Black Studies Scholarship Attacked by State Officials in Florida: AP AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES COURSE REJECTED FOR "VIOLATIONS OF FLORIDA LAW"

by Staff | January 25, 2023

As you have probably heard, the Florida Department of Education has refused the College Board's AP course in African American Studies for purported violations of the so-called Stop WOKE Act. (See NY Times coverage here.) This is part of a broad array of initiatives impacting K-12 and higher education that ASA is following, as our members and friends in Florida stand at the forefront of analyzing and addressing these developments. Florida's rationale for singling out African American Studies for rejection specifically cites by name the work of leading scholars with close ties to the ASA: Roderick Ferguson was president of ASA in 2018-19. His presidential address to the 2018 Annual Meeting is

The image above was posted on Twitter by a Florida state official with the accompanying statement: "We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education." Through the ASA's Annual Meeting, we invite you to engage directly with the scholars doing the work that others are distorting.

available on the ASA's YouTube channel here. Kimberlé Crenshaw spoke on the featured sessions "Intersectionality at 30" and "Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory" at the ASA's conferences in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

The ASA sponsors a distinguished public scholarship prized named for Angela Y. Davis. And at the 2022 Annual Meeting, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Freedom

Dreams by Robin D. G. Kelley. Professors Davis and Kelley both

participated in the 2019 Presidential Session "Build As We Fight."

We hope you will take this opportunity to review and share this vital work. To

continue this tradition of engaged scholarship, please see below for information on the 2023 Annual Meeting in Montreal: "Solidarity: What Love Looks Like in Public"