To Members of the Texas Senate and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick,

The uncertainty of how SB2020/HB3979 will be implemented and the likely loss of offerings for dual- enrollment and AP History courses could hurt Texas’s progress toward increasing its college-educated population. [...] Perhaps most ironically, the legislation requires assignment of “excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,” which famously extolls the civic role of the very same institutions being excluded from providing professional development or student internships. [...] None of this damage, of course, is the actual purpose of this legislation, much of which is couched in barely concealed euphemisms. [...] If a teacher cannot cast “blame on the basis of race or sex,” how are students to understand who owned human property and who were enslaved? Or, the role of the “White Primary” in the disfranchisement of African Americans? The American Historical Association, the largest and oldest association of professional historians in the United States, frequently reminds its members and the public at large t. [...] To deny Texas students the opportunity to discuss these issues openly and freely is to deny them their rightful place as citizens of the United States, and of the world.