Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education
Teach Truth
Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education by Jesse Hagopian is an urgent examination of the fight for honest education amid growing efforts to suppress critical discussions of race, oppression, and history. In it, Hagopian unpacks the rise of what he terms "truthcrime" laws—now impacting almost half of all public school students in the U.S. and a growing number of colleges and universities—which ban any teaching of systemic racism. These legislative initiatives are part of a broader attempt to rewrite history and replace antiracist education with what he calls “uncritical race theory”—a set of ideas designed to reinforce existing unequal racial power relations.
Teach Truth draws on interviews with educators, students, and parents—many of whom have faced severe repercussions for their commitment to truth-telling—and combines these narratives with rigorous research and historical analysis to provide a powerful critique of the systems that perpetuate racial injustice. Hagopian offers a compelling vision for not only defeating the laws that ban honest history but also for building social movements that can transform education into a guide for liberation rather than a tool of conformity. Drawing on decades of experience as an educator and organizer, Hagopian challenges readers to see the fight for honest education as essential to broader struggles for a just society, detailing key efforts already underway and providing strategies to help the movement win.
Jesse Hagopian
Jesse Hagopian is a high school teacher in Seattle,
an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, and the author
of Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education
(Haymarket, 2025).
Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning educator, author, and activist who has dedicated his career to fighting for antiracist education and social justice in schools. A veteran teacher with over two decades of experience in public schools, Jesse is the co-editor of the groundbreaking books Teaching for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice. His new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, has been hailed by Kirkus Reviews as “Inspirational…a well-researched case promoting the value of antiracist education” and “a compelling account of how a politically and economically powerful minority has been able to enact book bans and curriculum censorship.”
Jesse is the director of the Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign, an editor for Rethinking Schools magazine, and a member of the national steering committee of the Black Lives Matter at School movement.
His writing, organizing, and activism have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Racial Justice Teacher of the Year award from the NAACP Youth Coalition, the Social Justice Teacher of the Year award from Seattle Public Schools’ Department of Racial Equity, the Abe Keller Foundation award for excellence and innovation in peace education, and the Courageous Leadership award from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. Hagopian is a columnist for Truthout.org, an Education Fellow at The Progressive magazine, a winner of the the Seattle/King County NAACP Service Award, and was named a Cultural Freedom Fellow by the Lannan Foundation for his nationally recognized work promoting critical thinking and opposing high-stakes testing.
Jesse is a sought-after speaker whose presentations on antiracist education, truth-telling in schools, Black history, and the fight against censorship have inspired audiences at universities, conferences, and community events across the country. His activism or commontary has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, CNN, Democracy Now!, NPR, The Nation, HBO, NBC, The Wall Street Jounal.
Jesse’s impact extends beyond the classroom—he is also an accomplished musician, blending the power of blues music with stories of struggle and resistance, and a co-producer of the award-winning documentary Where I Got My Name: A Story of Struggle and Self-Discovery.
Whether writing, speaking, or organizing, Jesse remains committed to the belief that public education must be a site of resistance—a place where we struggle until all students are welcomed, valued, and empowered to imagine a more just and free future.
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Jesse Hagopian on "Educational Arson": Trump Moves to Abolish Dept. of Education
Amid Broader Attack on Public Schools
As Black History Month begins, longtime educator Jesse Hagopian joins us for Part 2 of an interview about the Trump administration and right-wing attacks on education, and his new book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. He lays out how “truth crime laws” that criminalize honest education have prompted two out of three teachers to self-censor discussions of race, gender and sexuality. “This is the new McCarthyism,” says Hagopian. “Teachers are scared to teach the truth.” He also describes a “great rebellion” of educators, parents and students who are practicing “fugitive pedagogy” in defiance of “outrageous laws trying to ban the truth.
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