Why Do Fascists Fear Teachers?

When I was a civics and history teacher at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York, it was my turn to teach my students the skills and knowledge they needed to soar. Whether the lesson was about the Constitution or movements that helped change the Constitution to create even greater justice and freedom, such as the suffrage movement that led to voting rights for women in 1920, I was equipping my students with as much information as possible to form their own ideas and opinions. To teach them how to think critically, how to problem solve, to understand differences, how to engage with others as they navigate the world, and to be resilient and persistent in the face of adversity.

One of the first lessons I would teach my students in my civics class was about the social contract—how individual freedoms and mutual responsibility are inextricably intertwined in our democracy. This is the sacred covenant that underlies our commitment to public schools. It’s the commitment to opportunity for all, in a safe environment, where every child is welcome, and where we work to engage every child so they can meet their God-given potential.

Clara Barton was an underfunded high school filled with kids who were too often underestimated. And the most heartbreaking thing was that they often underestimated themselves. We often competed in the We the People civics competition, a nationwide contest for high school students that tests not only their knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights but also their skills in applying civic knowledge to real-world issues and policy debates.¹ And in 1995, after we won the city competition, we raised money to get ourselves to the New York state competition, and when we won first place, we raised money to get ourselves to Washington, DC, for the finals.² They were excited, they worked so hard, and they were so disappointed when they came in fourth. They worked for hours and hours. They stretched themselves and relied on each other. And there were times when they were really mad at me and my co-teacher Dr. Leo Casey because we pushed them so hard.

My students taught me how, with hard work and support, they could do anything. And I knew that by learning civics and critical thinking, they were preparing to be the informed citizens and leaders of the future that our nation needs.

Al Shanker, my mentor and arguably one of the greatest union leaders and civic leaders of the 20th century, said that the essential job of our public schools is “to teach children what it means to be an American.” “One is not born into something that makes you an American. It is not by virtue of birth, but by accepting a common set of values and beliefs that you become an American,” Shanker wrote.³ And the point of schools is to inculcate and safeguard the very important foundational principle and practice in the United States that is democracy. “If we want democracy we have to demand it,” writes historian Timothy Snyder, “and we have to be able to educate children who will make and remake it.”⁴

Critical thinking is the heart of democracy, the muscle at the core that keeps democracy healthy and strong. We don’t tell our students who to vote for; we don’t tell our students what to believe. We teach them how to think for themselves, why democracy is important, and how they’re an important part of making it work and making it better. But rather than help teachers build a stronger America based on knowledge and truth and freedom of thought, fascists use fear, bullying, and culture wars to try to shut down teaching and democracy.

Ironically, there is one thing fascists and teachers agree on—that we cannot create a truly democratic, inclusive nation committed to opportunity for all without public schools. Fascists fight against public education because they want to control our minds, control our ideas, and control the future. And what do teachers do? We teach. It’s that simple. Class after class, year after year, we equip the next generation to think for themselves and preserve our nation’s precious bond between individual liberty, opportunity, and the common good.

We Want Kids to Think—and Read—for Themselves

When he was still a student at Morehouse College, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an essay in the student newspaper titled “The Purpose of Education.”⁵ He argued that education has two main purposes: “the one is utility and the other is culture.” Education helps students develop concrete skills and tools and learn how to use them to achieve their goals in life. But that second purpose King wrote about? That purpose is really democracy. “To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.”

“The function of education,” Dr. King went on, “is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” Critical thinking is vital to accurately understanding societal problems that need to be solved and, together with our civic peers, engaging, analyzing, and innovating as we constantly renew and reinvent our democracy. Critical thinking is the most important muscle in the exercise of democracy. No wonder fascists want to weaken it.

Democracy is being deeply, substantively engaged in the problems and solutions of our society. Which means critical thinking and education are absolutely essential to and intertwined with the practice of democracy. When we think critically, we have our own ideas and opinions, but we simultaneously scrutinize them, weighing other facts and ideas to be as rational as possible. We listen to and really wrestle with ideas and opinions that conflict with our own. And we engage earnestly with people who may think differently from us, exchanging facts and opinions, not taunts and smears.

“Democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint,” writes historian Heather Cox Richardson in her book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.⁶ Fascist leaders may campaign for our votes, but modern democracies more often fall because of autocratic candidates who work within the system to dismantle it, rather than because of coups or military takeovers. Prominent authoritarianism historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains that fascist and authoritarian leaders want to “damage or destroy democracy.”⁷ Democracy is people power. But fascists want one leader or a small group of elites to have all the power.

The problem for fascists, then, is that a public with strong critical-thinking muscles is more likely to strengthen democracy and resist authoritarianism. Scholars who study democracy worldwide are incredibly clear on this point: “On the whole, higher levels of education are associated with stronger democracies—a country with an educated populace is more likely to become or remain a democracy.”⁸ Looking at data from Latin American elections, researchers Amy Erica Smith and Mollie J. Cohen found that “The more education you have, the less likely you are to vote for an authoritarian.”⁹ In fact, some global scholars have gone as far as to suggest that “education causes democracy.”¹⁰

So is the opposite true? Yes, history has shown us that. For instance, in 2017, the Financial Times found that among Dutch voters, having attained less education was the greatest predictor of support for the country’s anti-immigrant, far-right political party.¹¹ And after winning a primary election during the 2016 election, Donald Trump bragged how well he did with certain demographics, saying, “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”¹² This may or may not have been just another sloppy aside from Trump, but it does reflect a deeper truth. Donald Trump was able to rise to power, yes, because of his keen political instincts and charisma, but also because he routinely says things he thinks voters want to hear, whether he can actually do anything about them or not.

Authoritarians actively attack truth, knowledge, and critical thinking because an uninformed public is easier to control. Degrading public education and critical-thinking skills may only prime more Americans to not recognize disinformation and misinformation and take authoritarian leaders like Trump at their word. Psychologist Bob Altemeyer studied personality traits that make people more receptive to authoritarian leaders. In his 2006 book The Authoritarians, Altemeyer documented his “Right-Wing Authoritarianism” scale, writing:

The authoritarian follower makes himself vulnerable to malevolent manipulation by chucking out critical thinking and prudence as the price for maintaining his beliefs. He’s an “easy mark,” custom-built to be snookered. And the very last thing an authoritarian leader wants is for his followers to start using their heads, to start thinking critically and independently about things.¹³

In other words, those inclined to support authoritarianism exhibit a general avoidance of or allergy to critical thinking. And authoritarians like it that way.

What do fascists do when they’re worried that students might learn about the truth on their own? They ban books. Book bans are a very old and deeply disturbing tactic that, frankly, I never thought we’d see at such a horrifying scope and scale in our country. But here we are. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2023, “more than 3,000 books have been banned in schools across America. These books disproportionately feature stories about LGBTQ+ communities, people of color, and others who have been marginalized.”¹⁴ Even though gun violence is the leading cause of death among children and teens today, the far right goes to extraordinary lengths to block any restrictions whatsoever on access to assault weapons or high-capacity rounds of ammunition.¹⁵ But they’ll use every means at their disposal to make sure high school students can’t check a book about gay identity out of the restricted section of the school library.

The point of diverse books isn’t to promote one identity or another—it’s to make sure all students have access to age-appropriate reading to inform their lives and choices. Factual, trustworthy, honest information isn’t propaganda—it’s power. Over the past several decades, one of the most banned books in America has been It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris. At quick glance, it’s sort of easy to understand why. It’s a book about sex, all different kinds of sex, written in an age-appropriate way for a middle school audience, with illustrations. Ideally, every child would be learning about safer sex and healthy relationships at home, but many aren’t. Plus, the far right has systematically attacked and undermined sex education for decades.¹⁶

Age-appropriate books and curriculum about health and safety provide vital information to students and can even be lifesaving for some. One story about It’s Perfectly Normal stopped me in my tracks.¹⁷ A 10-year-old girl at the library with her mother checked out a copy of the book. Eventually, the girl showed her mom the chapter on sexual abuse and said, “This is me.” The girl was being sexually abused by her father, and the book gave her a way to tell her mom what was happening. When the father was convicted, the judge in the case said, “There were heroes in this case. One was the child, and the other was the book.”¹⁸ Robie Harris, in retelling the story, said the girl’s mother was also a hero for listening to her daughter. And the librarian who ordered the book was a hero, too.

