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Educational gag orders—state legislation aimed at restricting the teaching of certain subjects—proliferated in both K-12 and higher education this year, according to a new PEN America report, “America’s Censored Classrooms 2023,” released today.
While most of the 110 gag orders the organization tracked concerned limits to K-12 instruction, particularly regarding gender and sexuality, more than a quarter of the bills—29—focused on public higher education. Still, that’s a significant decline from last year, when 54 higher education gag orders were proposed.
This is the third year in a row that PEN America has monitored educational gag orders.
The report notes that past legislative efforts to censor professors directly—which have proven unpopular and largely unsuccessful—shifted this year to target “the academic support system,” including faculty unions, governing boards, shared governance processes and accreditors.
“This new breed of legislation is designed to kick the legs out from underneath university governance and autonomy, so that the next time the state moves to censor faculty, no one is in position to push back,” the authors wrote.
The proposed legislation took four key forms: curricular control bills, tenure restrictions, DEI bans and accreditation restrictions, according to the report.
While “resistance to educational gag orders is rapidly growing,” it says, next year’s general election “is likely to contribute to ongoing escalation” of legislative efforts to censor instruction.
