Authoritarianism Leads Teachers to Self-Censor. Solidarity Lets Us Teach Truth.

Sixth-grade history teacher Sarah Inama was told by administrators in Idaho’s West Ada School District to remove a poster from her classroom that carried a simple but profound message: “Everyone Is Welcome Here.” Beneath the words were hands of many different skin tones.

Although upset about the directive, Inama initially complied. But the decision weighed on her. She began asking herself what message removing the poster would send to her students. She ultimately defied the order and put it back up. Her fight over a poster might seem like an isolated local dispute — the kind of conflict easily dismissed as the actions of one administrator or one conservative district. But it isn’t. It is part of a national struggle over what truths teachers are allowed to communicate to their students — on the walls, in the curriculum, and in the messages students receive about who belongs.

Over the past year, the Zinn Education Project’s (ZEP) Freedom to Teach and Learn Surveys asked classroom teachers, librarians, administrators, teacher educators, and other school staff how anti-history laws, executive orders, funding threats, and the broader political climate were affecting what they taught, what students experienced, and whether their schools and districts were defending the freedom to teach and learn. We collected responses from 610 educators in 43 states and Washington, D.C.

Their testimony reveals something larger — and harder to measure — than the books formally banned, lessons explicitly prohibited, or teachers publicly punished: the chilling effect of those attacks on classrooms across the country. Some educators gave us permission to use their names. Others, in this climate of heightened attacks on teachers, understandably asked to remain anonymous.

Our findings reinforce the findings of a nationwide 2024 RAND study examining how state restrictions and the broader political environment shape teachers’ willingness to address social and political topics in their classrooms. The ZEP survey shows that this chilling effect has not subsided and provides a clear picture of how it is shaping classrooms today. Teachers told us what fear was pushing out of their classrooms: discussions of systemic racism, gender and sexuality, LGBTQIA+ history, Palestine, immigration, U.S. imperialism, and movements for social justice. They described dropping books from their syllabus, softening lessons, avoiding discussions, and second-guessing whether teaching honestly might provoke retaliation or threaten their jobs.

The ZEP survey demonstrates how the government does not have to formally censor every classroom if it can frighten teachers into censoring themselves. That’s exactly how anti-history laws banning honest education — what I call truthcrime laws — work: They teach educators to anticipate punishment and students to mistake submission for education.

The nation has seen this before. During the McCarthy era, educators were a primary target of anticommunist loyalty investigations and blacklists, and political repression helped establish boundaries around what teachers and professors could safely say and teach.

Today, the same politics of intimidation is being organized from the highest levels of government. While Inama taught that everyone is welcome here, Trump is using federal power to advance an authoritarian, white supremacist vision of education — one that declares that people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, Muslims, and other marginalized communities are not welcome here. A January 2025 executive order, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” directed agencies to eliminate federal funding for schools that support teaching the administration labels “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology” — effectively threatening to defund schools that defy its restrictions on curriculum. Since then, the administration has formally scrapped Title IX rules that expanded protections for LGBTQIA+ students, dismantled major parts of federal civil rights enforcement and racial-harassment oversight in schools, and pursued an immigration crackdown that has left children and families fearful about going to school.

The message from the Trump administration is clear: Students are to be taught sanitized U.S. history stripped of systemic racism, gender oppression, and the movements that have fought for social justice.

The stories educators shared with us show how that message travels from executive orders, state laws, school board fights, and highly publicized punishments into everyday decisions about what happens — and what no longer happens — inside a classroom.

The Chilling Effect

One of the clearest findings from our survey is that censorship often works without anyone issuing a direct order.

Amanda Simpson, a high school social studies teacher in Arkansas, described how this happens:

I have found myself second-guessing lesson plans and removing materials that might be considered “controversial,” not because they are inaccurate, but because I fear professional repercussions or backlash from parents and community members.

A veteran government teacher in Fountain Valley, California, told ZEP how far that fear can reach:

I teach government, and I feel as if I have to bite my tongue teaching about the executive orders being presented and state laws enacted.

After more than 20 years in the classroom, the teacher said there had never before been such hesitation about questioning government policy. Now, they worry “that some students may take my comments and report to their parents or some authority.”

The fear this teacher had was not that the topic falls outside the curriculum, but that the curriculum itself was a liability. An American Government teacher was beginning to feel professionally at risk for teaching directly about executive orders and state laws.

Abby Lanfear, a middle school teacher in Vermont, described a version of the same retreat.

Teachers are quietly choosing less “controversial” books to teach with because they don’t want to deal with any potential pushback.

The teacher explained that the result is a less diverse curriculum, “silencing the voices and representation of a broad swath of the human experience.”

Taken together, these responses reveal a profound shift in how teachers are being forced to think about their work.