Banned books save lives. When we ban books, we take away power from parents to decide what information they do or don’t want their children to have access to. Banning books is anti-democratic and anti-American. That’s why the majority of Americans oppose the government legislating what can or cannot be in schoolbooks.¹⁹ And a majority of Americans “oppose efforts to have books removed from their local public libraries because some people find them offensive or inappropriate and do not think young people should be exposed to them.”²⁰

We just want kids to read and learn and think for themselves. We want to help them learn how to think, not what to think. Because that’s fundamental to their development and to a healthy democracy.

We Want Kids to Understand the Idea of Democracy

The far right has convinced many Americans that our democracy is broken because they actually want to break our democracy. And it might be working. Even before Trump and his supporters tried to overthrow our democracy, a 2017 poll found that almost a quarter of Americans said they would prefer a system of government in which a “strong leader” could make decisions without interference from other branches of government.²¹ A 2024 poll was even more ominous.²² Over 60 percent of respondents agreed with the phrase “What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.” One in four respondents strongly agreed. Most respondents also agreed our nation has to “smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs” and “silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.” These are authoritarian-primed perspectives.

Democracy is an idea. It only continues to exist if we believe in it and understand it. Foreign policy leader Richard Haass observes, “One major reason that American identity is fracturing is that we are failing to teach one another what it means to be American. We are not tied together by a single religion, race, or ethnicity. Instead, America is organized around a set of ideas that needs to be articulated again and again to survive. It is thus essential that every American gets a grounding in civics—the country’s political structures and traditions, along with what is owed to and expected of its citizens—starting in elementary school.”²³ In other words, what makes us Americans isn’t a singular identity or a singular ideology but a shared belief in democracy and the freedom and liberty for all that democracy creates. That belief is our shared creed.

Remember, the first official motto of the United States—still emblazoned on our nation’s seal and most of our currency—is 
e pluribus unum.²⁴ Out of many, one. Fascists and oligarchs want to divide us—attacking those who are different and turning us against each other so they can destroy America’s democracy and hand disproportionate power to a few of their chosen elites. But know that we, the people, believe in the promise of our nation—that all of us are created equal—and that working together while thinking for ourselves is the essence of American liberty. And who helps each and every one of us learn how to work together and think critically? Public school teachers. Public school teachers strengthen democracy.

Ryan Richman is a high school history teacher at Timberlane Regional High School in Plaistow, New Hampshire.²⁵ He tries to engage his students by showing how historical events relate to and inform the present, often by bringing current events into his classroom. So he gives his students a weekly assignment—to find something in the news and bring it to class, prepared to talk about how that current news event relates to history. According to Ryan, most of the stories his students bring in are about oppression. Those are the current events that catch their attention. “They’re about the Rohingya genocide, they’re about the Uyghur genocide, which are going on right this second,” says Ryan. “They’re about Black Lives Matter.” He’s responding to his students’ interest and helping them make connections with national and world events of yesteryear.

Before his second presidency, during which Trump unleashed an all-out attack on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a misinformation-fueled smear to destabilize public education writ large, in September 2020, during his first presidency, Trump signed an executive order banning what he called “divisive concepts” in diversity training within federal agencies.²⁶ With that cue, Republican legislators in at least 20 states introduced “divisive concepts” laws to restrict how teachers discuss inequality and injustice.

New Hampshire passed one such law in 2021. The law itself was convoluted and vague, mandating among other things that students not be “taught, instructed, inculcated, or compelled” to believe “that one’s age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion or national origin is inherently superior to people of another” or that any person might be “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”²⁷ So would talking about the Rohingya genocide and tying it to other ethnic cleansing campaigns in history violate the law or not? It wasn’t remotely clear. In fact, the vagueness of the law was the point—to sow confusion about what could or could not be taught and thus create a broad chilling effect.

When the New Hampshire law was passed, the state education commissioner created a website encouraging the public to file complaints accusing teachers of violating the statute.²⁸ And the far-right organization Moms for Liberty literally pledged a $500 bounty “for the person that first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this law.”²⁹ As the New Hampshire Bulletin noted, “The new teaching law comes as social studies classes have embraced new teaching methods. Gone is the strategy of rote memorization of dates and battle names. In its place is a model by which students lead discussion of thorny historical issues, and use research to arrive at their own conclusions.”³⁰ This “inquiry method” is meant to emphasize critical thinking. But laws like the one in New Hampshire discourage encouraging students to debate and discuss and think for themselves.

