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    Trump promises a crackdown on diversity initiatives. Fearful institutions are dialing them back already

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    In 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order against “race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating” which would have set the stage for sweeping attacks on diversity initiatives in the public sphere. In January 2021, on his first day in office, Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s anti-DEI order and signed one promoting “racial equity and support for underserved communities”.Now Trump is returning to office, he expected to restore his directive and double down on it. The people that run diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at public and private institutions are expecting mass crackdown. Project 2025 has labeled them “woke culture warriors” and pledged to wield the full force of the federal government against their efforts to create a more equitable society.Trump and his advisers have already threatened the funds and accreditation of universities they have labeled the “enemy”, and pledged to dismantle diversity offices across federal agencies, scrap diversity reporting requirements and use civil rights enforcement mechanisms to combat diversity initiatives they see as “discrimination”.The multi-pronged attack is certain to be met with major legal challenges, but while they prepare for those, advocates warn about the ripple effects of an administration declaring war on inclusivity efforts.“The concern is the bigger footprint and symbol,” said Nina Ozlu Tunceli, chief counsel of government and public affairs at Americans for the Arts. “Federal policies do have a domino effect on other states, on foundations, on individual donors.”Last week, Walmart became the latest in a series of high-profile companies to announce a rollback of its diversity initiatives following a campaign of legal challenges by conservative groups. Other businesses and institutions small and large are trying to keep a low profile to avoid becoming the target of anti-DEI campaigns, those who work with them say.There are already concerns that institutions fearful of losing funding or facing lawsuits may overcorrect and dial back their programmes before they are required to do so, advocates warn.A climate of fearEven before Trump was re-elected, “educational gag orders” seeking to limit discussion of race and LGBTQ+ issues in school classrooms had been introduced in at least 46 states. Last spring, conservative legislators linked campus protests against the war in Gaza to DEI initiatives. Virginia Foxx, the chair of the House committee on education and the workforce, told the presidents of several colleges that her committee would be “steadfast in its dedication to attacking the roots of antisemitic hatred, including anti-Israel DEI bureaucracies”.Questioning by Foxx’s committee ultimately led to several resignations by college presidents.“That got everyone terrified, including private university presidents who previously had been pretty brave about these things,” said Jeremy Young, director of the Freedom to Learn programme at the free speech group PEN America. “It was just this sense that, they’re coming, they’re headhunting for leaders, and you just have to do everything they say or they’re going to fire you or they’re going to cut your budget.”View image in fullscreenEven where no laws have been passed, a broad fear of repercussions has prompted some campus leaders to cut back on DEI initiatives, noted Young.“A number of states have engaged basically in jaw-boning, where the lawmakers will go up to a university president and encourage them or threaten them to close their diversity office while dangling a threat of funding cuts or passing a law the following year,” he said. “So we’re seeing universities trying to comply with these restrictions, or with these threats, even though there’s no law compelling them to do so.”Young cited the University of Missouri, for instance, where campus leaders in July dissolved its division of inclusion, diversity and equity citing nationwide measures against DEI even though no such law was passed in the state.In Texas, where state law does ban DEI offices but exempts academic course instruction and scholarly research, the University of North Texas system began scrutinising course materials in search for references to DEI, in what Young called an example of overcompliance and a “complete overreaction”.It’s a domino effect that anti-DEI activists are exploiting, for instance by sowing confusion about the 2023 supreme court ruling, which was fairly narrow but is sometimes cited as evidence that all DEI initiatives in higher education are illegal, said Leah Watson, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, where she focuses on classroom censorship.“We are very concerned about the broad chilling effect, and we see conservatives misrepresenting the status of the law in order to further the chilling effect,” Watson said. “Overcorrections are happening, and things are being cut that don’t have to be cut.”Some institutions have attempted to protect their work by downplaying their language around diversity to ensure that members from states with restrictions in place can continue to access them. Others have changed language about eligibility requirements for fellowships initially intended to promote access to people of color so as to avoid legal challenges.“There are institutions that want to continue their DEI programmes and they don’t want to be sued and they are really in a hard place with how to do that,” said Watson. “People are trying to fly under the radar at this point.”The new administrationGoing forward, the Trump administration is “likely to be the most virulent anti-DEI administration that we’ve seen”, said David Glasgow, the executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, which helps institutions navigate an array of recent legislative restrictions on diversity work.“People who do this work are nervous and anxious about what might be restricted but their commitment is still there, so it’s really about trying to figure out what they’re going to be able to do,” he added.So far, four states – Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – have banned diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or offices in universities, a primary target in the battle against DEI. A fifth, Alabama, has severely restricted them.In Florida, the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, also erased nearly all already approved state funding for the arts, ostensibly over a festival promoting inclusivity, which he dubbed a “sexual event”.View image in fullscreenThat may offer a blueprint for attacks on what conservatives see as “woke” culture under the incoming administration, said Tunceli, of Americans for the Arts.Institutions anticipating a similar backlash at the national level are already planning to emphasise projects the incoming administration may be more supportive to – like those celebrating the 250th anniversary of American independence, in 2026 – and to turn to alternative funding for those they expect will lose out on federal support.Many now believe that institutions will have to show bravery to uphold their values, even if it means risking funding. “What they need to do is find a backbone, and I say that with a lot of understanding and empathy for the situation they’re in,” said Young, of PEN America.“I worry when I see a university roll over for funding,” he added, calling on administrators to leverage their influence with alumni and their communities to stand up to legislators’ attacks. “A university that doesn’t have a new building is still a university, it’s just a poor university. A university that has lawmakers banning ideas and restricting the actions of the administration is really not a university at all.” More