There are a lot of questions teachers should be asking: Is this historically accurate? Will this help my students understand the world and make it better? Whose perspectives have been excluded? What questions will this lesson help young people ask?

Instead, fear increasingly forces educators to ask a different set of questions: Will someone accuse me of corrupting young minds for simply teaching my subject? Will a clip of my lesson be posted online? Will I be doxed? Could I be investigated? Will my principal defend me? Could I lose my job?

This is how the chilling effect transforms education without leaving behind an official censorship order. A teacher does not have to be told, You may not teach this. They learn to anticipate what might trigger a complaint, an investigation, or a threat to their livelihood — and adjust before anyone has to command them.

There is no list somewhere recording the books quietly dropped from classrooms. No school board necessarily voted to remove them. They simply disappear.

That is why counting formal book bans and censorship laws, although important, cannot tell us the full story of this political moment.

How do you count a book that was never assigned? How do you tally a lesson that was never taught? How do you record a question a student never had the opportunity to ask?

The Attack Is Organized

The chilling effect is not accidental. In many communities, it is the product of an organized backlash. National right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty, Defending Education, Citizens Defending Freedom, No Left Turn in Education, and Turning Point USA — backed by wealthy donors and billionaire-linked foundations — have worked alongside MAGA politicians to turn complaints about race, gender, books, and curriculum into coordinated campaigns against educators and schools.

A Missouri educator told us their district has spent the past year battling pressure from the federal Department of Education and Department of Justice. The teacher said the conflict intensified this summer after “contentious, unfounded allegations” from a church they described as supported by Turning Point USA. The educator described a broader backslide in the district’s equity efforts over the past year and a half: Its DEI work was dismantled and a school board equity policy was removed from the district website. Meanwhile, the educator said, the Department of Education and Department of Justice are pursuing a lawsuit accusing district staff of “disregarding parents’ rights” and helping to “hide/transition” transgender students.

“We are working on a way forward,” the educator wrote, “but things are very uncertain right now.”

Nowhere Is Immune

It would be wrong to imagine that these attacks on honest education are only happening in states with notorious anti-history laws, like Florida or Texas. The survey suggests otherwise.

One California high school social studies teacher wrote, “My students and I felt smugly impervious since we live in California, but that smugness is disappearing.”

The same educator described undocumented students becoming afraid to go on field trips or draw attention to themselves and transgender students saying, “Well, I guess we don’t exist anymore.”

Even in states with legal protections for teachers, local politics can make classrooms precarious. A middle school social studies teacher in Illinois wrote:

While I am in a “blue state,” I am in a very conservative part of the state. The laws protect me, but I have had parents — including a now state representative — question the topics that I cover in my social studies class. My administration doesn’t support me, so I have had to learn the state laws and standards to protect myself.

The geography matters. Federal pressure, state legislation, hostile school boards, organized parent campaigns, and fear generated by highly publicized attacks can reinforce one another. A teacher does not need to live in Florida or Arkansas to anticipate whether a lesson on racism, immigration, gender, or Palestine will bring trouble.

The chilling effect doesn’t stop at state lines or borders.

From ICE Raids to Anti-Trans Attacks

Our survey also makes clear that the attack on education does not only stem from the censorship laws whitewashing the curriculum. A middle school social studies teacher in New Haven, Connecticut, described how immigration enforcement has transformed something as routine as taking attendance:

There are many days where a student isn’t in school and — more often than not, recently — my mindset has gone from “oh, they must be sick, I hope they get well soon” to “oh my god, I hope they are still here.”

The teacher continued:

I teach 11- and 12-year-olds. This is not a fear I should ever have based on a government’s actions.

In Southern California, a middle school teacher reported:

The executive orders are keeping kids from school on a daily basis. Students are afraid to come to school or leave home in fear of ICE.

Near the San Diego-Tijuana border, a high school history teacher said the presence of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement had become “a deep concern for our staff.” Teachers responded by developing lessons explaining students’ constitutional rights and how to identify legal and illegal warrants. At another high school five miles from the border, an educator described Border Patrol vehicles and helicopters circling the neighborhood around her campus “on a daily basis.”

A Washington, D.C., middle school math teacher told us,

I have had students traumatized by their parents being picked up by ICE and deported — students who are kind, respectful, and hard-working.

Transgender students face another front of the same assault. Jason Curry, a Maine high school social studies teacher, described a transgender student who won a statewide athletic competition and was then publicly identified by a state legislator. The teacher reported that the school subsequently received “threats and intimidating calls and letters” for defending the student.

These are not separate crises. A student cannot freely participate in a discussion about immigration while wondering whether a parent will still be home that evening. A transgender student cannot simply focus on an assignment while politicians debate whether their identity deserves respect.

