When rioting Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Rep. Gerald Connolly was on the House floor. The Democrat from Virginia could hear pounding getting closer to the chamber, but wasn’t sure at first what it was. As word spread that angry mobs were inside the building, he saw Speaker Nancy Pelosi being escorted away, and members of the sergeant-at-arms securing the chamber doors.

Lawmakers were told to ready gas masks, which were under every chair – a fact previously unknown to the six-term congressman, who was shocked and alarmed. Then came evacuation. As he and about 150 members headed for a staircase to the sub-basement, he turned to see double doors just steps from the chamber entrance. They were barricaded, and hands were pounding on the glass.

Shortly after, a Capitol Police officer fatally shot Ashli Babbitt at that same spot. She was one of five people killed in the melee that Wednesday, including an officer who died the next day.

On Monday, House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump, charging him with “incitement of insurrection.” Speaker Pelosi said the House would proceed with impeachment if Vice President Mike Pence did not seek to remove the president under the 25th Amendment by Wednesday. It’s a move Congressman Connolly says he strongly supports – even though he knows impeaching will not remove Mr. Trump before Inauguration Day. It’s unclear when the Senate would take it up and whether it would convict. And politically, it might undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s unity message, while strengthening the outgoing president’s standing among Republicans. 

Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post/AP/File

Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia, shown Oct. 7, 2020, in Washington, says he strongly supports the impeachment of President Donald Trump after the Capitol was stormed Jan. 6.

“If you had been in the Capitol and experienced the mob violence that we experienced Wednesday, you might have a different point of view about unity,” the congressmen explains in an interview. “Unity can’t be a subterfuge for lack of accountability.”

Indeed, many Democratic lawmakers say they have no choice. This was an unprecedented, violent assault on the Capitol – a seditious attempt to deny the constitutional process of counting legal electoral votes that were certified by the states and the courts. They say they must hold the president accountable for fomenting rebellion. As Congressman Connolly puts it, he believes he has a constitutional obligation “irrespective of the politics of it, irrespective of its likely outcome.”

Still, nothing in Washington happens in a political vacuum. While starkly condemning the president and the attack last week, Mr. Biden is focused on gearing up his administration, getting to work on the pandemic and the economy, and unifying the country. On Monday, he told reporters that he had proposed a bifurcated system, where the Senate would spend half a day on impeachment and half on Cabinet confirmation hearings and priorities such as pandemic relief.

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of the most conservative Democrats in the 50-50 Senate and a crucial swing vote, said that while he believed the president deserved to be impeached, Democrats should be “practical” and pursue the legal path in the criminal justice system rather than the political path. Mr. Biden has “an awful lot on his plate,” he told CNN on Sunday.

The less attention paid to President Trump the better, advises Ross Baker, an expert on the Senate at Rutgers University. Otherwise, Democrats could inadvertently make a “martyr” out of him.

Republican pollster and consultant Frank Luntz agrees.

“Donald Trump is a pariah right now,” he says, “and the Democrats will be solving the GOP’s problem by getting rid of him.” In his view, Democrats are mixing up their priorities, putting their abhorrence of Mr. Trump above the interests of the new president, who will never have more power and influence than he has now.

“They feel a moral imperative, because they think that Donald Trump is literally evil, and so there is no limit to how far they will go to punish him, even to the point of hurting their newly inaugurated president,” says Mr. Luntz. 

Swift impeachment a “dangerous precedent”?

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who testified before Congress against President Trump’s first impeachment, describes this week’s actions as an “impulse” that would set a “dangerous precedent.” By voting to impeach without even holding a hearing, lawmakers are going against the Founders’ intention of a deliberative process and would clear the way for snap impeachments in the future.

Additionally, he warns that the standard for “incitement” is vague. Democrats want to remove the president based on his remarks before the storming of the Capitol – remarks that Professor Turley believes are protected speech. A number of Democrats have also spoken threateningly, he notes, including Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who urged supporters to confront Republicans in restaurants.

