Conservative activists launched a public campaign to enact new model legislation called the "General Education Act".
Behind this bland name is a proposal for the most radical assault on faculty and academic freedom in American history.
If the model legislation were to be enacted, lawmakers would force public colleges to adopt a uniform general education curriculum devoted to conservative values, give a new dean near-total power to hire all faculty to teach these classes and then require the firing of many existing faculty members in the humanities and social sciences, including tenured professors.
The GEA’s extreme ideas are not the babblings of some obscure blogger. They are a joint proposal from three leading conservative groups
—the Ethics and Public Policy Center,
—the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, and
—the National Association of Scholars.
One lead author, 😱Stanley Kurtz😱, has an extensive track record of writing legislation aimed at suppressing liberal ideas in education.
His 2021 "Partisanship Out of Civics Act" has been copied by state legislators seeking to ban critical race theory.
A profile of Kurtz in The Guardian called him “the conservative scholar who lit a match to the U.S. right’s education wars.”
#StanleyKurtz #GEA #NAS #EPPC #JGMCAR #POCA #education #repression
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2023/11/16/new-front-right-wing-attack-academia-opinion