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      Theatrics, hatred and Linda McMahon: how pro wrestling explains Donald Trump

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      Despite her background in professional wrestling, Linda McMahon is not known for bombast. Indeed, she’s terrible at it: in the many years during which the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO would make occasional appearances in her company’s programming as a version of herself, she was always derided by fans for her lack of charisma and wobbly speaking voice.The most notable thing she did in any of the storylines was pretend to be comatose in a wheelchair while her husband, the vastly more explosive Vince McMahon, sexually harassed one of his female wrestlers in a skit. Linda won’t be winning an Emmy anytime soon.That’s ultimately what makes her a threat: she doesn’t seem like one. She is falsely perceived as a “moderate” and will come across as the “good cop” in a collection of awful ones. When she was nominated as director of the Small Business Administration in 2017, under Donald Trump, she was the only cabinet pick who passed with substantial Democratic support – 81 out of 100 senators voted to confirm her. She made it through her two-plus years in the role without drawing attention (despite the fact that her husband was simultaneously making lucrative business deals with the Saudi government). She will almost certainly be confirmed by the Senate again with relatively little difficulty. They have other things to worry about.View image in fullscreenBut senators should be worried about putting McMahon in charge of education policy. Behind her grandmotherly affect beats a cold heart. As I documented in my biography of her husband, Ringmaster, Linda and Vince have presented a united front at all times even amid accusations of sexual assault. She was almost certainly aware of a massive pedophile ring that ran within the McMahons’ World Wrestling Federation (as it was known) from the 1970s to the early 90s.Just last month, five additional men stepped forward in a lawsuit to accuse Linda and Vince of knowingly allowing their childhood sexual assaults. Naturally, the McMahons deny any wrongdoing. (Vince is also under federal investigation for sex trafficking, a fact that Linda has yet to publicly comment on.)So far, Linda hasn’t mimicked Trump’s wild attacks on his opponents or the institutions of the US government. Her first statement since receiving Trump’s nomination was bland: “All students should be equipped with the necessary skills to prepare them for a successful future.” But I would doubt that her tenure will be moderate.She has never spoken or acted in opposition to any of Trump’s extremist policies in the past, and she has been friends with him since the early 1980s. She ran the biggest pro-Trump Super Pac in 2020 and is currently the co-chair of Trump’s transition team. There is no reason to doubt that this lifelong Republican and dedicated Trumpist operative will enact large swaths of the Project 2025 agenda, which calls for slashing school budgets and censoring educational content on race and gender.There is an illusion at play here. McMahon will be held up as a “reasonable” woman. But given that she works for Trump, her reasonableness is nothing more than “kayfabe”.View image in fullscreenEmerging from carnival sideshows in the 1880s, pro wrestling has always been built on a platform of deception. This deception is known in the industry as “kayfabe” (rhymes with “hey, babe”). For wrestling’s first century of existence, kayfabe was relatively simple, if arduous: wrestlers pretended to be violent madmen and performed staged matches “against” each other – but unlike film actors, they had to stay in character at all times, even on their off-hours. To commit to this code was to “stay in kayfabe”; to violate it was to “break kayfabe”. It was a lie, but it was wide and flat, so you could stand on it easily.However, those days are long gone. In the 1980s, Vince and Linda admitted their product’s fakeness in legal proceedings, so as to avoid taxes, regulations and fines. The secret was out, and nobody could credibly claim wrestling was on the level any more. So kayfabe evolved. What emerged was powerful – and often malevolent.In Ringmaster, I coined a term for this new form of misdirection, which still reigns: “neokayfabe”. Instead of insisting to the audience that what they were seeing was real, McMahon allowed fans to see behind the curtain and learn that not all was as it seemed.Wrestlers were encouraged to bring up real-life disputes with fellow grapplers, or even with McMahon himself, when they appeared in the ring. Previously taboo truths were confessed. Salacious teases of people’s personal lives came to the fore: first, it was just revelations of behind-the-scenes business frustrations; then, it graduated to things like a live interview with a wrestler’s widow about his drug overdose, the day after he died. Eventually, you had spectacles like a closeted gay wrestler being forced to sing Boy George lyrics and then