“This type of language has become ubiquitous in our politics,” says Professor Turley, who teaches at George Washington University Law School in Washington. 

Andrew Harnik/AP

People evacuate as protesters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.

“This is not a ‘both sides’ kind of time”

Former Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia says in the past she has had people come to her home and scream, to the point where her daughter was afraid to go out with her children in public. But, says the Republican, “this is not a ‘both sides’ kind of time.” The deadly storming of the Capitol and the president’s role in it are “unprecedented and we need to take strong action.”

Ms. Comstock has signed a letter with 23 other former GOP congressional lawmakers urging Congress to “uphold the integrity of the legislative branch and protect American democracy” by impeaching President Trump. She believes such a vote will be “well north” of the 218-vote threshold needed to pass and that it will be bipartisan.

Democrats, who hold a slim 11-seat majority in the House, say they have the votes – which would make Mr. Trump the only president in history to be impeached twice.

Ms. Comstock says she sees a “disintegration” of Mr. Trump’s support and believes that it will continue as more details of the president’s behavior and of what occurred on the Hill come to light. She points to an ABC News/Ipsos poll showing 67% of Americans blaming the president for the riot. The poll also found a majority of the country believes he should be removed before Mr. Biden takes office on Jan. 20.

But removal is highly unlikely. Unlike President Richard Nixon, who Ms. Comstock likened to a “statesman” compared to the current president, Mr. Trump has shown no intention to resign. In an interview, one former Republican House member argues that what is called for is a “Goldwater-to-Nixon” moment, referring to when three GOP senators went to Nixon to say he was doomed to impeachment, conviction, and removal from office. On Monday, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he opposed impeachment, but suggested censure among options House Republicans would pursue.

Meanwhile, the vice president, whose life seemed under threat by mobs at the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” appears disinclined to invoke the 25th Amendment, which would require that he and a majority of the Cabinet find the president unable to discharge the duties of his office. The vice president, next in line, would then become president.

That leaves impeachment followed by a trial and conviction and removal by the Senate, which would require a two-thirds vote of those present to convict. To bar him from ever holding an elected office again would require a second vote after conviction, but this one needs only a majority to pass. Although this would take place after Mr. Trump left office, there is precedent for such a maneuver. Several Republican senators seem more open to consideration of an article of impeachment than last year, when the GOP-controlled Senate voted on a near-party line basis to acquit Trump on a count of abuse of power and another on obstructing Congress. In 2020, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney was the only Republican voting to convict.

“The real need is not just for accountability ... but [for] a Senate vote prohibiting him from being able to run for office again. If we don’t hold him accountable and take that [next] step, we’re going to see the same sort of incitement for the next four years from him,” says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, which, together with Republicans for Integrity, organized the letter signed by Comstock.

“I’m sorry if it does tarnish Biden’s goals [of unity], but at this stage, I think that’s a secondary consideration,” Ms. Brian says.

Some experienced Democrats are unconcerned about a clash between impeachment and Mr. Biden’s start on his agenda, including his overarching goal to bring the country together.

“You have to think what unifying the country means. This country has never been 100% unified. Even when JFK was assassinated ... there were people who applauded,” says Robert Shrum, who advised earlier Democratic presidential campaigns and now is at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The timing of impeachment is a “complication” he says, but “the justification for it is overwhelming.”

“The politics will take care of itself,” chimes in Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic consultant.

A year ago, newly elected Hong Kong district counselor Fergus Leung was in high spirits as he stood outside a high-rise public housing block on Hong Kong Island, cheerily greeting constituents. In a white button-down shirt and wire-rimmed glasses, the earnest young University of Hong Kong student fielded questions on garbage bins and rent hikes, pledging to help supporters and win over skeptics alike.

But in a sign of how dramatically Beijing has curtailed political freedoms in Hong Kong over the past six months, last week Mr. Leung and 52 other pro-democracy elected officials and activists – including one U.S. citizen – were snatched up and arrested in early-morning raids by about 1,000 Hong Kong police.

