I appreciate your engagement and intellectually honest response....This debate is nuanced and people want to make it zero sum/binary. Essentially, in today's academic environment if you don't subscribe to Bell's theorhetical "critical" school of thought on race, or don't want to include that philosophy as part of a curriculum, you're "banning" or "against teaching" black history. But black history is a different conversation...thats factual history, not a theorhetical approach to teaching, analyzing, or discussing it. There are a number of valid paradigms in which to do those things, including but not limited to a critical approach. I do not know of any state or school district that bans the teaching of black history in the factual sense. And in NJ, Murphy just doubled down on the AP curriculum, which I'm certain includes a heavy dose of "critical" philosophy (which I'm fine with including and discussing...but am skeptical of having it guide entire curriculums exclusively...i feel that way about any theorhetical approach to any subject). If AP h.s. students learn about critical approaches to history, and choose to subscribe to them, thats fine with me. But introduce them to competing frames of thought as well, and let them engage and discuss...do not construct an entire curriculum based on just one theorhetical approach, designed to make the case for just that theory, and then pretend its a comprehensive curriculum. I'm not saying that's what's happening...just defining the actual parameters and competing perspectives in today's current discussion.

I don't agree with Hamm's politics. . . And I don't subscribe to the current predominant academic conceptualization of everything boiling down to some inherently and irredeemable system....removing the nuance and complexity of the conversation, and instead creating a straw man - i.e., "you don't agree with all critical perspectives on race, and therefore take issue with an unfettered pedagogical approach to teaching it...therefore, you are BANNING black history, and are against teaching black history"...is not true, but its a convenient way to paint a competeting perspective as problematic and to remove voices and perspectives from the conversation without having to actually take up the debate on the merits. This seems to be a common tactic these days with folks at Hamm's position on the political spectrum. I'm simply calling out the straw man, and hyperbolic headline. To your credit, you acknowledged the nuance.

Now, if certain academics or their works are being pulled from the curriculum without reason, or bc they are critical perspectives, that could very well be a problem. But if they are simply diversifying the theorhetical approaches to analyzing the history, or making the course less theorhetical in general, whether we agree or disagree, all I'm saying is that's a conversation to have, but it isn't banning the factual teaching of history.

This would be akin to teaching an English class, but only selecting works, and pushing students to analyze works exclusively through an existentialist lens, and when someone asserts that some existentialist works should be removed to make room for epistemology, and therefore a more diversified theorhetical approach to analyzing the printed page, the existentialist shouting "they want to ban philosophy!"