get gay-bashed by another grappler. It’s hard to overstate how shocking – and gripping – these neokayfabe developments were for wrestling fans.When neokayfabe fully took hold in the late 1990s, ratings soared. Fans knew for sure that the matches were staged, but they also knew that thrilling revelations were bursting to the surface. The appeal wasn’t about who “won” or “lost” any more. It was about digging up the truth and deciphering it.You’d see a wrestler throw a particularly vicious personal insult at another one and start to wonder if their hatred was real, even if the match result wasn’t. You’d see Vince wrestle as a sadistic owner called “Mr McMahon” and be astonished that a Fortune 500 CEO was risking life and limb by falling 20ft from the side of a steel cage and landing on a table – was he really hurt after that fall, or was it all part of the show? Conversely, when the wrestler Owen Hart fell 70ft in a zipline accident during a 1999 live show and died after hitting the ring, the McMahons’ show went on, leading many in the crowd to assume it had all been staged. On top of all that, McMahon would toss in obscene sexual references and unconscionable bigotry to mock the marginalized.Much like Trump, McMahon was a master at capturing your attention because you couldn’t quite believe he was able to do what he was doing. Yet there it was. And all the while, Linda was the hidden hand behind him, steering the ship through the choppy waters of industry and emerging with a (somewhat) respectable media empire worth over a billion dollars.In her time running the company, she and Vince cultivated relationships with a wide array of people who now find themselves at the top of the Republican food chain. Most notably, Trump hosted two installments of the annual WrestleMania extravaganza in the late 80s, attended many additional shows and even participated in a long storyline where he pretended to be in an explosive rivalry with Vince, back in 2007. Before that storyline, Trump had rarely, if ever, worked up a rowdy and interactive crowd. But he was a quick study, and we can all see what he learned when he addresses his rally crowds.View image in fullscreenBut Trump wasn’t the only key contact. The McMahons were early corporate partners of the mixed martial arts promotion UFC, getting to know its deeply controversial head, Dana White (and, for what it’s worth, missing an opportunity to buy UFC in its infancy, only to watch as MMA dwarfed wrestling in popularity). It was the McMahons who made the wrestler Hulk Hogan (born Terry Bollea) an international superstar in the mid-80s. By 2024, both White and Hogan, as well as Linda, were primetime speakers at the Republican national convention.The reasoning for that prominent placement was easy to suss out: Trump just flat-out loves wrestling, and has since he was a preteen in Queens, watching local shows organized by Vince’s father. Trump did a late-stage campaign interview with the retired wrestler Mark Calaway (better known as the Undertaker), and was so excited that he essentially turned the tables and started interviewing Calaway with childish questions (eg “What stops somebody from going nuts and starting a real fight?”).If you watched Trump’s face throughout the convention, you saw him practically – and sometimes literally – falling asleep during the speeches. Not so when Hogan got up there. Trump was rapt and grinning while Hogan ripped off his shirt and declared that “Trumpamania” would take the former president all the way back to the White House. Hogan proved more prescient than many highly paid pundits, in that regard.The introduction of pro-wrestling culture into mainstream politics has brought a huge dose of chaos. That chaos is, of course, the point. It’s a shock-and-awe tactic: the enemies of pluralistic democracy are attempting to overwhelm us with statements and actions that confuse and unsettle. The Trump team is doing what it does best, which is keep the world off balance by warping our sense of reality. We no longer trust that anything we see or hear from Trump is strictly “real” – he lies as easily as breathing and routinely gets bored with his plans – but nor do we feel certain that he won’t act on his most ludicrous promises. We are immobilized in a state of constant panic and bewilderment.All of which is to say, Trump and his team have learned the most essential lessons of Trump’s favorite art form. If you don’t understand wrestling, you’ll never understand Trump.And you must know wrestling to understand our likely next secretary of education, as well – even though she doesn’t come across as a typical wrestling personality. She will mask herself in neokayfabe and do what her boss tells her to do. She will seek to tear up American education, from starving public kindergartens of cash to crushing protests at universities. She will be the sharp end of the presidential spear, all while seeming more like a kindly southern aunt than an efficient tool of neo-fascist revolution. She, and all of her ilk, will deceive and misdirect us. We must be vigilant. Don’t believe the hype. More

