Censorship/Book Bans
Race & Discrimination
August 14, 2026
Conservative backlash was supposed to put an end to the diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) movement as companies were warned “go woke, go broke”.
In January 2025, Donald Trump delivered a death knell, ending DEI within the federal government with executive orders and threatening to target companies that still supported it. Companies including Google, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s and Walmart that had embraced DEI years earlier fell into line and announced an end to their policies.
But new research published on Friday and shared exclusively with the Guardian found that companies that resisted the pressure and kept their DEI practices, including Costco, Apple and Delta Air Lines, performed just as well as their competitors who pulled back.
For the research, Jacob Grumbach, an associate professor at at the University of California at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, analyzed how S&P 500 companies fared after Trump’s January executive order. He used what economists define as “abnormal returns” – the difference between how a stock was expected to perform versus how it actually performed – to isolate the impact of a company’s DEI decision. Read More
August 3, 2026
Since 2021, there have been nearly 23,000 bans on individual books in libraries and public schools.
Many of these bans remove Black and LGBTQIA+ literature
from bookshelves. Approximately 44% of the books banned in 2024 and 2025 featured characters of color and 39% featured characters who identify as LGBTQIA+.
Targeting books by or about Black people has a long history in the U.S., with classics like Toni Morrison’s 1987 “Beloved” frequently appearing on banned book lists. When books that highlight the richness of Black people’s lives are taken out of circulation or placed on a prohibited list, these stories and illustrations become less available to children of all backgrounds.
Research shows that children’s literature can help readers, including very young ones, see into others’ worlds and explore what it means to be human.
Informed by our roles as parents, educators and literacy researchers, we study “Black livingness” literature.
We describe Black livingness as Black children’s fiction by Black authors that depicts Black children and families as whole, joyful, thriving and engaged in everyday acts of living. Read More
July 14, 2026
Since 2021, there have been nearly 23,000 bans on individual books in libraries and public schools.
Many of these bans remove Black and LGBTQIA+ literature from bookshelves. Approximately 44% of the books banned in 2024 and 2025 featured characters of color and 39% featured characters who identify as LGBTQIA+.
Targeting books by or about Black people has a long history in the U.S., with classics like Toni Morrison’s 1987 “Beloved” frequently appearing on banned book lists. When books that highlight the richness of Black people’s lives are taken out of circulation or placed on a prohibited list, these stories and illustrations become less available to children of all backgrounds. Read More
July 15, 2026
The panels telling the story of the nine slaves of President George Washington at the President’s House in Philadelphia have been replaced following a lengthy legal battle between the Trump administration and the city.
The President’s House memorial — located on the corner of 6th and Market streets — honored the nine enslaved people brought by President George Washington when he moved to Philadelphia to serve as America’s first president in the late 1700s.
NBC10 went to the historical site on the corner of 6th and Market streets on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, and confirmed the panels had been replaced with new ones approved by the Trump administration. Read More
July 11, 2026
Private religious schools that receive public funds must follow state laws that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation or religion, a federal court ruled last week.
The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston came after two schools — Saint Dominic Academy in Auburn and Bangor Christian Schools, run by Crosspoint Church — asked for exemptions from the Maine Human Rights Act so they wouldn’t be required to enforce policies that contradicted their religious beliefs, such as admitting students who were openly gay or transgender, for instance, or requiring teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns.
The appeals court largely upheld a lower court’s decision denying this exemption, but it differed in its opinion of the state’s rules around religious expression and asked that the lower court reconsider how that provision applies to religious schools. Read More
July 11, 2026
A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a South Carolina law that restricts the teaching of certain race-based concepts in K-12 public schools may proceed, a federal appeals court ruled this week.
The ruling, issued Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed a U.S. District Court judge’s September 2025 dismissal of the suit for lack of standing and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.
Judge G. Steven Agee, writing for the Fourth Circuit panel, found the district court had erred in determining that several of the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue and in dismissing three of the plaintiffs’ claims without stating a basis for doing so. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which brought the case on behalf of students, educators and best-selling author Ibram X. Kendi, hailed the ruling as a “significant step” in the fight against classroom censorship. Read More
July 8, 2026
A coalition of pro-LGBTQ+, educational, and free-speech advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit today against the Texas Tech University system for violating their rights to free speech and due process rights by censoring lessons on LGBTQ+ people and anti-Black racism.
The lawsuit challenges memoranda issued by university Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the system’s Board of Regents that requires teaching faculty within the system’s five universities to submit all their course materials for a “stringent” audit to ensure they contain no “advocacy or promotion of race or sex-based prejudice,” any reference to more than two sexes, any course materials related to gender identity, and any course materials related to “[human] sexual orientation,” the lawsuit states. Creighton and the board require professors to remove such material under threat of discipline or firing. Read More
July 6, 2026
It is an arresting image: On the Fourth of July, a lone, young Black woman sits on a train filled with White nationalists headed to commemorate America’s 250th birthday in our nation’s capital.
Her thousand-yard stare is one of dignified terror. It is a moment forced upon her, in a democracy still reckoning with its contradictions about who gets to belong, where patriotism and freedom are perverted and how a Black woman becomes an unwitting and unwilling passenger amid a sea of mostly white men.