The alleged offense of Mr. Leung and his colleagues? Subversion, for what not long ago would have been a normal political action: organizing and taking part in legislative primaries run by the democrats last July. Subversion is punishable by sentences of up to life in prison.

The crackdown on Hong Kong’s political opposition marks a stark change from a year ago, when record voter turnout produced a landslide win for Mr. Leung and other democracy advocates in November 2019. The election handed pro-democracy and independent candidates control of 17 out of 18 of Hong Kong’s district councils, overturning their longtime domination by pro-Beijing politicians.

That election, taking place amid months of massive protests for democracy in Hong Kong, signaled beyond doubt that a majority of voters sought to maintain and strengthen freedoms, as promised by Beijing when it regained control over the British colony in 1997. But Beijing was moving in the opposite direction, steadily curtailing Hong Kong’s autonomy and judicial independence and instead promoting integration with mainland China.

Alarmed by the popular protests and election victory by pro-democracy candidates, Beijing last June imposed a draconian new national security law that authorities are now wielding to eliminate and punish political opposition to a greater degree than ever before, experts say.

“It’s a big sweep of all the opposition leaders. Essentially, anyone who dares to run in elections thereby is seen as challenging Beijing’s authority in Hong Kong,” says Victoria Tin-bor Hui, an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and a native of Hong Kong. “The significance is huge.”

Beijing’s calculation was that “if free and fair elections take place, the pro-Beijing parties will not win, so faced with that, the ‘obvious’ solution was to dismantle democratic institutions and eliminate political opposition entirely,” says Alvin Cheung, a Hong Kong barrister and university lecturer now at New York University.

For the mild-mannered Mr. Leung – whose agenda a year ago ranged from planning day tours for older people and Chinese New Year festivities, to modernizing recycling and protecting his district’s wild pigs and century-old banyan trees – aspirations for a political career are now likely to lead to jail.

“There is a good chance Beijing authorities will achieve what they want to achieve: literally, silencing any kind of dissent, including free speech, including by very peaceful means and formal legal channels,” says Professor Hui. “Hong Kong is fast becoming like the rest of China.” 

Vincent Yu/AP/File

Hong Kong riot police fire tear gas during a pro-democracy protest against Beijing's national security legislation in Hong Kong, May 24, 2020. Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp has sharply criticized China's move to enact national security legislation in the semi-autonomous territory.

Game-changing law

Last May, as Beijing drafted the top-down national security law, Mr. Leung lent his support to Hong Kong citizens who gathered to oppose it – only to be pepper-sprayed in the face by police as he moved to protect the protesters. “More than 300 peaceful protesters were arrested,” he tweeted, with a photo of himself blinded and wincing from the pepper spray.

Mr. Leung warned the law would fuel more radical opposition. “The CCP’s latest move means ‘burnism’ in Hong Kong is inevitable,” he wrote – referring to a strategy of hardcore protesters known as “laam chau” (literally, “stir-fry”) in Cantonese, and captured by the slogan, “if we burn, you burn with us.”

Then in a swift, secretive move, Beijing bypassed Hong Kong’s legislature and enacted the law on June 30. Overnight, not only Hong Kong citizens, but anyone, risked being charged for broadly defined national security crimes – secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign “elements” – with a maximum penalty of life in prison. The law allows Chinese state-security agents to operate in Hong Kong, where they can take jurisdiction of cases, apprehend people, and send them to the mainland to be tried in courts controlled by the Communist Party.

Since the law passed, authorities have used it to arrest scores of opposition politicians, activists, and journalists, as well as to curtail free speech and ban protest slogans – leading some to hold up blank signs instead. In an effort to eliminate dissent, authorities have cracked down on art and education, censoring textbooks and curricula and firing professors. 

“It’s a totalitarian drive for control over Hong Kong that we are witnessing,” spreading a mood of fear, uncertainty, and helplessness, says Kenneth Chan, associate professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.