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      in Elections

      Trump Doesn’t Care Enough About K-12 Education to Break It

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      When it comes to education, I consider myself a normie parent. What I want is for my children to have a strong foundation in the core subjects: reading, math, science and history. I want my kids to be challenged to the best of their abilities and be prepared for the future. I want to be guaranteed that they will be physically safe. I don’t want monthslong school board fights over book bans or school renaming. I just want my children to read books and go to school.People disagree about how best to meet these goals (roughly, liberals think the worst public schools should be made better, conservatives think parents should be given more choices outside the public system, though there are some heterodox advocates). But the depressing fact is that neither party has delivered on the basics. As I argued last month, neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris had a plan for increasing test scores, fixing Covid learning loss, working on the student absentee crisis or addressing the fact that the teacher pipeline is drying up.Though education is not a top -five issue for voters, I don’t think Democrats on the city and state levels have done a good job as leaders on K-12 schools under President Biden. And on the federal level, he also has struggled. To name one, there’s the ongoing FAFSA debacle — the federal student aid application form was delayed for a second year in a row after last year’s disastrous rollout of a new form.A lot of students are still suffering from the prolonged school closings of 2020-2021, and schools in blue cities and suburbs were closed the longest. While the Biden-Harris administration isn’t responsible for these decisions made on the local level, I don’t think they did enough to push back on the districts that were completely closed for in-person learning after adults could be vaccinated. The federal government pumped a lot of money into Covid education relief, but that funding expired in September. As a public school parent, I can feel it: My third grader’s class has 30 kids in it, more than we’ve ever experienced since my older child entered the system in 2017.In Trump’s first term, he proposed billions of dollars of cuts to the Department of Education that did not get through Congress. His secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, was a huge proponent of school choice. “But for all her efforts, DeVos has little to show for it,” NPR’s Cory Turner said in 2020.Despite Trump’s lackluster record, his ability to gain voters in urban areas might have had to do with how much voters were fed up with Democratic leadership on things like education. As Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian explained, he was able to win in part because “In big, diverse urban places — like Houston’s Harris County or Chicago’s Cook County — he pared down traditionally large Democratic margins.” Trump also increased support in blue places like New York, San Francisco and the densely populated Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. And a lot of city-dwelling Democrats stayed home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘It gave me a new perspective’: student exchange program attempts to bridge divided US

