Our guest authors are Adam Fefer, senior researcher at the Horizons Project and a political scientist; and Maria Stephan, co-Leader of the Horizons Project, a member of the Freedom Trainers, and an award-winning author and organizer.
How Educators Strengthen Democracy
Educators are critical to the maintenance of democratic institutions, norms, and freedoms. They provide students with knowledge (e.g., of history and the constitution), skills (critical thinking and media literacy), values (tolerance and civic virtue), and dispositions (to actively participate and deliberate in civic life). Public educators have the great advantage of being embedded in and frequently interacting with their communities, and are typically seen as trustworthy. Public schools are one of the most common places for voting to occur. Apart from educators generally, educators’ unions can strengthen democracy, for example because union members are more likely to vote. When labor unions and professional organizations push for democratic change, these movements tend to have much higher rates of success and long-term sustainability.
Democracy is not only strengthened by educators, but academic freedom is itself a component of democracy. Indeed, a free society is incompatible with heavy-handed restrictions on what can be taught, researched, and disseminated, as well as with state control and surveillance of schools and universities. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project contains more than 10 indices that seek to measure academic freedom across time and place. One example is the “Freedom of academic and cultural expression” index, a scale between 0 (freedoms not respected) and 4 (fully respected). This index documents the following recent declines in the US: from 3.2 to 3.0 between 2016-17, an increase to 3.3 in 2021, then a decline to 2.4 in 2023 and 2.1 in 2024. These coincide with declines on similar indices, like the “Freedom to research and teach” index, as well as with much steeper declines in places as diverse as Brazil, Hungary, and Indonesia.
Authoritarian governments, leaders, and movements clearly recognize the democratic role played by educators. In fact, the origins of mass education are arguably rooted in elite fears of the masses and desires to turn them into obedient citizens. A recent book by American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, Why Fascists Fear Teachers shows how attacks on education—- discrediting, defunding, and censoring—-are a key part of the “authoritarian playbook.” Educators’ unions have played a key role in resisting these attacks. An understanding of how educators have resisted authoritarianism abroad offers insight and inspiration for efforts at home.
What Educators Have Done
Educators have employed diverse strategies and tactics in contexts where (a) democracies became more authoritarian (‘backsliding,’ e.g., Brazil under Bolsonaro) and (b) autocracies became more authoritarian (‘consolidation,’ e.g., Russia under Putin). This includes the use of well-known tactics like protests, strikes, media appearances, and petitions. But it also includes more subtle tactics like wearing symbols, critically or selectively teaching state-mandated materials, whistleblowing to expose educators’ complicity in authoritarian abuses, and the organization of alternative education forums. Even in cases of “ordinary” statements or protests, the specific appeals that educators make as well as the alliances they form with other actors (both inside and outside of the education system) have often been crucial to their success.
Teachers Against Fascism: Norway under Nazi Occupation
A first example of educators standing up for democracy comes from Norway during the 1940-45 Nazi occupation. Teachers played a critical role in resisting authoritarian attempts to reshape education and society. In 1942, Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi-backed Norwegian puppet leader, mandated that all teachers join a new state-controlled union. In response, an underground network in Oslo mobilized between 65-85% of Norway’s teachers to write letters publicly rejecting the fascist union. Educators wore paper clips to signify that they were “bound together” in defiance of the Nazi occupation. The Quisling regime responded by closing schools for a month, sending children home en masse. This led nearly 200,000 parents to write letters expressing their frustration with the decision. Teachers defied the shutdown by continuing to teach in private. Meanwhile, the Quisling regime proceeded to jail around 1,000 educators, whose salaries continued to be paid by supportive networks. Nearly half of these teachers were sent to concentration camps, which prompted students and farmers to protest alongside their train routes.
These courageous, varied efforts undermined Quisling’s efforts at controlling Norwegian education and society more generally. The Norway case illustrates how autocrats regularly attempt to break teachers’ unions; American teachers must stay vigilant and preempt these efforts. In addition, the role of Norwegian parents was critical, especially in terms of their alignment with educators.
Educator and Student Collaboration: Chile under Pinochet
From 1973-90, Chile was ruled by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Because educators and students were perceived as incubators of socialism, the Pinochet regime fired, arrested, exiled, and “disappeared” them. It assigned military rectors to supervise universities, mandated coursework that was meant to build ideological support for the regime and help students identify so-called “subversives,” and dissolved specific disciplines and majors.
