Margaret Lloyd, Special to The Denisonian–
race, sexuality, and systemic inequality. Marketed under terms like “divisive concepts,” “curriculum transparency,” and “parental rights,” these measures serve meagerly as a neutral regulatory force and more as instruments of ideological control. The cumulative effect is the destruction of historical complexity and the silencing of marginalized voices within the national narrative.
These policies present not simply bureaucratic modifications to curriculum but a calculated effort to redefine what qualifies as legitimate knowledge. There is a deliberate attempt to constrain academic inquiry particularly in disciplines such as Black Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Queer Studies. These fields did not emerge from academic cogitation, but from political struggle and social movements. Their integral purpose has been to interrogate dominant historical frameworks, lived experience, and uncover the structures of oppression often looked over in the mainstream curriculum. Attempts to suppress these histories constitute a broader backlash against frameworks that challenge white, patriarchal, and settler-colonial narratives of American exceptionalism.
The implications for Black Studies departments are notability significant rooted in decades of student activism; these departments have served as institutional correctives—demanding that Americans reckon with the histories of slavery, segregation, incarceration, and ongoing anti-Black violence. Beyond content, Black Studies reshapes the methods and epistemologies of historical inquiry, bringing long excluded perspectives from canonical scholarship to the forefront. To legislate against this kind of work is to undermine the very function of education.
Contrary to the rhetoric of conservatives, the goal of education is not to insulate students from discomfort but to prepare them for democratic engagement. Critical reflection on historical injustice is not an attack on national identity; it is a prerequisite for ethical citizenship. Discomfort in the classroom is not a pedagogical failure–it is often an indicator on intellectual growth.
Furthermore, such policies rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of history. History is not a static compilation of dates and events, but a dynamic field shaped by evidence, interpretation, and contested narratives. Sanitizing history to avoid offense or uphold a celebratory national myth undermines its integrity and educational utility.
At stake is not simply the content of a class syllabus, but the capacity of education to foster historical consciousness and civic responsibility. If education is to remain a democratic institution, it must preserve the freedom to examine power, contest inherited narratives, and center those whose histories have long been suppressed. Conservative long war on higher education and educational censorship jeopardizes this imperative. Historical truth is not naturally divisive. Although its erasure always serves those who benefit from forgetting.
Margaret Lloyd ‘25 is a politics and public affairs major from Columbus.