'What if a student asks why?' Holocaust lessons may be banned under state's law

Author and educator Margaret McMullan sounded the alarm in The Bulwark about a new Republican-written law in Mississippi that intends to abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which is written so broadly that it would effectively make teaching about the Holocaust impossible.

The legislation, called the Requiring Efficiency For Our Colleges and Universities System and Education System, or REFOCUSES, Act, is part of a broader effort led by President Donald Trump to purge racial diversity concepts from the government.

As written, she noted the bill prohibits "diversity training," which is defined as “any formal or informal education, seminars, workshops or institutional program that focus on increasing awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.”

The definition is so broad, McMullan warned, that it could make teaching about certain periods of history unlawful.

"This spring I was invited to teach a session on Holocaust history to lifelong-learning students. We met on a campus of the University of Southern Mississippi, where I offered candid accounts of the realities of life in Nazi-occupied Austria," she wrote. "We talked about how the Nazis turned Judaism into a racial issue, and how they targeted my mother and her family, forcing them to emigrate from Austria. I explained the circumstances of those of my relatives who escaped and those who were killed. In this way, we used my family’s story to examine in detail issues that can sound bloodless and abstract in the summaries of history books."

Had the GOP's new anti-DEI law been in effect back then, she said, teaching the class — at least in this way — may not have been allowed, and it wouldn't just stop at the Holocaust.

A new lawsuit brought by the Mississippi Center for Justice against this law, McMullan wrote, warns that "To make sure they’re compliant with the law, constitutional law professors must cut out references to the Fourteenth Amendment and to cases about discrimination — a huge branch of American judicial history — from their lectures and even their textbooks. Classes at all levels must proceed without any discussion related to sex and gender identity. Canonical books by canonical American authors — Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, and William Faulkner among them — would be subject to de facto bans, because you cannot talk about them, let alone teach them, without getting into race or gender."

Worse still, the law requires any violation be "cured" but doesn't specify what that means, potentially leading to teachers being fired simply for talking about certain historical topics — and cuts off any federal share of funding if a school has two or more "uncured" violations, which means schools across the state could be shut down.

"Maybe the fact that six million Jews were murdered by Nazis will remain in Mississippi textbooks. Maybe it won’t — it’s too early to say anything about the fate of the new law or how its purposefully broad provisions will be enforced," she wrote.

But, she concluded, it's clear that when historians come to visit campuses to discuss even something as simple as books about the culture of the South, "will the high school administrators be anxious about these classroom visits, fearful they may lose their jobs or school funding? After all, what if a student asks, 'why?'"