Texas

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  5/17/2022
  

  Texas Librarians Face Harassment as they Navigate Book Bans

  While some librarians in the state have been fired for refusing to comply with bans, many others have or are contemplating quitting over political interference with their work and social media harassment. 

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• SOURCE: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
  4/21/2022
  

  TCU Faculty and Students Prepare to Grapple with the Past

  "TCU formed the Race and Reconciliation Initiative in August in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, which prompted TCU and many other universities to research their history with slavery."

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• SOURCE: Commentary
  4/16/2022
  

  Dan Patrick's Illiberal Attack on Higher Ed

  by Jonathan Marks

  There are good conservative arguments for abolishing faculty tenure; Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick isn't advancing one of them as he seeks to punish political opponents for their ideas.

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  4/18/2022
  

  Texas Governors Have Politicized "Border Security" for Decades. What Have They Accomplished?

  Texas governors since 9/11 have pledged billions to secure the state's border with Mexico, but a lack of accountability suggests that electoral and partisan concerns have been the key motive. 

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• SOURCE: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
  4/13/2022
  

  It Wasn't Long Ago that Easter in Fort Worth Celebrated the Lord and the Klan

  A look at the Easter week headlines from a century ago shows the casual respectability of the Klan among white Texas christians. 

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• SOURCE: Axios
  4/4/2022
  

  Cynthia Orozco Sheds Light on Latino Civil Rights Pioneer Alonso Perales

  The biography of Perales comes at a time when Texas conservatives are pushing to limit the teaching of histories of racial discrimination. 

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• SOURCE: Texas Monthly
  4/1/2022
  

  The Texas School District Considering Banning "Maus" Needs to Reconsider

  "Before reading Maus, if I had a sense of what Nazis were, it was as abstract villains, the bad guys Indiana Jones fought."

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  3/23/2022
  

  Caught on Tape: North Texas School Superintendent Orders Removal of Transgender, LGBTQ Themed Books

  "[Superintendent Jeremy Glenn] noted that members of Granbury’s school board — his bosses — were also very conservative. And to any school employees who might have different political beliefs, Glenn said, 'You better hide it'."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/11/2022
  

  Texas's Anti-Transgender Policies Erase the State's Indigenous Transgender History

  by Gregory D. Smithers

  The prominent role of what would now be called transgender individuals in indigenous societies in Texas was part of the justification Europeans claimed to colonize the land; students compelled to learn Texas history in school could learn a much more inclusive set of stories. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/11/2022
  

  Targeting the Marginalized for Political Gain is Nothing New in Texas Politics

  by Nancy Beck Young

  Minority groups have often had a perilous existence in Texas, but that hasn't stopped politicians from attacking them as dire threats to the state's moral fabric. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  3/4/2022
  

  Putin is Following the 19th Century US in Using Separatist Movements to Justify Empire

  by Elliott Young

  No American observers should use the term "unprecedented" to describe Putin's claim to support self-determination as a justification for invading another country. It's part of the toolkit of empire.

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  2/23/2022
  

  The Increasingly Authoritarian War on Tenure

  by Jennifer Ruth

  "Democratic societies build in protections for university faculty so that we are not at the whims of whichever party is currently in power. When Patrick threatens tenure, he threatens those protections," and threatens the partisan control of knowledge in society.

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• SOURCE: Substack
  2/24/2022
  

  We, The Abuser State

  by Jules Gill-Peterson

  Texas's announcement of a policy defining some support for transgender youth as "child abuse" echoes the abuses of colonial authorities on gendered minority groups. 

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• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  2/18/2022
  

  Texas Lt. Gov. Links Tenure Abolition to Banning Critical Race Theory

  The call makes explicit that academic freedom is on shaky ground in Texas. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/3/2022
  

  For Trump and Trumpists, the Law is Always White

  by Melissa Gira Grant

  In singling out the Black elected officials who thwarted his bid to steal the election and are investigating his political and business affairs, Trump evoked the Reconstruction-era rhetoric of white southerns under attack, which, as Eric Foner wrote, justified a massive wave of racist political violence. 

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• SOURCE: Black Enterprise
  2/2/2022
  

  Black Parents' Group Fights Texas Book Bans

  "The determined mothers of the Texas-based Round Rock Black Parents Association are speaking out against the multiple attempts of book bans in their kids’ schools."

• 
• SOURCE: NBC News
  2/1/2022
  

  Books on Race, Sexuality Disappearing from Texas School Shelves

  In a sample of 100 Texas school districts, 75 formal requests to remove books from libraries were filed between September and December (only one was filed in those districts a year before). But some students are fighting back. 

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• SOURCE: Austin American-Statesman
  1/25/2022
  

  Texas Social Studies Curriculum Review Led by Scholar who Called Biden Election a "Literal Coup"

  Stephen Balch, a founder of the conservative National Association of Scholars, is part of the panel advising Texas on its curriculum standards. He has amplified Trump's false claims of election fraud among other controversial positions. 

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• SOURCE: Chalkbeat
  1/6/2022
  

  A Texas Charter School is Caught in the Critical Race Theory Storm

  By flagging the school's application for reference to historian Ibram X. Kendi, the state's actions suggest that Texas is going beyond the text of recent legislation to suppress controversial ideas. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/10/2021
  

  In Texas, Battle is on Over Books

  "To talk with a dozen teachers and librarians is to hear annoyance and frustration and bewilderment, as much with the sheer ambiguity of the new law and the list of books as with the practical effect."