The attack on what schools teach is increasingly inseparable from the attack on the students whom schools are supposed to protect.

Palestine Is Censored, Advocates of Militarism Are Emboldened

Palestine emerged in the responses as another subject that educators fear can bring consequences.

A California middle school substitute teacher wrote: “We are not able to freely discuss the genocide occurring in Palestine.” A social studies teacher in a Philadelphia high school said that while their district generally defended the freedom to learn, “there have been some repressive actions in response to Palestinian activism.”

That matters because repression around Palestine has moved the attack on social justice teaching into places where the anti-critical race theory campaigns of 2021 often failed to gain the same foothold. In cities like Philadelphia and Seattle, educators have faced intense scrutiny and backlash when they teach about Palestine.

What began as a right-wing campaign to police race, gender, and history in K–12 classrooms is increasingly shaping how Palestine and U.S. foreign policy are taught and discussed — narrowing the boundaries of acceptable speech and making educators and students alike calculate the risks of speaking openly.

Although some forms of political expression are being suppressed, others — particularly those aligned with MAGA, militarism, and American exceptionalist myths — are being emboldened.

A Colorado high school social studies teacher said colleagues were already self-censoring to avoid complaints from students or parents. Yet at the same school, Marine Corps JROTC instructors who were strong Trump supporters had “gotten much bolder in pushing their agenda.”

Matthew Finn, an educator at a high school outside Chicago, described a similar double standard:

Personally, I was reprimanded for telling students that college kids were being illegally swept off the streets and sent to super max prisons in other countries. They said it was political, I said it was human rights.

At the same time, the educator said colleagues were allowed to “show PragerU content.”

PragerU is not a university. It is a far right media and advocacy organization that produces ideological videos and classroom materials promoting American exceptionalism, climate denial, and sanitized accounts of slavery and racism. Its rise was fueled in part by billionaire fracking brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who provided millions of dollars in early funding. As of April 2026, some PragerU materials had been officially approved for classroom use in a dozen states, including Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

The irony is difficult to miss. While teachers across the country are accused of “indoctrination” for teaching about systemic racism, gender, or other subjects targeted by the right, PragerU’s own leadership has openly embraced the term. At a Moms for Liberty gathering, founder Dennis Prager responded to accusations that his organization indoctrinates children by saying, “It’s true.” PragerU CEO Marissa Streit went further: “I do believe that we should indoctrinate kids to appreciate their country.”

The Illinois educator also described another teacher who displayed portraits of every president “but completely skipped Biden’s picture.” They concluded:

The school is in Illinois outside of Chicago, so we are pretty safe — but these little lies and omissions are how it starts.

Taken together, these accounts suggest that the current campaign is not simply removing politics from classrooms. It is helping determine which points of view are punished and which are encouraged.

Censorship Drives Teachers Out

For some educators, the pressure becomes intolerable.

Georgia high school AP Psychology teacher Sally Stanhope told us she had left the school she once attended as a student — the school from which she had imagined eventually retiring:

Statistically, no one will ever count me as a teacher who left because of Georgia’s divisive concept law, formally called the Protect Students First Act. Yet, that’s why I left.

Stanhope added:

Most likely, thousands like me have left because their values and personality have become divisive concepts.

To understand the current landscape of education, we have to distinguish between educators whose departures become public controversies and those who simply disappear from the profession. We already know that the visible toll is substantial. A 2022 Washington Post analysis identified more than 160 educators who had resigned or lost their jobs over two academic years amid political conflicts over race, history, LGBTQIA+ issues, and classroom instruction. The Post cautioned that its count was likely an undercount, because many such departures never become public.

But the Georgia teacher’s testimony points to an even larger problem: the people those statistics cannot capture.

We can count a teacher who is formally fired or publicly pushed out, or who goes public with their resignation. But how do we count the teacher who quietly leaves because they can no longer teach with integrity?

An Arizona educator told us:

I teach truth every day in my classroom. Therefore, I have decided to leave Arizona for the upcoming school year to a progressive state.

Amber Corrales in Hawaii said the pressure was pushing her out of teaching U.S. history altogether. Corrales wrote:

I am transferring to an ELA [English Language Arts] position.

She explained that the political climate had become so exhausting that she is “changing jobs and schools.”

One educator leaves the school they hoped to retire from; another leaves the state; another leaves the history classroom altogether. These departures take different forms, but they point in the same direction.

When these kinds of educators leave, schools lose more than employees. Students lose teachers willing to confront difficult history, challenge pacifying myths, and make space for young people whose lives have too often been excluded from the curriculum.

The chilling effect, then, shapes not only what gets taught. It can determine who remains to teach it, and who is deprived of learning.

