Book Bans Are Just the Beginning: Randi Weingarten on Education and Democracy
"Book Bans are Just the Beginning: The Fight for Education and Democracy" is a virtual conversation with teachers' union leader and author Randi Weingarten.
The Critical Justice Initiative is part of the Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice at Seattle University School of Law.
Seattle University School of Law hosts teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten for a virtual conversation on how attacks on education threaten civic life.
When schools and teachers are under attack, what’s really being targeted is the public’s capacity to think critically and act collectively.”
SEATTLE, WA, UNITED STATES, January 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Seattle University School of Law's Critical Justice Initiative invites scholars and students from across the country to a virtual conversation with teachers' union leader and author Randi Weingarten. — Steven Bender, Co-Director, Critical Justice Initiative
"Book Bans Are Just the Beginning: The Fight for Education and Democracy" will be held on February 3, 2026, at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET. This no-charge webinar is open to the public. Registration is required to receive the webinar link the day before the event.
Weingarten will be joined by Lynn D. Lu, Associate Professor of Law at City University of New York School of Law, and Charisse Cowan Pitre, Interim Dean and Professor at Seattle University's College of Education, in a wide-ranging discussion examining the broader context surrounding current attacks on public education.
Weingarten's book, "Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy", explains how attacks on schools and teachers have long been a hallmark of fascist regimes. The webinar will discuss why the fate of the United States is inexorably intertwined with the fate of public education and why former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once referred to Weingarten as "the most dangerous person in the world".
“When schools and teachers are under attack, what’s really being targeted is the public’s capacity to think critically and act collectively," said Steven Bender, Co-Director of the Critical Justice Initiative. "We are having this conversation to examine what’s at stake and why it matters now.”
This is the fifth in the Critical Justice Initiative's Advocacy for Justice Virtual Speaker Series which features authors and activists whose work contributes to the pursuit of materially felt racial and economic justice. The Seattle University College of Education is a partnering sponsor.
About Randi Weingarten
Since 2008, Randi Weingarten has served as the elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, a union of 1.8 million educators, health care professionals, and public-service workers. For 10 years prior, she headed the United Federation of Teachers, the union representing educators in New York City’s public schools, and before that taught social studies at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York. She has degrees from the Cardozo School of Law and the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
About the Critical Justice Initiative
Emerging to counter the anti-democratic and anti-equality culture and its progeny, the Critical Justice Initiative aims to educate, protect, nurture, and further the critical knowledges and histories sought of late to be suppressed, including those who teach them, and those groups that historically and today were and are subordinated by law and society, particularly as judged by material outcomes.
The Critical Justice Initiative is part of the Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice at Seattle University School of Law.
About Seattle University's College of Education
Founded in 1935, the Seattle University College of Education has a long and distinguished history of preparing ethical and reflective leaders who are making systemic changes from the classroom to the boardroom. In the past eight decades, the College of Education has graduated more than 11,000 students.
Our alumni work as administrators, teachers, counselors, school psychologists, principals, superintendents, deans, community college faculty, corporate trainers and human resources professionals, college and university presidents, and business and nonprofit executives.
Inspired by our Jesuit and Catholic values, the College of Education prepares students not only for educational careers but also for taking a leadership role in social justice work. In fact, our mission is to prepare ethical, reflective, transformative professionals to advance social, economic and political justice in collaboration with local and global communities.
Alicia Kan
Seattle University School of Law
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