Last year, over a dozen red states passed laws colloquially termed “critical race theory bans.” These laws were fueled by the widespread dismay of parents regarding the politicized and racialized lessons they saw when the classroom was Zoomed into their living room. The anti-CRT political passion of 2021 has since substantially diffused, but a new report published by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education suggests, despite itself, that these laws did not go far enough.

The report, titled “The State of Education Censorship in Institutions of Higher Ed and Implications for the Field,” fails to demonstrate evidence of censorship in higher education. But it succeeds in dripping with self-righteous contempt for Republican legislators and the constituents they represent — raising the question of why any conservative policymaker would continue to grant a teacher-training monopoly to institutions captured by ideologues who hate them.