit outlines the events that led up to the court filing:

Danley has been enrolled full-time at MSU since 2020 and joined the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority, which has since dissolved its Bozeman chapter, the lawsuit said.

The fellow sorority member “routinely made inappropriate sexual comments in the presence of other AGD members,” and she repeatedly asked Danley to accompany her to her apartment despite Danley’s rejections, the lawsuit alleges.

“Another member of the chapter warned Plaintiff Danley never to be alone with (the sorority member), as that member had observed (her) attempting to take advantage of women when they were intoxicated,” the lawsuit said.

The fellow sorority member is not a defendant in the lawsuit and the Daily Montanan is not naming her in this story.

The complaint also said the alleged stalker “repeatedly ogled” Danley, making her “extremely uncomfortable.”

After she alleged stalking and complained about the use of pronouns, MSU punished her for “hate speech” and imposed a no-contact order against her, which meant she couldn’t go to any sorority events or even enter a building where her alleged harasser was present, the lawsuit said.

Then, MSU officials charged her with “discrimination” in a “sham administrative complaint,” one it later dismissed, the lawsuit said. At MSU’s suggestion, the sorority evicted her, the complaint said.

Danley applied to the sorority’s national headquarters for reinstatement, and her request was granted, the complaint said.

Still, MSU won’t rescind the no-contact order, the lawsuit said.

It said Danley doesn’t want to be part of her specific sorority chapter because she “just happened to get into a bad chapter,” but she does want to participate as an alumna member in activities other alumnae continue to organize.

“I still care greatly for Alpha Gamma Delta as a whole, and I know it does so much good for women,” Danley said in the lawsuit.

But she can’t do so because of the no-contact order “of unlimited duration,” the lawsuit said.

“MSU has rejected repeated requests by the victim to rescind the order and has never explained why the order remains necessary or elaborated on why it was imposed in the first place,” the lawsuit said. “Nor has MSU ever given the victim a hearing to challenge the order.”

In the complaint, Danley alleges the defendants are violating her free speech rights, which prohibit “government officials from subjecting citizens to retaliatory actions in response to protected speech.”

“Danley’s protests against the harassment inflicted upon her by an LGBTQ student as well as her objections to ‘preferred pronouns’ constitute speech protected by the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said.

It also said the order violates her freedom of association, and MSU has provided her no opportunity to be heard, therefore violating her right to due process.

“A person has a protected liberty interest in his or her good name, reputation, honor and integrity, of which he or she cannot be deprived without due process,” the lawsuit said.

It alleges violations of the Montana Constitution as well.

Danley requests a judgment the no-contact order violates her First Amendment rights and that the defendants clear her name in their records.

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The University of Wisconsin System sent a survey to students on Monday looking for their feelings about the state of free speech on the system’s campuses across the state.

The survey had previously been planned for May, but objections from chancellors, including by UW-Whitewater Chancellor James Henderson, who when he resigned from his post, caused it to be delayed.

The 29-page was sent to a random sample of students at each of the System’s 13 universities with the hope of getting at least 500 responses from each campus. The survey asks students about their views on abortion, police misconduct and academic freedom, among other topics. The multiple choice questions also ask students how they feel about administrative responses to speech on campus and if they feel like an instructor has ever expressed ideological views in class.

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UW-Madison student MGR Govindarajan, the Legislative Affairs Chair for student government group Associated Students of Madison, told he’s worried about the responses being weaponized by Republicans.

“We shouldn’t be afraid of the results, like the president said,” Govindarajan said. “However, there is a very real possibility that the results will be manipulated. That is something that students in student government are preparing for and something that we know will have a negative impact on students directly.”

UW System President Jay Rothman said the survey is just an attempt to get a sense of campus climates.

“The First Amendment is a bedrock principle of American democracy, and this survey will help us understand what students know and think about free speech rights and responsibilities,” Rothman said in a . “At the same time, we have an obligation to promote respectful dialogue – inside the classroom, around residence halls, and on the campus square. What better place than a university to foster the vigorous, considerate exchange of ideas and opinions?”