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      For Baltimore native Jessica Osei-Adjei, a week-long trip to Anchorage, Alaska, last summer was more than just her first time traveling solo.“I went hiking on a glacier, camping and paddleboarding for the first time,” she says. “I’m not really an outdoorsy person but doing that was definitely worth it.”Osei-Adjei’s trip to Alaska was organized through the American Exchange Project (AEP), a non-partisan initiative founded in 2019 to facilitate high school seniors’ traveling to and meeting with youth from differing sociopolitical backgrounds in an attempt to help unite what Tuesday’s elections have made clear is an increasingly divided US.“We saw that emerging adults were perfect because they were malleable – we could put them through a shorter, easier-to-scale experience, and have it go much further than if we worked with adults,” co-founder and CEO of the AEP, David McCullough III, said.“And teenagers were also perfect because they were a very quick way into their parents’ hearts. So we thought: ‘Let’s have an exchange program right here in America.’”Over the past six years, the AEP has organized close to 1,000 student exchange trips, with students traveling to 70 towns in more than 40 states across the US.Funded by organizations such as the MacArthur Foundation, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw’s Hearthland Foundation, and other groups, students typically spend a week in a host family’s town free of charge, before hosting a student in their own home or community.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      “Most kids haven’t made up their minds politically. They have issues they care about, but they don’t really know the Democratic party or Republican party platform,” McCullough said.McCullough believes that the political divide that’s so entrenched in US politics – and which is likely to be amplified after Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday – is in part down to Americans not experiencing life or meeting people from a different geographic region or background.A 2022 YouGov poll found that one in five people Americans had visited fewer than six US states. A 2016 study of 2,000 US adults, meanwhile, found that the average American had visited just a quarter of US states and that 10% had never traveled outside their own state.For Olmert Hirwa, a student from Maine, one of the biggest takeaways from his visit to Longview in east Texas centered on the issue of guns. Before visiting Texas, he had never held a gun – but after spending a week in Longview, he found a new understanding for why people carry weapons.“What I learned is that people have guns because everyone has guns, and that guns are not the problem,” he said. “It’s the environment that people are in. It gave me a new perspective.“I also thought [Texas] would be less accepting of people of color – that was probably the biggest misconception I had going over there. For a small town, [Longview] has a lot of things going on.”Hirwa said he was still in touch with several fellow students he met during his time in Longview.Still, the challenges facing initiatives like the AEP are not inconsiderable in today’s polarized society.The rise of smartphones and the internet has further contributed to a sense of isolation among America’s youth, with researchers suggesting in 2020 that “a poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion and moralization poses a threat to democracy”.Divisive rhetoric at the political level has forced many to take sides, creating a sense that the country is more divided now than in the past. In most states, one party or the other controls the governorship and entire legislature.Some reports suggest Americans are increasingly moving to states that better fit their social and political views, further embedding a sense of division within the US. A report published by the real estate company Redfin in February found that one-third of real estate agents had clients who said they moved primarily because of state or local laws or politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are, at the moment, faced with some really challenging issues and we are talking about them in all of the wrong, most divisive ways,” McCullough said.“I’m wary that our country is doing two things that are really problematic – too often Americans would prefer to be right than to be effective. And [second,] national conversations are so frayed and divisive in a country that is enormous, incredibly diverse and prone to individualism.”He says some of the main challenges the AEP faces surround securing funding, and finding and recruiting more host families.“We have tons of interest across the country, but it’s going to be a lot of work to see all this through,” he said.Still, the program continues to grow.In 2023, about 475 students took part in exchanges. The AEP is planning to recruit 625 for next summer.For Osei-Adjei, the learnings of her 3,000-mile trip to Alaska went both ways.“I think that some people assumed that Baltimore was some extremely dangerous place,” she said. “People [in Alaska] were asking how often do I witness crime.“I told people I pretty much live like a normal citizen; I don’t fear for my life. I think them being here too can make them see that it’s just a normal city.”When other exchange students came to Baltimore, she said they were surprised by the city’s waterfront and the array of activities.Next up for Osei-Adjei? A trip back to Alaska next summer.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      in Elections

      Lo que los votantes de Estados Unidos le están diciendo a las élites

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      Hemos entrado en una nueva era política. Durante los últimos 40 años, más o menos, hemos vivido en la era de la información. Quienes pertenecemos a la clase educada decidimos, con cierta justificación, que la economía posindustrial sería construida por gente como nosotros, así que adaptamos las políticas sociales para satisfacer nuestras necesidades.Nuestra política educativa impulsó a muchos hacia el camino que nosotros seguíamos: universidades de cuatro años para que estuvieran calificados para los “trabajos del futuro”. Mientras tanto, la formación profesional languidecía. Adoptamos una política de libre comercio que llevó empleos industriales a países de bajo costo para que pudiéramos concentrar nuestras energías en empresas de la economía del conocimiento dirigidas por personas con títulos universitarios avanzados. El sector financiero y de consultoría creció como la espuma, mientras que el empleo manufacturero se marchitaba.Se consideró que la geografía no era importante: si el capital y la mano de obra altamente calificada querían concentrarse en Austin, San Francisco y Washington, en realidad no importaba lo que ocurriera con todas las demás comunidades que quedaron olvidadas. Las políticas migratorias facilitaron que personas con un alto nivel educativo tuviesen acceso a mano de obra con salarios bajos, mientras que los trabajadores menos calificados se enfrentaban a una nueva competencia. Viramos hacia tecnologías verdes favorecidas por quienes trabajan en píxeles, y desfavorecimos a quienes trabajan en la industria manufacturera y el transporte, cuyo sustento depende de los combustibles fósiles.Ese gran sonido de piezas en movimiento que has oído era la redistribución del respeto. Quienes ascendían en la escala académica eran aclamados, mientras que quienes no lo hacían se volvían invisibles. La situación era especialmente difícil para los hombres jóvenes. En la secundaria, dos tercios de los alumnos del 10 por ciento superior en las clases son chicas, mientras que aproximadamente dos tercios de los alumnos del decil inferior son chicos. Las escuelas no están preparadas para el éxito masculino; eso tiene consecuencias personales de por vida, y ahora también a nivel nacional.La sociedad funcionó como un vasto sistema de segregación, elevando a quienes estaban mejor dotados académicamente por encima de todos los demás. En poco tiempo, la brecha de los diplomas se convirtió en el abismo más importante de la vida estadounidense. Los graduados de secundaria mueren nueve años antes que las personas con estudios universitarios. Mueren seis veces más por sobredosis de opiáceos. Se casan menos, se divorcian más y tienen más probabilidades de tener un hijo fuera del matrimonio. Tienen más probabilidades de tener obesidad. Según un estudio reciente del American Enterprise Institute, el 24 por ciento de quienes han terminado como mucho la preparatoria no tienen amigos cercanos. Tienen menos probabilidades que los graduados universitarios de visitar espacios públicos o unirse a grupos comunitarios y ligas deportivas. No hablan en la jerga adecuada de justicia social ni mantienen el tipo de creencias sofisticadasi que son marcadores de virtud pública.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Curriculum restrictions in US public schools hurt teachers and students alike | Stacey Abrams and Randi Weingarten