By the early 1980s, students at the University of Chile occupied the French embassy and UNESCO headquarters in Santiago, drawing international attention to their plight. Students demanded the removal of pro-government student leaders and the restoration of academic freedom, and they went on hunger strike to protest the expulsions of their peers. Meanwhile, university faculty formed resistance groups that criticized not only academic unfreedom but Chile’s 1981 authoritarian constitution. One faculty group created an academic journal with UNESCO support that regularly criticized the Pinochet regime. However, much of these actions were initially done by individual student or faculty groups, as opposed to in collaboration with each other.
In 1987, the University of Chile’s new rector fired large numbers of administrators and professors and expelled large numbers of students. In response, faculty went on strike and protested—alongside students—to demand the rector’s resignation, while administrators repeatedly voted to endorse these strikes at meetings. The regime responded by closing universities, which only intensified the protests. Other universities across Chile publicly voiced their support, while physicians at state-run hospitals walked out in response to the regime’s plan to fire university medical staff. Independent Chilean magazines and church publications highlighted student demands and news of the protests. Meanwhile, CBS broadcasted the protests in the US, and prestigious organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science sent letters to Pinochet in support of the protesters. After 10 weeks of protests, Pinochet replaced his appointed rector with a well-respected civilian and philosophy professor.
Although Chilean educators faced a very different ‘regime’ context from the US—in that Chile was a ‘closed autocracy’—there are clear parallels in terms of what authoritarian leaders in both places have sought to undermine. Just as in Chile, the (mis)perception that educators and students are socialists who endanger national security is very salient today in the US. Pinochet’s efforts to appoint military rectors at universities is not wholly unlike the Trump administration’s demand that Columbia University’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department be placed under external, “academic receivership.”
Chains of Solidarity: Hungary under Orbán
A third example comes from Hungary, where Viktor Orbán’s government has worked to centralize its control over not only the political system but also the education system, punishing educators it portrays as promoting leftist ideas.
In 2016, educators founded an organization called Tanítanék (meaning “I wish to teach” in Hungarian) to support their colleagues whose firings were politically motivated. Tanítanék has legally and materially supported teachers on strike as well as those arrested for civil disobedience. The organization’s mailing list is over 90,000 large.
More recently, in September 2022, five Hungarian teachers were fired for striking, which sparked mass protests by tens of thousands of teachers, parents, and students. Their demands were broad, including the reinstatement of those dismissed, higher salaries for educators, and an end to Orbán’s authoritarianism. Protesters marched to government buildings and formed human chains, blocked key bridges, and engaged in symbolic acts such as burning threatening letters from the government. The 2022 protests were some of Hungary’s largest since the end of communism in 1989.
The “Orbán model” has inspired would-be authoritarians in Europe and the Americas. This playbook has involved undermining independent institutions, attacking the media, and using far-right nationalist rhetoric to stoke division and delegitimize opponents. American educators can learn much from the solidarity and creativity exhibited in Hungary, where Orbán’s grip on political power is much more pronounced than that of MAGA in the US.
Refusing to Teach Regime Doctrine: Venezuela under Chávez
A different example comes from Venezuela, where educators resisted the teaching of regime-friendly materials in creative ways. After rewriting the constitution and undermining independent checks on his power, Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) sought to radically reshape Venezuelan education. In 2007, the Chávez regime introduced a new curriculum that arguably lacked any legal basis. Its content was highly ideological, essentially portraying Venezuelan history as culminating with Chávez, who brought about the liberation of the masses.
Educators undermined Chávez’s new curriculum in a number of ways. In 2012, when researchers conducted over two dozen interviews with Venezuelan educators, only a minority reported using the new textbooks. Most within this minority still complemented their lesson plans with non-governmental materials, rarely used the official history materials, or simply ignored parts of the curriculum they found unacceptable. (Argentine teachers used very similar tactics under Juan Perón’s 1946-55 government.) Chávez’s limited success in changing Venezuelan education was arguably due to the actions of teachers, who benefitted from a history of strong unionization and shared backgrounds at teacher training institutes.
