What’s at Stake
Truth is under attack, as oppressive political forces seek to stifle the teaching of history and promote false narratives about the country’s founding and the most recent presidential election.
What We’re Doing
People For the American Way is protecting the freedom to learn the truth by:
- resisting book banning and censorship,
- challenging efforts to restrict the teaching of truth about racism in our history and institutions,
- supporting school board members and other public officials who are targets of political attacks for supporting the freedom to learn.
What We’ve Accomplished
| Since our founding more than 40 years ago, fighting far-right attacks on speech, art and education has been in our DNA at People For the American Way. We have been a leader in the fight against censorship and book banning for decades – helping parents and teachers win back control of schools and curricula.
In San Diego schools in the 1990s, we exposed a stealth campaign by the religious right to take over school boards, and organized a successful effort by parents to take back the board in the next election. Our guidebook on how we did it became a model for other fights. Our investigation of elective Bible-study classes in Fort Myers, Florida revealed rampant antisemitism in the curriculum. We exposed the bigotry and got the course canceled. In 2022, we joined with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the NAACP to mobilize Virginia parents against Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s “hotline” for reporting teachers who cover “divisive” subjects. Our effort earned extensive press and the “hotline” has been discredited. We have been a leading publisher of authoritative annual studies of book-banning and censorship nationwide, and of toolkits and sample anti-censorship policies that have empowered communities to fight back and win. |
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We are more than one million members, activists, and advocates fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. |