Would the New Hampshire law mean that Ryan’s students couldn’t discuss a topic like affirmative action and the recent Supreme Court decision, which was not only in the news but affecting them as soon-to-be college applicants? What if they were debating the topic? If a teacher shared research data showing the benefits of affirmative action, would that violate the law? What if the teacher were overseeing a class discussion where a student criticized affirmative action and the goal of racial justice? Would that break the law?

In 2021, Ryan and two other New Hampshire public school teachers joined with two parents to sue the state, arguing that the law was unconstitutionally vague and would make it impossible to comply with New Hampshire state education laws that require all schools teach about “intolerance, bigotry, antisemitism and national, ethnic, racial or religious hatred and discrimination [that] have evolved in the past, and can evolve, into genocide and mass violence.”³¹ The brief filed in their lawsuit went on to state:

New Hampshire law thus requires students to examine—and it follows that teachers shall provide the instruction for students to learn—controversial events from multiple perspectives and ideologies and learn to defend and challenge differing views on a wide variety of topics. In short, New Hampshire state law promises to develop students into well-rounded, well-educated young adults who are prepared to embrace all the challenges, complexities, privileges and responsibilities of American citizenship, who are prepared to live in an increasingly diverse world, and who can compete successfully in the New Hampshire, national and global economies.³²

In other words, historically, New Hampshire’s education laws not only encouraged but mandated that students be equipped with critical-thinking skills. But the politically motivated “divisive concepts” law wanted to censor teachers and control not just what students learn but what they think. The vagueness of the law was the point—so teachers never knew what was and wasn’t permissible.

In May 2024, a federal judge ruled that the anti–critical thinking law was unconstitutional. US District Judge Paul J. Barbadoro wrote that the law amounted to “viewpoint-based restrictions” that were so vague they would open the door to “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”³³

As a final exam question, Ryan often shares a passage from writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. It was Wiesel who said, when receiving the Nobel Prize, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”³⁴ In their final essays, Ryan asks his students to reflect on Wiesel’s insights on bystanderism in the context of present-day events. And Ryan says that his students—the liberal ones, the conservative ones, and all the students in between—often draw connections to racial oppression in the United States. They’re thinking critically about the present and the past and making those links. Which, frankly, we want them to do, right? We don’t want the leaders of tomorrow to forget about the mistakes of the past—lest they repeat them.

We history teachers have a saying—that “past is prologue.” We have to talk about—and think critically about—all aspects of history, honestly, fully, with all perspectives reflected and debated, so that we create well-rounded, informed, thoughtful citizens armed with the skills of critical thinking. That’s the point. That’s what teachers do. Ryan Richman adds, “I won’t be badgered into whitewashing the experience that my students deserve.”³⁵ I stand with Ryan and every other teacher in America committed to the dispassionate teaching of honest history and developing the muscle of critical thinking among our nation’s young people.

Public schools are more than physical structures. They are the manifestation of our civic values and ideals. The belief that in a free society, free education must be available and accessible to all. The idea that young people deserve opportunities to prepare for life, college, career, and citizenship. The understanding that, in a pluralistic society such as ours, people with different beliefs and backgrounds must learn to work together and bridge differences. And the principle, as the Founders believed, that an educated citizenry is essential to protect our democracy from demagogues.

It is, however, undeniable that a powerful group of autocrats, oligarchs, and far-right extremists is trying to undermine our nation’s values by questioning what we teach and defunding and demeaning our public schools. They attack diversity, equity, and inclusion because they inherently believe some people are more worthy than others. They want to pit Americans against each other while they hoard all the wealth and power for a handful of elites. They want to dismantle the US Department of Education to gut opportunity. They give taxpayer money to private schools and religious schools because they want to defund public schools. They attack critical thinking and rail against “indoctrination” because they want to control what all of us learn and think. And they foment culture wars to distract us from the all-out war they are waging on the American dream. They do not want to help students or help schools. They want to end public education as we know it. Fascists and autocrats fear what teachers do because they know their brand of greed, hierarchy, and extremism cannot survive in a democracy of diverse, educated citizens.