Their identities are not known, but the fear the image evokes is familiar. A crowd of faces, sitting and standing, intentionally unseen behind sunglasses and scarves. And then, in their midst, a single face exposed: brown, female, eyes fixed in the direction of the camera. In this photograph, what was meant to intimidate became insight. Read More
July 5, 2026
As conversations surrounding book bans and the preservation of Black history continue across the country, the Black Contractors Association of Alabama Chapter (BCAAC) is inviting the Birmingham community to gather for an evening centered on literature, culture and conversation.
The organization’s inaugural Unbound: Freedom to Read event will take place Friday, July 10, from 4 to 8 p.m. at Innovation Depot, bringing together local artists, musicians, community leaders and residents to celebrate the importance of protecting Black stories and ensuring those voices continue to be heard.
Hosted by Lady Woo with music by DJ Chocolate, the event will feature spoken word performances, live entertainment by vocalist Deirdre Gaddis and saxophonist Pedro Moore, light hors d’oeuvres, networking opportunities and one complimentary drink ticket included with each admission. Tickets are $25 and are available through the Banned Books Tour website. Read More
July 2, 2026
Federal agencies should support display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, issue guidance on parents’ rights to opt their children out of lessons that conflict with their religious beliefs, and promote the rights of students and school employees to express their religious views on campus, a federal religious liberty commission said in new recommendations.
The sprawling 220-page draft report includes recommendations for federal agencies involved in healthcare, K-12 and higher education, the military, and employment law. It broadly calls for an “originalist” interpretation of religious freedom in the Constitution, viewing that freedom as a “bridge” between personal belief and public life rather than promoting a “wall” of separation between church and state—a phrase used by Thomas Jefferson. Read More
June 29, 2026
America will celebrate its 250th birthday later this week. As teachers and schools have prepared lessons to mark the occasion this past school year and next, President Donald Trump’s administration has offered its own priority: Teach students to love their country.
In September of last year, the U.S. Department of Education announced “patriotic education” as a new priority for competitive grants. The agency convened an America 250 Civics Education Coalition, composed largely of conservative-leaning organizations, aimed at “restoring patriotism by ensuring every American knows our history and treasures our freedoms,” said Katie Gorka, the coalition’s executive director, in a statement.
A 2025 executive order promised to end “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools, arguing that classrooms were pushing “anti-American ideologies.” Read More
June 18, 2026
In March 2026, Now Magazine reported that a mother, Nicola, discovered her nine-year-old son had found his name on a “kill list” along with names of two other students circulating in his classroom in Tottenham, Ont.
The mother said she has faced backlash from her community after exposing the incident, and that she filed a human rights complaint after criticizing the school’s 10-day suspension of the student who wrote the list.
This news is harrowing in light of the recent school shootings we are seeing in Canada.
There is a longstanding body of research documenting the persistence of anti-Black racism targeting our children, as well as mounds of disturbing anecdotal incidents Black mothers must carry.
Carrying this weight exacts a cumulative toll, evident in the exhausting labour of repeatedly mobilizing time, energy and emotional reserves to advocate for our children. Read More
June 18, 2026
The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday announced it was moving certain civil rights enforcement functions to the U.S. Department of Justice, heightening anxiety over whether the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will be able to properly perform its duties.
“A federally coordinated law enforcement mechanism between the two agencies actually strengthens the enforcement of federal civil rights laws,” said a senior Education Department official on a press call Tuesday about the forthcoming Justice Department interagency agreement.
The announcement adds to a number of functions that the Education Department is already outsourcing to other government agencies, including certain special education responsibilities, as part of its efforts to downsize the department and reduce bureaucratic bloat. Read More
June 17, 2026
Two Hollidaysburg Area School District teachers have filed a federal class-action lawsuit, alleging that the district’s policy on displays related to sexual orientation and gender is discriminatory. Watch Here
June 16, 2026
Two of the U.S. Department of Education’s biggest responsibilities will shift to other federal agencies: safeguarding student civil rights and administering programs for students with disabilities.
The Trump administration said Tuesday it will move much of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). OSERS manages programs that support students with disabilities, offering guidance and oversight to ensure states follow the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a law that guarantees disabled students access to an equitable public education.
The administration announced it would also move much of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). OCR’s staff of civil rights lawyers are tasked with protecting students in K-12 schools and universities from discrimination based on disability, gender, race and national origin. OCR has been in tumult for months, targeted repeatedly by the Trump administration for staff cuts, then reversals of those cuts. Read More
June 4, 2026
New laws and policies across the country are dismantling the idea — celebrated by some, rejected by others — that prayer and proselytization should be kept out of public schools. Increasingly, religion is being injected all over the place.
With the Supreme Court rapidly changing its views on what is and is not permissible, policymakers — particularly in conservative states — are pushing the limits on incorporating religion into the school day. Public school classrooms are required to post the Ten Commandments, Bible verses are being injected into social studies curriculums, and some school districts are required to allow students to leave campus midday to participate in Bible study.
“Like a teenager with a new car, states are trying to figure out how far and fast they can go,” said Michael A. Helfand, a law professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and an expert in church-state law. Read More
May 26, 2026
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D‑NY) reintroduced the Hate Crimes Commission Act, bicameral legislation to strengthen the nation’s response to hate crimes, improve hate crime reporting, and identify strategies to prevent bias-motivated violence. The legislation would establish a bipartisan United States Commission on Hate Crimes to examine the factors driving hate crimes, barriers to accurate reporting, and evidence-based approaches to prevention, while directing the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to audit federal hate crime data collection systems.
