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Backtalker Academy Replays
This powerful opportunity to learn from leading scholars, media voices, and justice advocates on Critical Race Theory, historical memory, feminism, education, and voting rights links the assaults on democracy with the weaponization of anti-Blackness. We invite people of all generations, backgrounds, and experiences to learn from our past to safeguard our future.
The tradition of intellectual and civic backtalk in schools and universities has long nurtured the critical imagination that democracy requires. For that very reason, education has often been one of the first terrains authoritarian movements seek to control. Across the country, we see this struggle unfolding in battles over book bans, curriculum restrictions, and attacks on teachers, as well as on critical frameworks such as critical race theory and intersectionality.
This panel examines how education (and educators) have become central targets in contemporary authoritarian politics. Drawing on current examples, panelists will assess how teachers, scholars, and students are increasingly cast as enemies in campaigns that seek to discipline knowledge itself. They will explore how efforts to sanitize history and undermine public education reshape democratic institutions and narrow the boundaries of public debate. By connecting the dots between the struggle over classrooms and the broader assault on democratic life, the conversation aims to clarify what is at stake, and why defending honest education and those who teach it is inseparable from defending democracy.
SPEAKERS: Russell Robinson, Mark Rosenbaum, Janel George MODERATOR: Sumi Cho
READINGS:
- Janel A. George, Deny, Defund, and Divert: The Law and American Miseducation, Georgetown University Law Center, 509-516; 546-68 (2023).
- Devon W. Carbado & Russell K. Robinson, SFFA: Bakke's Chickens Coming Home to Roost, 113 Cal. L. Rev. 1035-1078 (2025).
- Mae M. v. Komrosky, No. G064332, 2025 WL [WL Number] (Cal. Ct. App. May 19, 2025).
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Backtalker Academy Replays
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