Americans want a better life and more opportunity, not less. They want to be treated with dignity and respect, and they want the same for others, too. From my lifetime of working with Americans across the political spectrum, I know this to be true. We are in a profoundly consequential fight between fear and hope, between anger and aspiration, between chaos and community. And I know, with every fiber of my being, that hope and aspiration and community always win—when we fight for them. Yes, the story of America has included too many dark chapters enabled by our worst impulses. But what makes our nation great isn’t that we’ve always been perfect but that we have fought for justice and have learned from our mistakes—that just as our forebearers forged a new nation to improve upon the one they fought for freedom, so too did our grandparents and our great-grandparents fight to make America more just, more fair, more equitable, more inclusive. An America of boundless opportunity. An America where the next generation has a pathway to the American dream. Just like we, in this moment, must fight for those values and that vision—and educate our children and grandchildren so that they, too, can continue to write the story of America that continues to reach toward hope and aspiration and opportunity and liberty and justice for all.

Randi Weingarten is the president of the AFT. Prior to her election in 2008, she served for 11 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2. A teacher of history at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn from 1991 to 1997, Weingarten helped her students win several state and national awards debating constitutional issues. Widely recognized as a champion of public schools and a better life for all people, her commendations include being named to Washingtonian’s 2023 Most Influential People in Washington and City & State New York’s 2021 New York City Labor Power 100. This article was excerpted with permission from her new book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy, published in September 2025 by Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Weingarten is donating half of her proceeds from the book to the AFT’s Disaster Relief Fund and Educational Foundation.

Endnotes

1. Center for Civic Education, “We the People,” civiced.org/we-the-people.

2. M. Owens, “A Point-of-Light for All Americans: The Clara Barton High School Bill of Rights Team,” Congressional Record 141, no. 99 (June 16, 1995): E1270, govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1995-06-16/pdf/CREC-1995-06-16-pt1-PgE1270-2.pdf.

3. R. Kahlenberg and C. Janey, Putting Democracy Back into Public Education (New York: The Century Foundation, November 10, 2016), tcf.org/content/report/putting-democracy-back-public-education.

4. S. Hopgood and F. van Leeuwen, On Education & Democracy: 25 Lessons from the Teaching Profession (Brussels, Belgium: Education International, July 2019), olme-attik.att.sch.gr/new/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/on-Education-And-Democracy.pdf.

5. M. King Jr., “The Purpose of Education,” Maroon Tiger, January–February 1947, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/purpose-education.

6. D. Smith, “‘An End of American Democracy’: Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s Historic Threat,” The Guardian, October 7, 2023, theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/07/american-democracy-heather-cox-richardson-trump-biden.

7. R. Ben-Ghiat, “The New-Old Authoritarianism,” Project Syndicate, June 7, 2024, project-syndicate.org/onpoint/how-authoritarian-leaders-dismantle-democracy-trump-orban-netanyahu-meloni-by-ruth-ben-ghiat-2024-06-1-2024-06.

8. A. P. Carnevale et al., The Role of Education in Taming Authoritarian Attitudes (Washington, DC: McCourt School of Public Policy Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University, 2020), files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED609008.pdf.

9. A. Smith and M. Cohen, “Here’s What Citizens Who Vote for Authoritarians Have in Common,” Washington Post, November 2, 2016, washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/02/heres-what-citizens-who-vote-for-authoritarians-like-trump-have-in-common.

10. E. Glaeser, G. Ponzetto, and A. Shleifer, “Why Does Democracy Need Education?,” Working Paper 12128, National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2006, 4, nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w12128/w12128.pdf.

11. B. Ehrenberg-Shannon and A. Wisniewska, “How Education Level Is the Biggest Predictor of Support for Geert Wilders,” Financial Times, March 2, 2017, ft.com/dutchvoting.

12. M. Fares and G. Cherelus, “Trump Loves ‘the Poorly Educated’ ... and Social Media Clamors,” Reuters, February 24, 2016, reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0VX2DE.

13. B. Altemeyer, The Authoritarians (Ramona, CA: Cherry Hill Publishing, 2006), 104, theanarchistlibrary.org/mirror/b/ba/bob-altemeyer-the-authoritarians.a4.pdf.

14. American Civil Liberties Union, “ACLU Supports Bill to Block Book Bans,” February 8, 2024, aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-supports-bill-to-block-book-bans.

15. D. McPhillips, “As Guns Rise to Leading Cause of Death Among US Children, Research Funding to Help Prevent and Protect Victims Lags,” CNN, February 7, 2024, cnn.com/2024/02/07/health/gun-deaths-injury-research-funding/index.html.