“Our country was founded on the core principles of liberty, justice, and equality. Every American has the right to live freely and safely, regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or religion,” said Senator Gillibrand. “The alarming rise in hate crimes over the last few years demands a comprehensive federal response — and that starts with the establishment of a commission to investigate hate crimes. This legislation would help protect communities and gather the data we need to prevent future violence, and I am determined to get it passed.”
Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Grace Meng (D-NY), and Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) co-lead this legislation in the House of Representatives. Read More
May 22, 2026
Democrats on the House Education and the Workforce Committee say the panel’s ruling right-wing Republicans are trying to censor—whitewash might be more accurate—history teaching in U.S. schools.
And they’re doing much of it in the name of assassinated far-right influencer Charlie Kirk, whom the radical right has set up as a martyr. Kirk was the founder of Turning Point USA. His widow now runs it.
HR8705, the “Charlie Act,” as right-wingers call it, would permit federal education money for schools only if history teachers avoided certain subjects. The committee approved the measure on May 21. Panel Democrats tried and failed to knock the bans out of the bill.
Instead, the GOP banned federal funds to schools whose teachers discuss slavery and its impact, civil rights, immigration, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and attempted pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, LGBTQ rights, and sexual exploitation by the late financier/sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. Read More
May 21, 2026
Today, the Republican-controlled House Committee on Education and the Workforce advanced H.R. 8705, the CHARLIE Act, favorably out of committee. Congressional Equality Caucus Chair and Senior Member of the Committee Rep. Mark Takano released the following statement in response:
“Censoring American history doesn’t change what happened—it dooms future generations to forget and potentially repeat the mistakes of the past. Importantly, denying the existence of transgender people and the lasting effects of racism on American society does nothing to make American education better,” said Rep. Mark Takano, Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus and Senior Member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. “This bill censors some of the leading government-funded history and civics educational programs in an act of unacceptable overreach. Denying the lasting impacts Jim Crow and slavery have had on American society is denying reality, and restricting educators from honing their knowledge on these dark—but important—topics is an incredibly dangerous disservice to American students. I will keep working with my colleagues in the Equality Caucus to prevent this bill from becoming law.” Read More
May 15, 2026
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling against drawing congressional maps to protect Black or other minority voters represents a direct assault on the political voice of communities of color. For Black and Brown voters across the South, this decision has unleashed what congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins describes as “a historic moment in terms of how we draw our political lines,” and the consequences fall squarely on minority shoulders.
Where redistricting battles were once “spread out all over the country,” there is now “a real focus on one region of the country, the South,” the very region where Black political power was hardest won. Four additional states are now poised to redraw their maps, and the targets are clear: districts that have given Black and Brown communities meaningful representation for decades. Read More
May 14, 2026
Florida has long been a laboratory for autocracy. Several of the Trump administration’s most extreme policies were piloted there, including aggressive immigration enforcement, the systematic rollback of civil rights and voter suppression.
Now the Sunshine State is offering a new experiment: a high school history course offering a conservative interpretation of American history and a corrective to the official Advanced Placement U.S. History curriculum, which more than half a million students took last year, and that most historians and educators consider to be ideologically well-balanced. Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis and the state’s education department have attacked the AP course as “woke” and unpatriotic because it examines the complexities of American history including White on Black chattel slavery, the genocide of First Nations peoples and other realities that puncture sacred civic myths such as American exceptionalism and the fantasy that America is, and has always been, the greatest country in the world. Read More
May 12, 2026
Claire Galloway-Jones stepped up to lead the Brookline school district’s Office of Educational Equity in July 2023 at a time when families, staff and students were losing trust.
The wealthy, coveted district on Boston’s edge faced allegations of repeatedly failing to address incidents of racial bullying and harassment, including a case in which an eighth grader knelt on a Black classmate’s neck, mimicking the murder of George Floyd. Educators of color had a pattern of staying only a few years; from 2021 to 2023, 18 left their positions. The Brookline school district, whose staff declined to comment for this article, has also churned through five superintendents in the last decade.
At the start of the 2024-25 school year, the district announced a projected $8 million budget deficit, and all operations funding for Galloway-Jones’ department was pulled. Read More
March 23, 2026
Lawmakers and citizens gathered in Harrisburg on Monday to celebrate the passage of the CROWN ACT, which bans discrimination in schools and the workplace based on hairstyles.
The bill, which was signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro on Nov. 25, 2025, has now taken effect in the Commonwealth.
“When I signed the bipartisan CROWN Act into law, we made it clear: no matter where you’re from, what you look like, or what hairstyle you choose, we’ll protect your freedom to be who you are here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro wrote on social media.
Pennsylvania is among 28 states that have passed similar laws, and New Jersey and Delaware have done so as well.
A CROWN ACT was proposed at the federal level, but while it passed the House, it failed to pass the Senate. Read More
March 23, 2026
Lawmakers and citizens gathered in Harrisburg on Monday to celebrate the passage of the CROWN ACT, which bans discrimination in schools and the workplace based on hairstyles.
The bill, which was signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro on Nov. 25, 2025, has now taken effect in the Commonwealth.
“When I signed the bipartisan CROWN Act into law, we made it clear: no matter where you’re from, what you look like, or what hairstyle you choose, we’ll protect your freedom to be who you are here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro wrote on social media.
Pennsylvania is among 28 states that have passed similar laws, and New Jersey and Delaware have done so as well.
