1 The Real “Boogeyman”: How White Legal Logic Is Used to Create Educational Gag Order Laws in US Higher Education

Abstract

Abstract: The goal of the current ‘debate’ about Critical Race Theory is to stifle institutional academic freedom in two ways: through faculty self-censorship and via state legislative censorship such as bans against scholarship and teaching about race-related socio-historical and contextual realities. In many ways, the gag order state laws that normalize epistemic injustice against BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other racially minoritized People of Color) fit the pattern of what the author calls white legal logic: legal arguments and rationales embedded in white supremacy's power structure and assumptions. In this conceptual article, the author names and analyzes recurrent themes in the educational gag order law movement directed at U.S. higher education. The gag order law movement involves an orchestrated campaign led by state legislators (in tandem with think tanks, grassroots groups, and right-wing media) to silence and penalize scholarship and teaching focused on the history and impact of racism and white supremacy. The author demonstrates how white legal logic undergirds the gag order laws that effectively censor academic speech, violate free speech rights, defund higher education, and damage the careers of anti-racist scholars. This work joins a tradition of Black women scholars who have demonstrated U.S. law’s flawed inception in white supremacy.