What we do when we talk about teaching

In the face of a spate of executive orders about education and what we can and cannot teach about the United States, particularly with regard to race, I’m posting here the course description for my American Political Theory class that I’m teaching this term. It’s high time that those of us, particularly with tenure, who teach American history or American politics or American political thought or anything in that realm, stand up and speak out on behalf of what we teach. Not in a defensive or apologetic crouch, but proudly and loudly, affirming that we offer students an in-depth approach to central problems of the American experience. My course opens with readings from Aristotle and the Hebrew Bible on slavery, […]