A CROWN ACT was proposed at the federal level, but while it passed the House, it failed to pass the Senate. Read More
March 5, 2026
In their mostly white school district, Black students routinely heard racial slurs. White classmates hurled insults like “slave,” “monkey” or worse.
It often went unpunished.
Parents made those claims in a 2024 complaint asking the U.S. Education Department to investigate racial bullying at the Pennridge School District in Pennsylvania. They thought their complaint had the power to make things better. Instead, it became one of thousands sitting in a federal office with little hope of gaining attention after layoffs by the Trump administration.
Families say they’ve had nowhere else to turn.
“There was an expectation that something was going to happen,” said Adrienne King, who has two daughters in the district and is president of the NAACP Bucks County chapter. When nothing did, “it’s a very hollow, empty feeling.” Read More
March 4, 2026
A federal judge voided a Trump administration directive that pressured educational institutions to end all programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion last month.
The directive, issued by the Department of Education as a “Dear Colleague” letter to public schools in February 2025, stated that school districts who failed to drop “discriminatory” DEI practices could violate civil rights law and lose federal funding. The letter cited the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions are unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit the following month on behalf of the National Education Association, a labor union of about three million educators, arguing that the Education Department’s policy violated due process and First Amendment protections. Read More
February 19, 2026
Workers on Thursday began restoring an exhibit on the lives of the nine people once enslaved at the former President’s House in Philadelphia amid a contentious legal fight between the city and the Trump administration.
Mayor Cherelle Parker visited the site Thursday morning and thanked the workers for their efforts, spokesperson Joe Grace said.
A federal judge had set a Friday deadline for the Interior Department to restore the exhibit on the people enslaved by George Washington at the site on Independence Mall. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the restoration work, a spokesperson said.
The administration argues that it alone can decide what stories are told at National Park Service properties. Park service workers last month abruptly removed exhibits from the Philadelphia site, prompting the city and other supporters of the exhibit to sue. Read More
February 18, 2026
A sociologist interviewed over 45 former and current Black students in Philadelphia public schools, ranging from ages 14 to 95, and found persistent reports of anti-Black attitudes, low expectations from teachers, and racial trauma across generations. While some students experienced affirmation of their Blackness in majority-Black schools, many described feeling singled out, degraded, and disciplined more harshly than their non-Black peers.
Why it matters
This research provides critical insight into the lived experiences of Black students in Philadelphia’s public education system over multiple generations, highlighting the entrenched nature of systemic racism and the need for meaningful reform to create more equitable and inclusive schools. Read More
February 18, 2026
In a victory for academic freedom and education equity, the U.S. Department of Education conceded the end of its February 14, 2025, “Dear Colleague” directive that sought to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in schools and higher education institutions nationwide. Upon the U.S.’s concession that the directive and subsequent certification requirement are vacated – meaning they are formally nullified – the district court issued a final ruling today, permanently invalidating the directive and preventing the government from enforcing, relying on, or reviving it. As a result, the challenged guidance is no longer in effect and cannot be enforced against anyone, anywhere nationwide.
“This ruling affirms what educators and communities have long known: celebrating the full existence of every person and sharing the truth about our history is essential,” said Sharif El-Mekki, CEO at The Center for Black Educator Development. Read More
February 11, 2026
Book bans across America have surged to unprecedented levels, with Black authors bearing the brunt of censorship efforts. This Black History Month, a powerful reading initiative challenges those bans head-on by spotlighting 28 essential works that schools and libraries have attempted to remove from shelves.
The campaign pairs each book with a liberation leader whose life embodied the same principles of resistance and transformation found within those pages. Together, they form a comprehensive education in Black history that extends far beyond February’s 28 days.
Why these books face censorship
The works targeted for removal share common threads. They confront uncomfortable truths about American history, explore the psychological impact of racism and challenge sanitized narratives taught in classrooms. Read More
January 28, 2026
More than a dozen people rallied outside the federal courthouse and the President’s House site on Wednesday, calling for displays showing the history of slavery during George Washington’s presidency to be restored.
The rally was organized by the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, which is calling for the panels detailing the lives of nine of George Washington’s slaves to be put back up at the President’s House site at 6th and Market Streets. Federal officials last Thursday removed several panels from the site at the order of the White House, which has described them as divisive.
The city is now suing the federal government over its removal. The coalition
Michael Coard is a founding member of ATAC and hopes to join the city’s injunction to restore the site, while also pursuing separate legal action. Coard said he is filing a lawsuit that he believes will preserve and restore the site long-term. Read More
February 4, 2026
The “Everyone is Welcome” saga is now a major legal battle. An Idaho middle school teacher has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a state law that led to her forced resignation after she refused to permanently remove motivational posters displaying messages of inclusion and hands of various skin tones from her classroom.
Sarah Inama, a sixth-grade world studies teacher formerly at Lewis & Clark Middle School in Meridian, filed the complaint this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, naming the Idaho State Board of Education, the Idaho State Department of Education, Attorney General Raul Labrador, West Ada School District, and school administrators as defendants.
The Posters at the Center of Controversy
The dispute centers on two posters Inama purchased from an arts-and-crafts store in 2021 and displayed in her classroom alongside world maps, an American flag, and other educational materials. Read More
February 1, 2026
Watching the news over the past several weeks, I have felt a mix of outrage, sadness, and horror. Since early December, federal immigration enforcement has intensified in Minneapolis, and by January, the escalation of violence became impossible to ignore. As a mother, educator, and counselor, I keep returning to our children, who are seeing and hearing much of the same things we are, but without the tools to make sense of them. In moments like these, I find myself pondering the role of educators.