The survey is set to be conducted by the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service at UW-Stevens Point and is funded by UW-Stout’s Menard Center for Public Policy and Service, which was started by a donation from the conservative Charles Koch Foundation and bears the name of John Menard, a prominent Republican donor.

When the survey was initially announced this spring by the UW System’s interim President Michael Falbo, a political controversy sprung up as faculty and staff on campus worried that Republican lawmakers — who are frequently hostile to the UW System — would use the responses to attack their work.

After chancellors initially expressed concerns about the survey, Falbo said the System would not be participating but some Republican legislators intervened in an attempt to get it pushed through. Republicans have long accused university faculty and administrators of stifling conservative speech on campuses.

Falbo relented, which is what caused Henderson’s resignation.

“First Amendment rights are vital to the UW-Whitewater community, and they have demonstrated that they are able to assure that a variety of voices are heard on campus in a respectful way, so we didn’t view this as crucial to serving our students,” he told the Wisconsin State Journal in May. “We should be able to determine the prioritization of surveys administered on our campuses.”

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The state Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s 26 public universities, voted Tuesday to change their institutions’ free speech policies to bring them in line with state legislation.

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The new policy largely does away with so-called campus free speech zones, areas of the campus open to protests and rallies. The zones are a relatively new concept in Georgia that has come under fire in recent years, especially with religious and conservative groups, who say the idea curtails First Amendment rights and opens the state up to lawsuits.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former Georgia Gwinnett College student who was prevented from handing out religious literature on campus.

Under the change, set to go into effect July 1, members of the campus community — students, faculty, staff and invited guests — can have access to outdoor parts of campus for protests. Schools will have the ability to set certain restrictions such as disallowing late-night demonstrations outside a residence hall, but these restrictions cannot be based on the content of the speech.

People who are not part of the campus community can be restricted to specific high-traffic parts of the campus and made to comply with other restrictions, including the requirement to make reservations.

“Clearly, the Board of Regents is trying to thread the needle here with allowing free speech throughout the campus, without it being disruptive, and allowing people to make their case in a way that supports what all institutions of higher learning should support, which is free and open discussion of ideas,” said Richard T. Griffiths, president emeritus of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.

Others say some campus protests are less about the open exchange of ideas and more about threats and intimidation. While the idea was in the Legislature, concern it could embolden fringe groups who go beyond distasteful speech to harrass students based on their race, religion or sexual orientation.

Georgia Tech student Alex Ames said she and classmates sometimes travel the campus in groups to protect each other from vitriolic protesters, who are particularly prone to shouting down Muslim, Jewish or LGBT students.

Ames said some of the distasteful demonstrations have been at the request of student groups, which means they could have free rein of campus in the future.

“Now there aren’t really places on campus where marginalized students can be safe from these extremist groups showing up,” Ames said. “And USG’s policy doesn’t just mean that students and faculty and staff can go on campus, it also means that outside, invited groups, like these extremist groups, you know, the ones that hold signs that say “Muslim people will go to hell,” or use slurs referring to LGBTQ students as they walk around, now, those groups could go across campus.”

Griffiths called the Regents’ plan to open campuses up to people who live or work there while maintaining restrictions on outsiders a nuanced and appropriate solution.��

“Free speech is one of the great rights in our Constitution,” he said. “But as with all our great rights, we have to balance our rights against the rights of others, and it’s a beautiful thing when it works well, and a challenge when it doesn’t, but ultimately, it is free exchange of ideas in a setting that is respectful and open to dialogue that allows our society to move forward.”

For times when the dialogue is not open and respectful, college leaders need to make sure marginalized students who are being harassed have a way to report it and that administrators are able to respond — that only seems right when students are paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend classes, Ames said.

“It shouldn’t be on students to have to go out of their way to protest and keep each other safe when you’re paying tuition to be there,” she said. “And you should be able to walk across campus as a Muslim student or as a queer student without being harassed on your way to class. That’s the university’s responsibility to us.”

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“You better grow eyes in the back of your head,” she said one person wrote in an email. “You’re going down,” wrote another.

