The Academic Freedom Alliance has issued a new guidance statement. It calls for an end to policies designed to restrict the advocacy or discussion of "divisive concepts" in university classrooms.
President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13950 on September 22, 2020, which prohibited federal workplace training programs that taught, advocated, or promoted any "divisive concepts." Since then, many proposals have been made in the states similarly to exclude divisive concepts, or what has sometimes been characterized as "critical race theory," in government workplace training and in public schools. More recently, such bans have also been contemplated for state colleges and universities. The most prominent of these was adopted by the Florida legislature in the "Stop W.O.K.E. Act" in 2022. The enforcement of that statute has now been enjoined as unconstitutional by a federal district court. I have discussed the problem with such legislation at some length.