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      Students across the country are settling into the new school year, connecting with friends and developing new knowledge and skills. Teachers are also hard at work, but in many places, their lesson plans will be far more complicated than they were last year.An alarming number of states have passed laws forcing educators to navigate terrifying legal and professional minefields – laws that restrict forthright lessons about history and current events, policies that make it illegal to discuss identity in our schools, and bans on books written by or about people from diverse backgrounds. More than 30 states have passed or introduced more than 100 anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) bills, and 20 states have passed bills banning the discussion of race and gender in the classroom. In these polarizing times, many teachers are racked with anxiety about whether teaching in ways they know to be appropriate could subject them to discipline, harassment or even termination.Access to strong, supported public schools is one of the key pathways to the American dream. By attempting to shape public education to reflect their worldview and punishing educators for teaching a diverse and inclusive curriculum, reactionary legislators are looking to impose their specific ideologies over educational institutions that serve a broad public.And they disregard the value of free speech that anchors our democracy. The first amendment is often viewed as an individual right, namely the ability to say and think what you want without government interference. But our nation’s founders understood that the primacy of the amendment stems from the collective nature of the right: it is our ability as a people to speak and think freely that ensures we remain a free people.No group of people better illustrates how the first amendment functions to protect us all as a society than public school teachers. Our teachers bear the tremendous responsibility of shaping our future leaders. They are charged with educating our children about the importance of our nation’s complex history, engaging in civil discourse with people with whom they disagree and thinking clearly and independently about the world they inhabit.To do so is a monumental job, and teachers necessarily surrender some of their first amendment rights when they agree to take on these responsibilities. They must defer to the state curriculum. Their job is to educate, not indoctrinate. But teachers do not surrender all of their first amendment rights upon entering the profession. They could not serve our children otherwise.Guidance to teachers must be clear and unambiguous, especially if their jobs are on the line. Bans on the teaching of our nation’s complex history – and its complicated present – degrade the ability of teachers to do their jobs. These vague bans are unconstitutional, unnavigable and undermining to our core narrative as Americans. The government should support teachers to carry out their vital role, not create a chilling effect on speech and force people to guess at what is permissible to teach.Bans on entire subject areas are so broad that they impede the ability of teachers to perform their most essential duty. Educators must be permitted to teach the required curriculum – including all the subjects our children need to compete in a global economy and to acquire the skills and knowledge they will need to succeed in life.Cynical, narrow-minded schemes to censor and skew what is taught and learned in our nation’s classrooms hurt our efforts to help all children get the best education possible. In a pluralistic society such as the United States, that includes helping students to bridge differences with people with different beliefs and backgrounds. There is no better place to do that than in our public schools.