In a matter of weeks, Minneapolis witnessed the fatal shooting of Renée Good, a 37-year-old writer and poet, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, both U.S. citizens. Read More
January 23, 2026
The National Park Service began removing a slavery memorial at the President’s House in Philadelphia on Thursday afternoon — an exhibit that opened in 2010 and honored the lives of the nine people held there who were enslaved by President George Washington.
On Thursday afternoon, the Action Cam captured NPS staffers taking down boards and panels that told the stories of Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules, Joe Richardson, Moll, Oney Judge, Paris and Richmond.
Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who founded an advocacy group that fought for a slavery memorial at the President’s House for decades, told ABC News that his group, Avenging The Ancestors Coalition, is planning to announce “powerful action shortly” in response to the removal. Read More
January 23, 2026
Over half of the states in the U.S. have enacted legislation to prohibit hair-based discrimination, and Pennsylvania has now followed suit. The Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act, signed into law on November 25, 2025, goes into effect on January 24, 2026. This state-wide measure follows CROWN Act ordinances passed by the Allegheny County and Pittsburgh City Councils in 2020 offering local protections, but Pennsylvania’s new law has several unique nuances.
The purpose of the CROWN Act is to address longstanding biases where natural hair and protective styles were deemed to be unprofessional or inappropriate, resulting in racial or religious discrimination. Read More
January 21, 2026
The University of Pennsylvania is pushing back on the Trump administration’s demand to release personal information about Jewish students, faculty, and campus groups.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoenaed Penn as part of its investigation into antisemitism at the Ivy League school.
The EEOC wants emails, phone numbers, and home addresses released immediately, without consent.
Penn says doing so could put those involved at “real risk of antisemitic harm.”
The commission has until Tuesday to respond to Penn’s filing. Read More
January 12, 2026
President Trump thinks the Civil Rights Movement—a series of laws and events that brought the country closer to realizing the full humanity of Black people, LGBTQ people, and women—was “reverse discrimination.”
“Do you believe … that the civil rights protections that Americans had, starting in the 1960s and so forth, resulted ultimately in the discrimination against white men?” The New York Times’ David E. Sanger asked the president in an interview released on Sunday. Read More
December 20, 2025
A Montgomery County principal is on administrative leave and faces termination after allegedly making antisemitic remarks, Wissahickon School District officials said Friday.
Philip Leddy, principal of Lower Gwynedd Elementary School, reportedly made the comments after a phone call with a parent about a student issue.
District leaders say Leddy believed the call had ended when he made the remarks to another employee in the room, which was inadvertently recorded on a parent’s voicemail.
Action News obtained the voicemail. The father, who asked not to be identified and has two children who attend the school, said Leddy had called him in response to an email about an incident involving his daughter.” Read More
December 8, 2025
The Arizona State Board of Education voted on Monday to begin the process of removing language related to diversity, equity and inclusion, commonly known as DEI, from state classroom standards. However, the board said they wanted more time to rewrite the policies.
State Superintendent Tom Horne, who proposed revisions in October, said the changes are necessary to protect Arizona schools from potential federal consequences despite federal courts blocking similar efforts by the Trump administration.
“He doesn’t usually bluff; he usually follows through,” Horne said of President Donald Trump. “If people did DEI, he would remove federal funding, which in this state is $866 million.”
“You never know when the ax is going to fall and it takes a while to fall to change standards, so we need to be proactive,” Horne said. Read More
December 3, 2025
On Nov. 19, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI) Salon welcomed students and professors to a discussion titled “Politics, Democracy, and Censorship: The Future of History Education in American Public Schools.” The discussion detailed the modern political battleground of K-12 history education in the United States.
Jamal Donnor, associate professor of education at the William & Mary School of Education, and Brendan Gillis, the director of teaching and learning at the American Historical Association, were invited to campus to discuss ongoing threats to K-12 history education and offer insights into the struggle for political control over curriculum. The event was hosted and moderated by Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Black Studies and History Stefan Bradley, Department Chair of History Ellen Boucher, and Five College Professor of Education Studies Kristen Luschen. Read More
December 2, 2025
When my son, Jonathan, was born, one of the first children’s books I bought was “So Much” by Trish Cooke. I was captivated by its joyful depiction of a Black family loving their baby boy. I read it to him often, wanting him to know that he was deeply loved, seen, and valued. In an era when politicians are banning books, sanitizing curricula, and policing the teaching of Black history, the idea of affirming Black children’s identities is miscast as divisive and wrong. Forty-two states have proposed or passed legislation restricting how race and history can be taught, including Black history. PEN America reported that nearly 16,000 books (many featuring Black stories) were banned from schools within the last three years across 43 states. These prohibitive policies and bans are presented as protecting the ‘feelings’ of White children, while at the same time ignoring and invalidating the feelings of Black children who live daily with the pain of erasure, distortion, and disregard in schools. Read More
November 11, 2025
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is supposed to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, age and disability status, isn’t what it once was.
The Trump administration laid off nearly half the staff in March, shuttered seven of its 12 regional offices, shifted the hollowed-out agency’s focus to new priorities (including keeping transgender women out of women’s sports) and then reportedly terminated more employees amid the ongoing shutdown.
