Gov. Ron DeSantis is credited with forcing a rewrite of a new high-school AP class in African-American Studies, after Florida balked at such lesson topics as “Black Queer Studies.” Denying pressure, the College Board said the revisions were pedagogical: “This course has been shaped only by the input of experts and long-standing AP principles and practices.”
Yet its own faculty advisers privately castigated this as dishonest spin, according to emails we obtained via open-records laws. “I have patiently and quietly watched the ubiquitous interviews and media assertions that AP would not make changes at the behest of any group beyond professors, teachers, and students,” wrote Nishani Frazier, a University of Kansas professor who sits on the AP course’s development committee. “If this is so, which student, professor, or teacher suggested adding black conservatives to the course over Combahee River Collective?”