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      in UK Politics

      Teachers will be allowed to work from home in Labour plan to boost recruitment

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      Your support helps us to tell the storyFind out moreCloseAs your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have the resources to challenge those in power.Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November electionAndrew FeinbergWhite House CorrespondentTeachers will be allowed to work from home to do marking and lesson planning under a Labour plan to boost recruitment to the profession.Under reported plans, headteachers will be told to make it easier for teachers to work from home during free periods. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson hopes the increased flexibility will stop women from leaving the profession when they have children, according to reports. Schools would be encouraged to give teachers blocks of free periods for marking or other prep work at the beginning or end of the day. This would allow people to juggle work while looking after children or completing the school run. A government source told The Telegraph: “Unlike its predecessor, this government is taking the recruitment and retention of teachers seriously, which is why we’re making common-sense changes that enable great teachers to say in our classrooms.“These changes are part of a wider reset of the relationship between government and teaching staff to ensure we drive high and rising standards across our schools and deliver better life chances for our children.”Labour has vowed to end the ‘culture of presenteeism’ at workplaces across the country More

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      in US Politics

      Ex-senator and university president’s spending is under state scrutiny

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      Increased spending by the recently resigned University of Florida president Ben Sasse is coming under scrutiny after a student-run newspaper found that he awarded secretive consulting contracts and gave high-paying jobs to former members of his US Senate staff and Republican allies – actions that he defended on Friday.Both Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida’s chief financial officer are calling on the state university system’s governing board to investigate after the Independent Florida Alligator reported this week that as school president, Sasse gave six former staffers and two ex-Republican officials jobs with salaries that outstripped comparable positions. Most did not move to Gainesville – but work remotely from hundreds of miles away.Sasse, a former Nebraska senator, became the school’s president in February 2023.Overall, Sasse’s office spent $17.3m during his first year compared with the $5.6m spent by his predecessor Kent Fuchs in his final year. The university has an overall budget of $9bn.DeSantis’s office issued a statement saying that the governor “take[s] the stewardship of state funds very seriously and [has] already been in discussions with leadership at the university and with the [governing] board to look into the matter”.The chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, wrote on the social media platform X that the Alligator’s report “is concerning” and that the governing board “should investigate this issue to ensure tuition and tax dollars are being properly used”.Sasse resigned on 31 July, citing his wife’s recent diagnosis with epilepsy after years of other health issues. His hiring by the governing board to head Florida’s flagship university (UF) had been controversial as his only previous experience was five years as president of Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska, which has just over 1,600 students. UF has 60,000 students and 6,600 faculty members and is one of the nation’s top research universities.In a lengthy statement posted to X on Friday, Sasse defended the hirings and consulting contracts, saying they were needed as UF launches new satellite campuses and K-12 charter schools around the state, increases its work with artificial intelligence and looks to improve in the fields of medicine, science and technology.He said all the hirings were approved in the normal budget process, that some got raises to secure their services amid “competing opportunities and offers”, and he welcomes an audit.“I am confident that the expenditures under discussion were proper and appropriate,” he said.According to documents obtained by the Alligator, Sasse hired Raymond Sass, his former Senate chief of staff, to be the university’s vice-president for innovation and partnerships, a new position. His pay is $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made in Sasse’s Senate office. Sass still lives in the Washington DC area. He did not immediately respond on Friday to a phone message and email seeking comment.James Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, became UF’s vice-president of communications, earning $432,000 annually. His predecessor had earned $270,000. He still lives in Washington. He did not immediately respond on Friday to an email seeking comment.Taylor Silva, Sasse’s former Senate press secretary, was given the new position of assistant vice-president of presidential communications and public affairs. The job has an annual salary of $232,000. Silva did move to Gainesville. No contact information for Silva could be located. Silva is not listed in the university directory.Three of Sasse’s other former Senate staffers also got jobs with UF.Besides his former staffers, Sasse hired two others with strong Republican party ties.He hired the former Tennessee commissioner of education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice-president of pre-kindergarten to grade 12 and pre-bachelor’s programs at a salary of $367,500. She still lives in Tennessee. She did not immediately respond to an email on Friday seeking comment.He also hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, as director of presidential relations and major events at a salary of $205,000. She also did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.Because most of these appointees still live outside Florida, travel expenses for Sasse’s office ballooned to $633,000, more than 20 times the amount spent annually under Fuchs.Sasse also hired McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser, to a $4.7m contract. The secretive firm is one of the country’s most prominent management consulting firms. The university has declined to say what its work includes. The firm did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.He also awarded about $2.5m in other consulting contracts, the Alligator reported. More

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      in UK Politics

      Revealed: the worst-hit schools as spending freezes amplify ‘privilege gap’