Philadelphia was among the cities that lost its OCR regional office in the first round of layoffs. Lindsey Williams, a Pennsylvania state senator who serves as minority chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the region’s cases now go to Atlanta, “where they may or may not be heard.” Read More
October 29 2025
Faith leaders, school officials and civic members joined the Mechanicsburg community for a “No Hate Here” event after recruitment cards seemingly promoting the Women for the Ku Klux Klan were found at a Halloween parade earlier this month.
“There is more love somewhere. I will reach out ‘till I find it. There is more love somewhere,” hundreds sang as they crowded into an alley next to the Gingerbread Man bar on Railroad Avenue as they promoted love and stood up to hate.
“It is not enough for us to say we are not racist, we have to be anti-racist,” said Rev. Elizabeth Eckman.
Organizers said silence is the welcome mat to hate, and that it’s time to get loud.
“Advertising by a hate group, especially in even the vicinity of children is a problem am I right?” Dr. Andrew Bitts, the Superintendent of the Mechanicsburg Area School District asked the crowd, to which they responded with an emphatic “Yes!” Read More
September 4, 2025
In April, the U.S. Department of Education used a landmark law intended, in part, to end racial discrimination to investigate Chicago Public Schools over a “Black Students Success Plan,” after a complaint that the program discriminated against students of other races.
In July, the department ruled five Virginia school districts had violated another civil rights law, intended to protect women and girls from sex discrimination and harassment, by allowing transgender students to use school facilities based on gender identity, not biological sex.
And just last week, the Trump administration announced a similar finding against Denver Public Schools, warning the district to, among other things, “adopt biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female'” within 10 days or risk losing federal funding.
The country’s federal civil rights laws, written to protect marginalized groups from discrimination, have become an unlikely tool in the Trump administration’s efforts to end targeted support for students of color and protections for transgender students. Read More
September 3, 2025
A large Washington-based medical association announced Tuesday they had reached a settlement with the Trump administration requiring the restoration of dozens of public health web pages and datasets tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and gender identity.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not comment on the settlement, but told Fox News Digital it remains “committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people.”
The Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) and Doctors for America sued HHS and other agencies in May after the Trump administration, following executive orders in January, directed the removal of hundreds of web pages and datasets that referenced gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion, LGBTQ+ health, racism, vaccines, opioid use, and Biden-era abortion policies on federal health websites. Read More
August 15, 2025
A federal judge on Thursday struck down two Trump administration actions aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the nation’s schools and universities.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland found that the Education Department violated the law when it threatened to cut federal funding from educational institutions that continued with DEI initiatives.
The guidance has been on hold since April when three federal judges blocked various portions of the Education Department’s anti-DEI measures.
The ruling Thursday followed a motion for summary judgment from the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association, which challenged the government’s actions in a February lawsuit. Read More
July 31, 2025
Twenty-three years ago, Black activists led a relentless effort to make slavery the focal point of an exhibit on a Philadelphia home once occupied by Presidents George Washington and, later, John Adams. It was a chapter of history that the National Park Service was — at first — hesitant to explore.
But the activists’ persistence helped transform the President’s House Site at Independence National Historical Park into what it is today: a powerful tribute to the nine people President George Washington enslaved there during the founding of the United States.
And now in a little over a month, by Sept. 17, those efforts could be altered or erased in another attempt to sanitize history in response to an order from President Donald Trump, who seeks to remove content at national parks that his administration deems to “inappropriately disparage” Americans past or living. Read More
July 31, 2025
Summer is popularly imagined as bringing joy to all young people. Yet it is not an equal break or of the same quality for all students.
Learning loss is the decline in academic skills and knowledge that can occur when students are not engaged in structured learning, especially during extended breaks like summer.
It disproportionately impacts Black and low-income students who face greater systemic disadvantages within the education system.
Black families face challenges in accessing culturally relevant and affirming summer opportunities. As work by education researcher Obianuju Juliet Bushi and others has documented, for many Black families, the question isn’t just “what will my child do this summer?” It’s also “where can my child go to be safe, affirmed and supported?”
Without access to affordable enrichment programs during the summmer, many students fall behind in reading and math, further widening the opportunity gap when school resumes in September. Read More
July 16, 2025
Kansas City tackles racial and social justice challenges with community responses. The curated articles highlight systemic issues, such as racism in schools, policing practices, and mental health support for Black men, while suggesting community-based solutions. One article reveals a student’s use of a racial slur at a Christian school, urging school leaders to enforce stricter anti-racism policies. Another article discusses policing on Prospect Avenue, cautioning against overpolicing while ensuring safety.
A third article advocates for the compensation of a family whose relative was unlawfully killed by a former police detective. It stresses the importance of upholding civil rights and holding officers accountable. Lastly, a discussion around Black men’s mental health showcases an initiative aimed at promoting open conversations and support among marginalized communities. These examples illustrate Kansas City’s efforts to address complex racial and social issues through collective action and accountability. Read More
July 11, 2025
When public school teachers return to classrooms this fall, they will confront a new legal landscape that has given parents expanded veto power over certain aspects of a child’s education.
A sweeping constitutional interpretation issued last month from the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes a fundamental right under the First Amendment to opt-out from classroom lessons that may pose what it called a “very real threat of undermining” sincerely held religious beliefs.
