In the 1952 case Wieman v. Updegraff, the Supreme Court struck down an Oklahoma law requiring state employees to certify that they had not belonged to a “subversive organization” in the previous five years. That included college professors, then among the preferred punching bags of anti-Communist politicians. In his concurring opinion, Justice Hugo Black described the Oklahoma law as, “but one manifestation of a national network of laws aimed at coercing and controlling the minds of men” during the Red Scare.
Today, some state legislatures are back at it, attempting to control what teachers say in the classroom and how they say it. Florida’s 2022 Individual Freedom Act, to take one notorious example, considers teaching to be unlawful discrimination if it “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels [students] to believe” certain concepts. The concepts, though ill-defined, likely include…