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      Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches emailSign up to our free weekly Voices newsletterSeven in 10 schools across England have been hit by cuts and can’t afford the same essential running costs as when the Conservatives came to power in 2010, new analysis shows.Some 13,000 schools across the country were subject to cuts over the period, with the worst hit – Dunraven Secondary School in Lambeth – seeing its real-terms spending power slashed by a total of £4,093,473 this year when compared to 2010.Hundreds of schools have lost over £1m in real-terms funding compared to 2010, according to calculations by the National Education Union (NEU). On an individual level, some 2,000 schools have lost over £1,000 in real-terms budget per pupil under the Tory government.Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson told The Independent: “I wish that I could commit to solving all of that if Labour wins the next election, and fixing it quickly, but I do have to be upfront about the scale of the challenge.“There will be that immediate investment of cash that we will make ending the tax breaks that private schools enjoy. But beyond that, we do need to get our economy growing so we have more to invest in our public services.”A Conservative spokesperson said: “Under Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives, we are boosting school funding to the highest level ever in real terms per pupil, driving up standards across the country up from 68 per cent of schools being rated good or outstanding under Labour to 90 per cent today with children in England named ‘Best in the West’ for reading.”Headteacher Claire works in an infant school in Milton Keynes. The school has lost out on £1,214 in real-terms funding for each pupil compared to 2010, according to NEU calculations, a dip of 13 per cent.Claire doesn’t believe that either political party is tackling the budget problem.“On a national level, I think funding just needs to be completely relooked at for schools… it doesn’t feel like it’s on the agenda for this election at all. I don’t feel that it’s a priority for any of the major parties.”The NEU has created the single-issue School Cuts social media campaign for the general election, which the union says has reached upwards of seven million people. The union is encouraging a letter-writing campaign to local candidates.The NEU calculates real-term cuts to schools by determining core funding and then outlining school expenditure each year, adjusting for inflation and other price shocks.Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said that the impact of Conservatives’ education cuts is clearly visible in schools. “The truth is, 14 years of government cuts to schools have left education in crisis, and children are paying the price. We can all see the consequences: larger and larger class sizes, burned-out teachers leaving the profession, and buildings literally falling apart.”He added: “The government is failing a generation of children.”Government cuts to funding, in addition to a spike in children with special educational needs at mainstream schools, means that schools have been forced to make drastic decisions on what they can provide to students.Teachers like Claire are seeing that lack of resources widens the divide between children from high and low-income households, the latter of whom don’t get access to the same experiences, such as school trips.“What’s really worrying me is if we can’t give children access to resources and experiences, that’s going to affect their education. We won’t be able to close that privilege gap, between those that can and those that can’t. The cycle is just going to continue and repeat itself.”The above map from NEU data shows that schools have been impacted in all areas of the country, with most local schools facing budget squeezes in constituencies in the North West and South East.Schools in Slough, Bethnal Green and Stepney have lost close to £30m in real terms, comparing 2023-24 levels to 2010-11 levels. Meanwhile, London boroughs top the list of constituencies worst hit by cuts, with 17 having lost more than £1,000 on average per pupil.These take in constituencies such as Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Clapham and Brixton Hill, Tottenham, and the Cities of London and Westminster.Claire’s school in Milton Keynes is struggling with monetary pressures on all sides. Her only avenue for major costs like leaks and asbestos checks is the local council, which says it doesn’t have the money either. “It’s like a brick wall, basically,” she said.The budget is so small that the school can no longer afford to pay the caretaker. Now, teachers and office staff take out the bins themselves, perform health and safety checks, and pick up essential items after school. In an effort to get by, Claire says that the school relies on some goodwill: volunteer groups have come to paint the building, for example, and teachers’ husbands have even done repairs when needed. “Saying it out loud, I think, oh my God. We just get on with it,” said Claire. In a recent report, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that “no real-terms growth in school spending per pupil over 14 years is historically unusual”.Over her 11 years at the school, Claire has noticed a huge drop in resources and budget, particularly when it comes to IT and school trips. “When I first started, we had a full suite of computers in the ICT room. The budget was in a surplus. We had an extension done at the time to make one of the classrooms bigger. There were significant pots of money, and we just don’t have that luxury any more. It’s just gone.”The ratio of pupils to teachers has gone down, too; and staff are juggling multiple roles, without having the pay or qualifications to match.“Lots of children are coming into school with significant speech and language difficulties. The services are not there in the NHS to support that. So we’ve got teaching assistants being expected to act like speech and language therapists when they’re not qualified to do that.”She added: “Schools and teachers are becoming almost social workers, to support families that are living in poverty.” More