It has school districts and their attorneys nationwide scrambling to review curriculum for possible conflicts and fine tune protocols for when and how students can be excused from certain material.
“It marks a significant challenge for public education nationwide,” the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education, which lost the case, said in a statement on the decision. Read More
June 25, 2025
Hair comes in all types, as varied and unique as the people whose heads it crowns. That’s why the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) wants all Pennsylvanians to “Love Your Crown.”
What does that mean? It means that beauty, as expressed in hairstyles, allows no room for discrimination.
“Nobody should be discriminated against because they come with hair in locks, braids, twist, or hair that’s purple today or blown out like an Afro tomorrow,” says PHRC Executive Director Chad Dion Lassiter. “We should not be discriminating against people in the workplace or any other place because of their hair.”
The inherent beauty of hair representing Pennsylvania’s wealth of cultural and experiential diversity is the driving force behind the proposed CROWN Act. The legislation, HB 1394, would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to prohibit discrimination based on hair texture or style. Read More
June 12, 2025
The war on public education is nothing new. It’s a modern tactic rooted in a long history of denying Black people access to knowledge.
During slavery, it was illegal in many Southern states to teach enslaved people to read. After emancipation, white mobs burned Black schools and attacked Black educators. During Jim Crow, unequal funding and forced segregation were used to keep Black communities locked out of opportunity.
Today, the tools have changed — book bans, anti-“critical race theory” laws, defunded schools — but the goal is the same: to control what Black children know and, therefore, who they can become.
You can’t change the future without understanding the past. Some people have made it clear: They don’t want to understand the past and don’t want the future to look any different from the past they built. Read More
June 12, 2025
In November 2024, a Jacksonville, Florida, mother watched her 16-year-old son unravel.
Already the target of racist bullying at school, he was one of many Black students across the country who received racist text messages after the presidential election. It hit hard: the teenager became withdrawn, afraid to return to school, and was overwhelmed by a feeling that he didn’t belong.
He eventually returned a few weeks later, but much like the bullying, the school never addressed it publicly. The school and the world, his mother said, “just moved on from the story.”
But the situation almost cost him his life.
“He told me later that he didn’t want to go back to school and that the reason he gave me his phone was that he had been thinking about ending his life,” says his mother, who asked Word in Black to remain anonymous to protect their privacy. “And that’s when I just broke down.” Read More
June 9, 2025
Despite the promise of equal opportunity heralded by the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a new WalletHub report reveals that America’s educational system remains critically unequal – especially for Black students. The disparities, experts say, have only widened in recent years, worsened by former President Donald Trump’s dismantling of federal education funding and his administration’s attacks on teaching real American history.
WalletHub’s analysis ranked states by racial equality in education, using key metrics such as gaps in graduation rates, college degree attainment, and standardized test scores between Black and white students. Wyoming, New Mexico, and West Virginia top the list for equity, while Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin rank lowest.
According to the report, school districts with predominantly white students receive $23 billion more in funding per year than districts with majority nonwhite students. Read More
May 25, 2025
The number of white nationalist, hate, and anti-government groups around the US dropped slightly in 2024—not due to shrinking influence, but rather the opposite. In its annual “Year in Hate and Extremism” report, released Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it counted 1,371 hate and extremist groups, a 5% decline from the previous year, per the AP. In 2023, “record numbers” of white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ groups were found.
- Hate groups: Last year, there were 533 active hate groups in the US. These include groups who express views that are anti-LBGTQ+, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, and anti-Muslim. This number has been steadily declining since reaching a historic high of 1,021 in 2018.
- Anti-government groups: Last year, they totaled 838, an increase from recent years, according to the law center based in Montgomery, Alabama. These groups see the federal government as “tyrannical” and include militias and self-described sovereign citizens. Read More
May 22, 2025
The number of white nationalist, hate and anti-government groups around the U.S. dropped slightly in 2024, not because of any shrinking influence but rather the opposite. Many feel their beliefs, which includes racist narratives and so-called Christian persecution, have become more normalized in government and mainstream discourse.
In its annual Year in Hate and Extremism report, released Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it counted 1,371 hate and extremist groups, a 5% decline. The nonprofit group attributes this to a lesser sense of urgency to organize because their beliefs have infiltrated politics, education and society in general. Some of the ways they have done this are through pushing for bans on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, book bans and protests of drag story hours, the report says. Read More
May 5, 2025
More than 49 million young people attend public schools in the United States, and they have all been thrust into the center of President Donald Trump’s regressive agenda as he moves to use education funding as political leverage. Critics contend his attacks on public education will hurt disabled students, LGBTQ students, students of color, and those from low-income households the most.
“What’s coming out of Washington—it’s whiplash-inducing and tragic,” says one California middle school and high school history teacher who spoke anonymously for fear of being targeted. “To me, the message [has been] that education is unimportant and the needs of students [are] unimportant. Read More
April 25, 2025
A federal judge on Thursday blocked Trump administration directives that threatened to cut federal funding for public schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, which accused the Republican administration of violating teachers’ due process and First Amendment rights.
In February, the U.S. Education Department told schools and colleges they needed to end any practice that differentiates people based on their race. Earlier this month, the department ordered states to gather signatures from local school systems certifying compliance with civil rights laws, including the rejection of what the federal government calls “illegal DEI practices.” Read More
April 15, 2025
A storied civil rights legal group that helped desegregate U.S. public schools seven decades ago is suing the U.S. Department of Education over its efforts to stop diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools.