Toy-Dragoni said the vitriol began to intensify after the pandemic shuttered classes at the Pennsbury School District in Bucks County. What began as anger over school closures and mask mandates quickly turned — amid national pushback to critical race theory — to outrage over the district’s diversity and equity efforts. A barrage of hateful and violent emails left Toy-Dragoni, the school board president, feeling harassed and threatened, including by people who lived in other states.

“It’s unnerving because someone is saying they want nothing but harm to come to you and they’re emailing you 30 times about it,” she told ����Ӱ��. “You start to think ‘Well, how long are they going to wait for this harm to come to me?’”

As public education leaders from across the country come forward with stories about receiving death threats amid political strife over the pandemic and classroom lessons on systemic racism, a partisan feud has coalesced around the free-speech rights of infuriated parents. In a recent letter, the National School Boards Association warned of an “immediate threat” against school leaders and called on the Biden administration to clamp down on what it referred to as “domestic terrorism.” In a follow-up memo, Attorney General Merrick Garland instructed federal law enforcement to create a plan to combat a “disturbing spike” in threats against school board members. Republican lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups, meanwhile, have accused the Biden administration of stifling frustrated parents in violation of the First Amendment. 

The issue has highlighted a tension between ensuring school board members are safe while protecting the free-speech rights of aggrieved citizens.

Because of the Justice Department memo, parents are afraid to speak up at school board meetings due to a “poisonous chilling effect,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said during a Senate hearing Wednesday. And while the national school boards group has since used in its letter, Garland didn’t back down on efforts to investigate what he called an increase in violent threats against educators and other public servants. 

As the Senate hearing was underway, activists held a rally outside the national school board group’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.

A spokesperson for the national school boards group declined to comment. Several state school boards groups, including the one in Pennsylvania, over the issue.

“It’s a rising tide of threats of violence against judges, against prosecutors, against secretaries of state, against election administrators, against doctors, against protesters, against news reporters,” Garland said. “That’s the reason we responded as quickly as we did.”

A ‘true threat?’

The Constitution doesn’t guarantee “a dialectical free-for-all,” and the Supreme Court has long held that true threats of violence are not constitutionally protected speech, said Clay Calvert, the director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida. But the issue at hand, he said, isn’t “black and white.”

“There’s a difference between how we colloquially think of a threat versus the legal standards for what really is a threat, which are going to be much higher,” he said. 

Parents have a First Amendment right to criticize government employees through offensive speech, he said, and officials must analyze on a case-by-case basis whether someone’s speech goes beyond protected dialogue.

“A true threat is a statement that would place a person in fear of imminent bodily harm or death,” he said, but does not include “political hyperbole.” In a 1969 case, the Supreme Court who was arrested after he said that if he were drafted into the Vietnam War and forced to carry a rifle, “the first man I want to get in my sights” is then-President Lyndon B. Johnson. The statement was crude political hyperbole rather than a true threat, the court ruled. The line between true threats and hyperbole, Calvert said, are not always clear and the Supreme Court has yet to offer a concrete definition. He said that police often err on the side of silencing speakers in the interest of public safety and debating the issue in court later.

Meanwhile, police departments are “always walking the tightrope” when investigating whether someone’s statements go beyond those permitted by the Constitution, said attorney John Driscoll, a former New York City police officer who served 11 years as head of the NYPD Captains Endowment Association. Officers are in charge of preventing immediate threats and most departments employ legal experts who determine whether someone broke the law, he said.

“You can voice your opinion, even if you’re the only one who thinks that way, but you don’t have the right to physically threaten and intimidate people,” said Driscoll, who taught constitutional law at NYC’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He said the tense political environment has made it more difficult for officers to do their jobs. “Because of social media, the schism in the country has gotten a lot more extreme on both sides. There doesn’t seem to be too much moderation and police, as usual, are stuck in the middle trying to navigate this and protect people at the same time.”

