In the meantime, policies her group has advocated for, like the End DEI portal, are chilling speech for teachers in public schools.
Transcript:
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For years, Sarah Inama had a poster hanging in her Idaho classroom – a poster that encouraged her sixth-grade students to be kind, to be inclusive. Everyone is welcome here, it said, in bright, multicolored letters.
SARAH INAMA: It has images of hands of different skin tones underneath it that have little hearts in the palm of their hands.
FADEL: She got it at a classroom supply store, and it had never drawn any attention – until recently.
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INAMA: I just was approached by my principal and vice principal. They told me that they were having to go through the school and have posters that have controversial messages taken down.
FADEL: When she pressed them on what was controversial…
INAMA: They told me teachers aren’t allowed to have posters that show their personal or, like, political opinions on things, and this was now seen as a personal opinion.
FADEL: Today, on The State of the First Amendment: The Right from Which All Rights Flow – rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools.
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FADEL: Sarah did not take the poster down for very long.
INAMA: I just woke up and was like, I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s just so wrong. I just felt so gross feeling complacent in it. And I just came in on a Saturday with my husband and my baby and put it back up, and I emailed my principal to let him know that I had done that.
FADEL: What did the principal say?
INAMA: He did come to my classroom, and he said, that is considered insubordination. After I put it back up, one of our district personnel – our chief academic officer – he told me that political environments ebb and flow, and what might not have been controversial three or six or nine months ago can be considered controversial now.
FADEL: In a statement, the school district confirmed Inama’s recounting of what happened, saying it wasn’t the words but the colors of the letters and the different skin tones of the hands that they, quote, “determined to potentially express viewpoints regarding specific identity groups.”
INAMA: When I was told that it doesn’t allow for people to express differing opinions – there’s only two opinions of that poster. You either believe that everyone is welcome here or you don’t. I just was so shocked, especially on the basis of skin tone.
FADEL: Are they still up in your classroom?
INAMA: Mm-hmm.
FADEL: And you’re still teaching at the school?
INAMA: Mm-hmm.
FADEL: Now, she’s not the only teacher feeling watched over the hunt for diversity, equity and inclusion. When we asked you, our readers and listeners, if you felt freer or more silenced in this moment, a teacher from Oregon wrote to us. She was so worried about speaking, she asked to only go by her first initial, E.
E: Just where I live and where I teach is a really small community, and I’m definitely worried about getting reported.
FADEL: What she’s referring to there is a new portal from the Department of Education called End DEI, where you can report any instances of lessons around diversity, equity and inclusion. When E first heard about it in the news, she thought it couldn’t be real. Then she looked it up.
E: And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, it literally just says, students, parents, teachers, you can report when you see instances. So I was like, oh, my gosh.
FADEL: E’s mind started racing.
E: Immediately, I kept thinking about, what did I say in class today? What was asked in class today? What could be taken out of context in class today? Who’s mad at me right now for changing their seats or something like that? Could someone use this against me for something I’ve done in the recent past? So I was pretty scared.
FADEL: Can you describe how that sort of changed your teaching behavior in the classroom?
E: I mean, the very next day, kids are asking me questions. There are so many times where I just have to tell them I can’t answer that question, or I just change the subject. Or I think about how I’m going to say it in a way that gives them the information they need, but also in a way that’s going to cover my butt.
FADEL: A year ago, did you feel the same way?
E: No, I did not. Right now, in our current environment and our current political place, it’s becoming easier and easier for certain people to have the right to free speech and for others to be having theirs shut down. And I think it’s just been a big shift as to what’s acceptable speech and what is now considered, you know, a DEI report issue.
FADEL: If we were doing this interview about freedom of speech a year ago, would you have given me your full name?
E: Yes, I would have.
FADEL: The Education Department has not responded to our repeated requests for comment on how this portal works or what penalty teachers reported would face. So we reached out to a group that endorsed the End DEI portal, a right-wing advocacy group called Moms for Liberty. It was founded in the midst of the COVID pandemic by moms who felt unheard and shut out by school administrators and school board members over objections to masking policies and school closures. One of its co-founders is Tina Descovich, a Florida mom who says the portal was created to serve a need.
