This January, Florida’s Department of Education banned the teaching of AP African-American Studies, claiming it was inconsistent with new Florida laws prohibiting the teaching of Critical Race Theory and related topics concerning Black and LGBT history. In April, 2022, the Yale Faculty Senate passed a resolution opposing the Educational Gag Orders that were used to justify this decision. In this teach-in for the Yale community, we bring together two of the four scholars targeted by name in Florida’s decision, Kimberlé Crenshaw and Yale’s own Roderick Ferguson, together with a high school teacher, a distinguished US historian, and a member of the Yale Faculty Senate to discuss the significance and implications of Florida’s decision for education in a democracy.
This public event is hosted by the Yale Faculty Senate and co-sponsored by Yale Education Studies, The Department of African-American Studies at Yale, The African American Policy Forum, the Yale Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Anti-Racist Teaching and Learning Collective.
There will be a reception following this event.
Kimberlé Crenshaw is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Distinguished Professor of Law and the Promise Institute Chair in Human Rights at UCLA Law School. She is one of the founders of Critical Race Theory.
Roderick Ferguson is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Professor of American Studies at Yale University, and the author of four books, including Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. He is the 2020 recipient of the Kessler Award from the Center for LGBTQ Studies.
David William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winner for History.
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. His most recent books are How Fascism Works and How Propaganda Works.
Daisha Brabham teaches Black and Latinx Studies, history and civics at Windsor High School and is a teacher organizer and educator with the Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective an andjunct faculty member in History at Southern Connecticut State University, where she received her BA. Born and raised in New Haven, she holds an MA in Public History from University College London.
The discussion will be moderated by Daniel HoSang, Professor of Ethnicity, Race, & Migration and American Studies at Yale University.