While threats and intimidation have no place and teachers need legal protection from legalized bullying, to simply counter-censor bad ideas is to fail students. Not only do we risk teaching them not to think for themselves, we undermine their confidence that truth can be known and defended.

A video that made the rounds on social media last week featured a group of Portland educators in a Zoom meeting. After introductions including the obligatory “preferred pronouns,” the moderator said, “I’m gonna say something that’s not nice and not sweet, but it’s true. If you’re not evolving into an anti-racist educator, you’re making yourself obsolete.”

She didn’t mean that these educators would fade away. As she went on to explain, anyone who disagreed with the new agenda would no longer find a home in Portland education. Plans were in place to ensure compliance. Either hop on the train of ever-shifting progressive orthodoxies or be driven out of work. Being opposed to evils like racism isn’t enough. Teachers will have to conform to a very specific script, no dissent allowed.

While it’s not clear that this particular person wields the power to carry through with her threats, educators across the country face similar pressures. Recently via open letter, a New Jersey teacher explained that she was leaving a job she loved because her district had become “a hostile culture of conformity and fear.” Students were expected “to see themselves not as individuals, but as representatives of a group, forcing them to adopt the status of privilege or victimhood.” As in Portland, administrators overtly threatened termination for anyone who failed to comply. And, don’t get me started on Loudoun County, Va.

Increasingly, proponents of critical theory aren’t merely looking for a place at the table, they’re demanding control over “the menu, the venue, the seating,” and the guest list. In response, several local governments have proposed various forms of bans on Critical Race Theory. Despite the hysteria, these bans aren’t nearly as confining or controversial as the headlines suggest. Rather, they attempt to protect students, especially the younger ones, from being labeled as racist based on either past evils or on being a member of a particular race.

Still, even well-intentioned educational bans are a dangerous game.  First, and specific to this case, CRT is merely the loudest version of critical theory at the moment. Given the track record of the LGBTQ movement hijacking civil rights history and successes, we can expect the emergence of CQT (“critical queer theory”) any day now.

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