TINA DESCOVICH: Our parents across the country, and people that aren’t even members, email us things that they find in their school districts – practices, policies that they find concerning. And there really was nowhere to report that.
FADEL: If you could give me an example of the type of complaint that you think the DEI portal would then handle.
DESCOVICH: The things that I’ve seen that I know people have forwarded on to the DEI portal are lessons where they divide children by race and call, you know, Black children the victims or the oppressed; white children are the oppressors. So that would be something absolutely somebody should fill out in the DEI portal.
FADEL: An executive order on, quote, “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling” to end diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools makes a similar claim. But we couldn’t find examples in public schools of lessons where kids were physically divided by race, as Descovich described. Moms for Liberty pointed to a Florida public arts high school that planned separate meetings for students of color and white students four years ago. It later canceled them and apologized.
Now, getting rid of DEI is not the only issue driving Moms for Liberty. The group has pushed to ban books, largely on racism, discrimination, sexuality or LGBTQ rights. Members post anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. And at a chapter meeting three years ago, a member talked about gunning down a school librarian. All of this is why the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the group extremist in 2023. Back at the height of the pandemic, it was a charged environment. Parents were shouting down school board members.
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UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Shame on you. Shame on you.
FADEL: There was a spike in violent threats against school staff and school board members – like this threat.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You know your home address is on the internet, don’t you? That could be a little scary.
FADEL: Which prompted the National School Board Association to ask the Biden administration to intervene. Moms for Liberty has framed the FBI’s investigation of those violent threats against school board members as a politically motivated campaign to silence parents and organizations like theirs. Again, Descovich.
DESCOVICH: Parents were just showing up, trying to voice their opinions, sometimes, you know, not really that nice to school board members. They were angry about things that were going on with their children. But in no way, shape or form should they have had the DOJ, the federal government, coming after them.
FADEL: You know, it’s no secret that the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations see Moms for Liberty as an extremist organization – as a far-right organization that actually is in opposition to LGBTQ+ and racially inclusive school curriculums, that it advocates for book bans. What do you make of that, and how is that connected to what you were describing?
DESCOVICH: I and my co-founder both served in a public school board for four years – dedicated my life during that time to that. We believe in the public education system. We believe in America’s founding principles and our government. We are not anti-government. But we absolutely have the right, guaranteed in the First Amendment, to address government officials when we think they are not on the right track.
FADEL: In just a few years, a lot has changed for Moms for Liberty. With Trump’s election, the doors to the White House are open to the group.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much.
FADEL: Members were at the signing of executive orders – one for banning transgender athletes from women and girls’ sports; another for dismantling the Department of Education.
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TRUMP: And it sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education – we’re going to eliminate it. And everybody knows it’s right.
FADEL: Not only does the right-wing advocacy group feel freer to speak these days – they seem to have the ear of the president.
DESCOVICH: A lot of these executive orders speak to the struggle that our organization and many other organizations have experienced over the last four and five years. I hope that government will be much more open. I think people in the administration really want to see changes that will open up the government more, and that’s good for all Americans – left, right, Republican, Democrat. I have a lot of hope.
FADEL: You know, I think there were people who felt like what you were advocating for was dangerous for certain Americans. I’m just wondering, in this moment, if it’s free speech for everyone or just free speech for some.
DESCOVICH: Well, the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees free speech for everyone. And if anyone in America is being silenced in the way that we were silenced the last several years, they need to do the things that we do. They need to organize. They need to petition their government. We have filed lawsuits, and we’ve been victorious because the legal system in America does work. It may take time, but it does work. You know, I am willing to stand with someone – anyone – for their right to speak.
FADEL: But it is the policies her group has advocated for, like the End DEI portal, chilling the speech of some teachers in public schools.
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FADEL: MORNING EDITION invited Education Secretary Linda McMahon or the vice president, JD Vance, to sit down with us for a conversation about free speech. We have not heard back, and that invitation is still open.
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