DeSantis’ anti-CRT policies are 'MAGA education,' influential prof argues

In a February 3 panel discussion at Yale, influential critical race theory (CRT) scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw and others discussed an AP Black History course that Florida’s Department of Education claims violates the STOP W.O.K.E. Act. Crenshaw described the DeSantis administration’s recent efforts to curb the influence of CRT and DEI in Florida higher ed as “MAGA education.” 

The STOP W.O.K.E. Act, which bans the use of “divisive concepts” that morally categorize students in terms of their race or gender, was argued by Florida’s DoED to be inconsistent with a proposed AP Black History course curriculum that would have included CRT-related material, as well as “feminist” and “queer studies” thought.

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Crenshaw charged the DeSantis admin with “hoping to sow dissatisfaction with public education in order to dismantle it,” proceeding to claim that such efforts would lead to “Race McCarthyism.”

Fellow panel member Roderick Ferguson, professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Yale, said the Florida DoED’s banning of such material from the AP course would constitute a “general assault on all education and critical literacy.”

Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale, added to the conversation by pointing out that “after the civil rights movement, after this movement for liberation, racial injustice completely persisted.” Speaking about mass incarceration, he said that we have “end[ed] up with resegregation.” 

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Stanley went on to say that he has learned much from a Yale colleague who “studies the myth of racial progress.” 

The discussion was co-sponsored by the Yale Faculty Senate and Education Studies at Yale.

All parties in this report have been contacted for comments and the article will be updated accordingly.