Florida school district cancels professor?s civil rights lecture over critical race theory concerns

SectionstvFeaturedMore From NBCFollow NBC NewsMIAMI — A Florida school district canceled a professor’s civil rights history seminar for teachers, citing in part concerns over “critical race theory” — even though his lecture had nothing to do with the topic.J. Michael Butler, a history professor at Flagler College in St. Augustine, was scheduled to give a presentation Saturday to Osceola County School District teachers called “The Long Civil Rights Movement,” which postulates that the civil rights movement preceded and post-dated Martin Luther King Jr. by decades.He said that he was shocked to learn why the seminar had been canceled through an email Wednesday but that he wasn’t surprised because educators feel increasingly intimidated over teaching about race.Less than 24 hours before Butler was informed of the cancellation, a state Senate committee advanced legislation Tuesday at the behest of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to block public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” when they’re taught about race. This is not indoctrination.” Butler said he believes that the legislation being debated in Tallahassee is too vague and that it “makes it so that any topic that falls under the rubric can be labeled as potentially critical race theory.““And the end result is that any teacher training any educational program can be canceled, postponed, stonewalled so that it never happens,” he said.The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., said in a text message that the law wouldn’t really prohibit teaching critical race theory; rather, he said, it would prescribe “the teaching of accurate and objective history on all the topics listed.”“I think part of the confusion” over teaching basic civil rights history “is the confusion that has been created about what is or isn’t CRT,” Diaz said.Marc Caputo reported from Miami, and Teaganne Finn reported from Washington, D.C.Marc Caputo is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Teaganne Finn is a political reporter for NBC News.© 2022 NBC UNIVERSAL