Attempts by the Chávez regime to foster obedience and weaken teachers’ organizational capacities resonate with contemporary efforts in the US. This case highlights the significance of resisting authoritarianism in spaces, such as classrooms, that are often seen as apolitical. Autocrats regularly sanitize and falsify history, which educators are in a unique position to resist. As racism, homophobia, and transphobia intensify via the classroom, educators will play a key role in advancing an accurate portrayal of where the US has been as well as where it might go.
Teaching Against the Kremlin: Russia under Putin
As Vladimir Putin strengthens his iron grip over Russian politics and society, local educators have deployed creative forms of resistance against governmental attempts to rig elections and silence critics. Some educators have become whistleblowers, speaking with journalists and researchers to expose efforts to coerce them into engaging in election fraud. At the same time, prominent teachers have posted YouTube videos appealing to their colleagues, imploring them to be exemplars of honesty to their students and not give into Putin’s pressure.
A recent documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin (2025) follows school videographer Pavel “Pasha” Talankin as he exposes the Kremlin’s indoctrination campaign in classrooms. Risking arrest and state repression, Pasha leaked his footage to a Western producer to expose how Russian children were being manipulated into obediently supporting the war on Ukraine. Pasha also staged a number of subversive acts, including replacing the Russian national anthem at a school ceremony with Lady Gaga’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and delivering a veiled farewell speech at graduation, after which he fled Russia.
The Russia case resonates with recent attempts to pressure American state- and local-level leaders to falsify the 2020 election. Much attention has focused on the courage of election commissioners and poll workers, but American educators may also play a key role in indirectly resisting anti-democratic abuses, for example by shaping social norms around election integrity and influencing public discourse.
Standing up for Minorities and Academic Freedom: Turkey under Erdoğan
Another example comes from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s (2014-) unprecedented assault on higher education in Turkey. In January 2016, over 1100 Turkish academics signed a petition that criticized the Erdoğan regime’s repression of minority Kurds. In response, Erdoğan accused the signatories of treason and of supporting terrorism. State prosecutors and loyalist university administrators began investigating the signatories while pro-government media launched a smear campaign against them. Signatories faced forced resignations, criminal investigations, imprisonment, and threats from ultra-nationalist groups. Erdoğan’s campaign escalated after the failed July 2016 coup attempt, after which he declared a nearly two-year state of emergency, firing thousands of educators.
In response to the Erdoğan regime’s attack on academics, many academics formed coordinating committees and support networks to assist individuals during their legal proceedings, as well as providing expelled educators with financial support. Turkey’s largest union, the Education and Science Workers’ Union, played a key role in these support and coordination efforts. In addition, alternative education centers were established in a number of cities, which provided open lectures, conferences, workshops, and summer schools.
In Turkey one observes just how much authoritarian leaders detest those who criticize their efforts at state violence. Much as Turkish academics were targeted for denouncing the decades-long marginalization of Kurdish people, so too have American educators and students been targeted for their support of Palestinian freedom and self-determination.
The United States
Today, educators in the US are challenging discriminatory and anti-democratic policies and practices using a variety of means. The Iowa State Education Association filed lawsuit challenging a censorious book ban, while an Iowa teacher refused to take down a sign that read “everyone is welcome here,” prompting her community to mobilize in support. In Chicago and Los Angeles, teachers unions have reaffirmed and reinforced sanctuary policies to protect students and families from ICE raids at schools and offered “know your rights” guidance in the face of federal rollbacks of “sensitive locations” protections. Meanwhile, hundreds of parents, teachers, and school administrators in Sackets Harbor, NY organized and marched to secure the release of a family from immigration detention.
At the university level, in early 2025 the American Association of University Professors released a statement called “Against Anticipatory Obedience.” Connecticut colleges and universities have campaigned to boycott Avelo airlines, which has a contract with ICE to conduct deportation flights. And all but two universities rejected a compact with the White House that would have offered them expanded access to federal funding in exchange for changing their admissions policies to disfavor international and historically marginalized groups.
These actions highlight the many ways that educators across the US and globally have stood resolutely in the face of government-sponsored attacks on democratic norms and institutions. The range of activities they have undertaken—from the wearing of symbols to collective noncooperation—have encouraged unity, solidarity, and defiance in the face of state repression and abuses of power. When part of a broad movement for democratic renewal as well as for social and economic rights, educators have sometimes done the unthinkable, defeating dictators and paving the way to more free and just societies.
View the original article and our Inspiration here