16. P. Verbanas, “U.S. Adolescents Are Receiving Less Sex Education in Key Topics Than 25 Years Ago,” Rutgers University, November 4, 2021, rutgers.edu/news/us-adolescents-are-receiving-less-sex-education-key-topics-25-years-ago.

17. Common Sense Media, “Parents’ Guide to It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/its-perfectly-normal-changing-bodies-growing-up-sex-and-sexual-health.

18. S. Trimel, “PEN America Mourns the Death of Children’s Book Author Robie Harris, a Champion of Free Expression and the Right to Read,” PEN America, January 19, 2024, pen.org/pen-america-mourns-the-death-of-childrens-book-author-robie-harris-a-champion-of-free-expression-and-the-right-to-read.

19. K. Alfonseca, “How Americans Feel About Book Bans, Restrictions: Survey,” ABC News, August 21, 2024, abcnews.go.com/US/americans-feel-book-bans-restrictions-survey/story?id=112991794.

20. American Library Association, “Voters Oppose Book Bans in Libraries,” ala.org/advocacy/voters-oppose-book-bans-libraries.

21. R. Wike et al., “Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy: 2. Democracy Widely Supported, Little Backing for Rule by Strong Leader or Military,” Pew Research Center, October 16, 2017, pewresearch.org/global/2017/10/16/democracy-widely-supported-little-backing-for-rule-by-strong-leader-or-military.

22. PRRI, “One Leader Under God: The Connection Between Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism in America,” September 10, 2024, prri.org/research/one-leader-under-god-the-connection-between-authoritarianism-and-christian-nationalism-in-america.

23. R. Haass, “Why We Need Civics,” The Atlantic, January 22, 2023, theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-identity-democracy-civics-education-requirement/672789.

24. Dictionary.com, “e pluribus unum,” dictionary.com/browse/e-pluribus-unum.

25. E. Dewitt, “As They Await State Guidance, Teachers Consider How ‘Divisive Concepts’ Law Will Affect Lesson Plans,” New Hampshire Bulletin, July 12, 2021, newhampshirebulletin.com/2021/07/12/as-they-await-state-guidance-teachers-consider-how-divisive-concepts-law-will-affect-lesson-plans.

26. “Executive Order 13950 of September 22, 2020, Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” 85 Federal Register 60683 (September 22, 2020), federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/28/2020-21534/combating-race-and-sex-stereotyping.

27. US Law, “Local 8027, AFT-New Hampshire, AFL-CIO et al v. NH Department of Education, Commissioner et al, No. 1:2021cv01077—Document 63 (D. N. H. 2023),” law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-hampshire/nhdce/1:2021cv01077/58483/63.

28. V. Myers, “Fighting to Teach Honest History in New Hampshire,” AFT, December 16, 2021, aft.org/news/fighting-teach-honest-history-new-hampshire.

29. H. Ramer, “Governor Condemns Tweet Offering a ‘Bounty’ on Teachers,” Associated Press, November 18, 2021, apnews.com/article/education-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-new-hampshire-b231854bde76495a806d76355991857d.

30. DeWitt, “As They Await State Guidance.”

31. Myers, “Fighting to Teach Honest History.”

32. Local 8027, AFT-New Hampshire, AFL-CIO et al. v. Frank Edelblut, in his Official Capacity as Commissioner of the Department of Education (“DOE”) et al., No. 1:21-cv-01063—Complaint (D. N. H., filed December 13, 2021), aft.org/sites/default/files/media/2021/aft_nh_complaint_final.pdf.

33. Local 8027, AFT-N.H., AFL-CIO, et al., v. Frank Edelblut, Commissioner, N.H. Department of Education, et al., No. 1:2021cv01077PB (D. N. H., May 28, 2024), static.politico.com/3d/a4/6481c73f42d7bf1904a2a761ec2f/case-1-21-cv-01077-pb-ruling-52824.pdf.

34. E. Wiesel, “Acceptance Speech,” The Nobel Prize, December 10, 1986, nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/acceptance-speech.

35. DeWitt, “As They Await State Guidance.”

[Photos by AFT; REUTERS / Callaghan O'Hare; Aaron Schwartz / Sipa USA via AP Images; courtesy of The Albert Shanker Institute; Allison Shelley for EDUimages]