From Fear to Fightback

Repression does not produce only silence and resignation. Our survey is also filled with educators resisting — and their responses offer an important clue about what makes resistance possible. Chicago high school science teacher Juan Pablo Esquivel acknowledged the fear surrounding race, gender, and supposedly controversial history, but wrote, “I’m proud to say our district is trying to stand up for the freedom to learn.” Then came a telling sentence: “It’s not easy, but knowing we’re not alone makes a big difference.” It’s clear that educators are more willing to defend honest teaching when they know others are standing with them.

Oceanside, California, high school social studies teacher Kris Hawkins said:

We have had haters come to our school board meetings trying to ban books from our libraries, but we as teachers and a district have stood strong to keep books available to all.

The teacher added:

Our school district is defending the freedom to learn. We are not caving by removing DEI from our teaching.

These responses point toward an essential distinction. Individual courage matters, but telling teachers simply to be brave while leaving them isolated is not a strategy.

Courage grows when it is organized — and revisiting Idaho educators offers a powerful example.

Educators in an Idaho Teaching for Black Lives study group (organized by the Zinn Education Project) described how meeting and learning together changed what they believed was possible. One educator in the group said the experience helped them move from “Something should be done about this!” to “I’m going to do something about this!” Another said teaching students to better understand people different from themselves “gave me the strength to take on anyone who might have thought I should have taught a more ‘white’ curriculum.”

The group was meeting in a state where educators were already feeling the political pressure. One study group participant noted that a high school social studies teacher had to obtain parent permission slips to teach some content. Another described their continued organizing as an act of defiance:

We kept on working and meeting even though our legislation is working on taking away what books we can read to students, what we can teach students, and what we can hang on our walls.

That collective defiance brings us back to Sarah Inama’s Idaho district.

A high school English teacher in the same district where Inama fought to keep her “Everyone Is Welcome Here” poster described a colleague at another school in the district being ordered to remove books; a poster of Amanda Gorman, the youngest poet to perform at a U.S. presidential inauguration; country flags; and even a classroom map because it still said “Gulf of Mexico” rather than “Gulf of America,” the name Trump ordered federal agencies to adopt in January 2025. That same teacher ultimately decided to leave the state.

But the respondent’s own school had a different culture. Administrators were supportive, the English department was “full of activists,” and the teacher praised a union president who attended district meetings and spoke out on educators’ behalf.

“I have made a promise to myself,” the educator wrote, “that I will teach the full truth of history in my classroom until I am fired for it.”

Other educators echoed that determination. The Connecticut middle school teacher who worried that an absent student might have been taken by immigration authorities wrote:

The president and his cronies can come and get me if they have a problem with that. My kids deserve the truth, and that is what they will get in my class every day.

Collin R., a Virginia high school social studies teacher, vowed to “NEVER stop teaching the realities of U.S. history,” even if doing so cost them their job.

And in Florida, middle school history teacher and Air Force veteran John Meeks captured the contradiction at the heart of the campaign to censor honest teaching about race, history, and inequality: “I took an oath to defend the very freedoms that our state claims to support. We should do whatever we can,” Meeks concluded, “to resist the rise of fascism in our state and nation.”

Teach Truth

Educators are told they live in the freest nation on earth while watching books disappear, immigrant families terrorized, transgender students attacked, Palestinian history silenced, and teachers threatened for telling the truth.

Our survey shows what can help turn fear into resistance: solidarity. When colleagues organize together, educators learn in community, unions defend their members, administrators refuse to capitulate, and school boards protect the freedom to learn, teachers have more room to allow students to learn history and ideas that don’t conform to the current federal administration’s political views.

That is the spirit of the Zinn Education Project’s Teach Truth campaign. What began as an annualDay of Action has expanded into something broader: Throughout the year, educators, parents, students, and community members bring the Teach Truth message into rallies, school board meetings, protests, and public gatherings across the country. In 2026 alone, the Zinn Education Project documented the Teach Truth message appearing at No Kings protests, May Day events, immigrant rights rallies, Pride celebrations, Juneteenth events, and other gatherings for justice.

The forces attacking public education want every teacher wondering whether one complaint, one book, or one honest lesson could leave them on their own.

Our task is to make sure they never are.

Every time educators collectively defend a banned book, protect an immigrant or transgender student, teach the history of Palestine, organize a struggle for justice in their union, or band together before a school board, they make it easier for another educator to do the same. And every time the Teach Truth message appears at a rally or protest, it sends a message to educators everywhere: You are not alone, and you do not have to censor the truth.

“We must teach the truth to our students,” said Alberto Otero, an elementary school teacher in Washington, D.C., “so that they can be brave in the face of tyranny.”

The chilling effect is real. So is the movement generating the heat to thaw it.