EDUCATIONAL GAG ORDERS: What colleges and universities can respond

In Oklahoma, a similar state law passed in May 2021 spurred Oklahoma City Community College administrators to cancel a sociology class on race and ethnicity. PEN America, a nonprofit that champions creative expression and the freedom that makes it possible, has been tracking the proliferation of these censorship measures, which target K-12 schools and higher education institutions across the country. Since January 2021, more than three hundred of these bills have been introduced in forty-four states, and 118 million people-a third of the US population-live in one of the eighteen states where these laws or policies are in force. How will the gag orders affect business professors teaching about racial or gender disparities in employment or nursing professors teaching about similar disparities in health care? [...]programs offering early college credit, such as concurrent enrollment courses in US history and literature, could be threatened by gag order laws that focus only on K-12 classrooms; since these classes count for high school as well as college credit, and since they are often offered in high school settings, they could be subject to K-12 prohibitions even though they are rightly college courses.