More on petition

Posted

In the December 2024, David Middlemiss wrote a letter about a petition written by teachers and authors who participated in the 2024 NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) convention in Boston. Mr. Middlemiss was careful and accurate with his wording, but the headline to this letter is misleading: it was not the NCTE that issued the petition.

As a retired English teacher, a former union rep for a union affiliated with the NCTE, and a writer, I was alarmed by the information in this letter. As a result, I checked the NCTE website to see their report. (I wish the editors has referenced NCTE as a resource, as well as CAMERA.) The NCTE made a thorough and careful investigation, ending with this statement:

“As an Executive Committee, and with the help of many experts in this area, we are deeply concerned about the precedent we might set and its long-term negative implications to academic freedom if we get this wrong. If we censor CEI today for unjustified reasons, who will we censor tomorrow? For this reason, despite the horrific experiences that some of our members have encountered, we must say ‘no’ to censorship based upon the facts currently presented to us. We do not have sufficient grounds to deny CEI a platform at our Convention. We will, however, continue to monitor all of our vendors to best ensure a safe and inclusive Convention environment.” (NCTE Statement on Allegations of Harassment. CEI is CAMERA's educational division.)

The entire NCTE statement is worth reading. It does not use ambiguous words like “right-wing hate group,” a meaningless description that might be translated as “you don't agree with me so I hate you.” (I think that “woke” applied to organizations by the other end of the political spectrum means the same thing.)

I'd like to thank Mr. Middlemiss for bringing up this issue and again, for his careful wording in reporting who issued the anti-CAMERA statement. I think that discussions about research, reflection and careful meaning of the words we use is worth further conversation.

Jane Arnold

Pawtucket, R.I.

Editor's Note: JRI staff write headlines on letters.

letter to the editor, Jane Arnold