But Toy-Dragoni, the Pennsylvania school board president, said the statements she’s faced reached the bar of being considered death threats and were clearly designed to incite intimidation. Among the messages, she was warned to “sleep with one eye open,” and that “we will never stop until you are done.”

“It’s a level of hate, it sets you on edge,” she said. “But did they straight up say ‘Next week I’m going to kill you?’ No. But I’ve never heard of anyone saying that to anyone ever, even when they do get killed by that person.”

Threats reported nationwide

The messages delivered to Toy-Dragoni are part of a national trend. School board members have reported receiving threatening letters, being followed and screamed at in board meetings. 

After Las Vegas school district employees were mandated to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the school board president saying she should be hanged or shot. In New Jersey, two board members in the mail with their photos in the crosshairs of a gun.

Sami Al-Abdrabbuh, chair of the Corvallis Board of Education in Oregon, also highlighted several incidents this year that he perceived as death threats. On the same day his campaign sign was discovered at a local shooting range with bullet holes, he said a man showed up outside his friend’s house and asked “Where is Sami? I want to kill him and I’m going to kill you if you don’t tell me where he is.”

Local police were notified of the incident but have not arrested a suspect, Al-Abdrabbuh told ����Ӱ��, and a friend who served in the Navy helped him develop a safety plan.

“Make sure, before you leave the house, look from the window and make sure you can go to your car,” he said. “Before I enter my house I have a way to make sure nothing has been tampered.”

Protests in other communities have grown so raucous that they prevented school boards from conducting official business. That energy and activism is being harnessed by conservatives and Republicans, particularly Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glen Youngkin, who has with Democrat Terry McAuliffe in next week’s election.

In , Calvert of the University of Florida called public comments at government functions like school board meetings “perhaps the purest form of citizen political expression” — the precise speech the First Amendment sought to protect. The Constitution doesn’t enshrine a public platform before school boards and other public bodies and they can impose certain rules so long as they’re “content neutral” and apply to all speakers evenly. For example, “time, place and manner” restrictions can limit how long speakers occupy the podium and can prohibit people from restricting government bodies from carrying out business. 

“Interrupting does nobody any good,” Calvert said. “It’s the heckler’s veto notion that the audience should not have the ability to heckle or drown out the speaker.”

During Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Republican lawmakers repeatedly noted a concern that the Justice Department memo could have a chilling effect on parents’ free-speech rights and that federal intervention was unnecessary. Those concerns mirrored a letter from 17 state attorneys general earlier this month, accusing the Biden administration of “seeking to criminalize lawful dissent and intimidate parents into silence” in violation of the First Amendment.

Garland maintained that his memo only focused on threats and violence and drew a clear distinction between such messages and constitutionally protected speech. 

“It makes absolutely clear in the first paragraph that spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution,” he told lawmakers. “That includes debate by parents criticizing school boards.” 

Education activist Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, said it’s important for parents to remain engaged and they must not shy away from making themselves heard at school board meetings. In just the last six weeks, Rodrigues has attended a dozen school board meetings across the country where parents didn’t focus on mask mandates or critical race theory. Instead, she said they were concerned about unreliable school transportation and food shortages in cafeterias. Yet those voices, she said, are being drowned out by “people who are behaving badly and who are exercising their anger in ways that are really unproductive.” 

“Parents have really deep, serious concerns about what is happening right now with our kids that have nothing to do with the culture war,” she said. “Parents are showing up to have that conversation but it’s sexier to show white parents that are losing their minds at a microphone. It’s heartbreaking because we have real, serious and sober work to do to help our kids recover from this pandemic.”

For Toy-Dragoni, parent outrage during the pandemic forced her to reconsider her place in education policy. She said she sought her seat on the school board because she’s a mother who wanted to create additional afterschool activities in her community but will no longer serve on the board after this year. She decided not to run for reelection after the pandemic prompted parental uproar in her community. But now, after the situation has gotten even worse, she said she regrets the decision to step aside. 

“Having gone through all of this, I would have run again so that they wouldn’t feel like they ran me out of town,” she said. “This is 100 percent part of a national agenda to get decent people out of local office by making it absolutely miserable for them.”