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, co-sponsored by Yale Educational Studies, 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 David Blight, to explain the threat these laws pose to democracy and academic freedom.
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.
Kimberlé Crenshaw is the Isidor 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.
The discussion will be moderated by Yale Faculty Senate member Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.
Contact: yaleeducationstudies@gmail.com