Why it matters: The federal lawsuit by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) on behalf of the NAACP is the latest challenge to the Trump administration’s attempts to end DEI programs and limit discussions of racism in schools.
The big picture: The lawsuit comes at the Trump administration is using a broad reinterpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on “anti-white racism” rather than discrimination against people of color. Read More
April 14, 2025
Using the power of football to engage young people, Newcastle United Foundation delivers 19 free Premier League Kicks sessions every week, tackling anti-social behaviour and enriching the quality of childhoods through sporting opportunities in the community.
The visit to Byker Primary coincided with the Premier League’s No Room For Racism campaign, which runs from 5-14 April. Willock took the opportunity to join the Foundation’s coaching staff, before teaming up with Ameobi for a Q&A with the youngsters to illuminate the importance of diversity in sport and wider society. Read More
April 16, 2025
There are a lot of things 12-year-old G likes about school. She likes gym class; she likes to help other students; she likes to craft with her teacher.
But when you ask what she doesn’t like, G doesn’t hesitate.
“The blue room,” she says, sitting in her home outside Fort Wayne, Ind.
That’s a padded room G’s family says school staff sometimes lock her in.
“It feels like close spaces, and it’s like — it’s, like, scary in there.”
Her mother, Amy Cupp, says G has disabilities, and because of them, she sometimes has tantrums at school — lying on the floor; refusing to follow instructions; and trying to leave the room. Sometimes when this happens, school staff seclude her. Read More
April 10, 2025
In a memo, Pennsylvania officials complied with President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders but told school districts that they don’t need to change any of their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, claiming there are “no federal or state laws generally prohibiting efforts,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
March 17, 2025
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday again passed a bill that would add hairstyle to the state’s anti-discrimination law.
The bill passed nearly unanimously and would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to clearly state that the law’s prohibition on racial discrimination includes hair — a specific concern for Black women who have faced prejudice over the texture and style of their hair, according to the bill’s supporters.
In recent years, the Democratic-majority House has passed several expansions of the Human Relations Act, but these haven’t been brought forward in the Republican-controlled state Senate. Read More
February 21, 2025
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, Allentown School District Superintendent Carol Birks said she’s now afraid to use the “E-word”: equity.
“The new administration has been actively implementing policy changes, many of which have a direct impact on public education,” Birks said Thursday at Allentown School Board’s Policy Committee meeting.
The U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 14 sent a letter to educational institutions that get federal funding, issuing new guidance on how federal laws should be interpreted in regard to diversity, equity and inclusion, Birks said. Read More
February 17, 2025
In a recent guest column for the Tennessean, Tennessee educator Joseph Murray lambasted DEI, arguing that the acronym stands for “division, excuses and identity” instead of “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Of particular concern, he wrote, is the impact of DEI in the classroom. And though he focused much of his attention on Frances Rosales’s opinion that diversity amongst teachers is important, Murray opened his piece with a discussion of Morgan Freeman’s 2005 appearance on “60 Minutes.”
In the interview, Freeman said that “Black history is American history” and called the concept of Black History Month “an insult.” Read More
February 1, 2025
A Pennsylvania school district has launched an investigation after photos of a sign prohibiting school bus riders from speaking Spanish circulated on social media.
The sign was allegedly posted in a school bus for the Juniata County School District, which outsources busing to Rohrer Bus, of Duncannon.
It prohibited the speaking of Spanish “out of respect to English only students” per “owner/management.”
Christie L. Holderman, superintendent of the Juniata County School District, released a statement on the matter Saturday morning, saying the district became aware of the matter Friday morning and “took immediate and appropriate action to address the situation.” Read More
January 28, 2025
A Central Dauphin Middle School teacher has resigned amid an investigation into a racist comment allegedly made to a student of Middle Eastern descent.
Several dozen people — including the child’s parents — attended Central Dauphin School District’s board meeting Monday night to voice concerns that the district had not treated the matter with sufficient gravitas and has not been proactive in dealing with racial harassment issues.
School board president Michael Jacobs read a statement — which had already been released by the district — during the meeting, saying that “this alleged incident goes against staff policies and the values that our district is built upon.” No other school officials addressed the issue during the public portion of Monday’s meeting. Read More
Janurary 13, 2025
2025 marks the 14th year of this teacher-focused blog, and, during this time, hundreds and hundreds of educators have offered advice on just about every classroom topic imaginable.
Now, here are all the posts—categorized, linked, and with detailed descriptions for each:
Race and Racism in Schools
Parent Engagement
Using Technology in the Classroom
Student Motivation and Social-Emotional Learning
Student Voices
Challenging Normative Gender Culture to Support All Students
Schools and the Pandemic
Classroom Management
Cooperative, Collaborative, and Project-Based Learning Read More
January 10, 2025
Recent incidents of racial harassment in schools and Trump’s re-election have intensified concerns among Black parents about their children’s safety and well-being on campus.
“As we inch closer to January 20th, I worry for my son and his friends who are about to graduate, a milestone we should be celebrating, but who have instead had to endure racism and harassment in spaces where they are supposed to be learning,” says a Jacksonville mother, who requested anonymity to protect her 16-year-old son’s privacy.
Her concerns aren’t unfounded. In the hours following Trump’s win, a wave of racist text messages targeted Black students across the nation — and her son was one of the recipients. Read More