By the end of July, Mr. Leung and 11 other pro-democracy candidates had been disqualified from running in Legislative Council elections scheduled for September. Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam – selected by a pro-Beijing committee of 1,200 – later postponed the election, citing the pandemic.

In October, in his last tweets prior to his arrest, Mr. Leung commented on troubling changes at his own university, where professors with strong ties to China’s Communist Party were taking over research and development. “This shall signal the end of academic freedom and institutional autonomy at HKU,” he wrote, but “I’m confident that HKUers will continue to fight.”

Kin Cheung/AP

Former Democratic Party legislators Andrew Wan (left), Lam Cheuk-ting (second left), and Helena Wong (right) attend a press conference after being released on bail in Hong Kong, Jan. 8, 2021. The Chinese in the background reads, "Totalitarian government suppresses dissidents; fearless of indiscriminate arrest, we walk forward together."

Distracted democracies

The feeling of the city’s autonomy rapidly deteriorating is palpable, residents say. “The entire atmosphere has ... worsened over the last six months,” says Professor Chan. “People are still very clear-minded. They know what is happening. What they don’t know is what will happen to themselves.”

With the world in disarray from the pandemic and populist challenges to democracy, Beijing has been emboldened, analysts say, and Hong Kong’s embattled activists such as Mr. Leung need international support more than ever. Many advocates have urged the United States and its allies to challenge Beijing over human rights violations in Hong Kong. The police raids last week included the arrest on national security grounds of U.S. citizen John Clancey, chairman of the Asian Human Rights Commission, who is treasurer of a pro-democracy group involved in last summer’s primaries.

Another important step, experts add, is for democratic countries to open their doors wider to immigration from Hong Kong. A new British visa allows certain Hong Kong residents to work and study in the United Kingdom for five years, and then apply for citizenship.

“Lifeboat programs” that offer safe haven are especially important for those who are less affluent, says Dr. Cheung, who has classmates among those arrested last week. “It’s the middle class and lower-class people who will bear the brunt of Beijing’s retributions, but I don’t see any meaningful effort by any country to set up a lifeboat scheme for those people,” he says. “I do not plan ever to return.”

For Mr. Leung, that exit route may already be closed. Once arrested, even if released on bail, Hong Kong’s activists must surrender their passports and report regularly to police. “Only those people not on the regime’s radar can emigrate,” says Professor Hui.

As Hong Kongers braced for Beijing’s crackdown last year, they talked about “how to prepare for the coming totalitarian era,” she says – looking into how people survived in Eastern Europe in the Soviet era, for example. “Even if you cannot talk to fellow supporters, at least make eye contact,” she says, “continue to make friends and devote time to community service, keep civil society alive, and wait for the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Joshua Roberts/Illustration/Reuters

A photo illustration shows the suspended Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump on a smartphone at the White House briefing room in Washington on Jan. 8, 2021.

The drama of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol Building in Washington played out largely in real life, to tragic effect. But it has culminated in one of the most significant changes in the landscape of political social media in recent memory. The leader of the United States has been banned from his favored means of communication, and his conservative allies are throwing about accusations of censorship and unconstitutionality.

So what happened?

Really, there are three related but distinct sets of events that occurred. The first is the de-platforming of President Donald Trump from Twitter, Facebook, and other sites. The second is social media’s mass banning of QAnon and Capitol-assault-related accounts and media. The third is the at least temporary collapse of Parler, a right-wing Twitter clone that promised to be a haven for free speech. They should be treated separately.

Let’s start with Mr. Trump and his social media accounts, particularly Twitter, on which he was followed by 88 million people. In the aftermath of the Capitol invasion, a federal crime that resulted in five deaths, Mr. Trump and his team continued to post material that could be interpreted to endorse the riots. Facebook, Twitter, and other major social media companies viewed this as a violation of their terms of use – the rules under which users agree to use the companies’ services – and deactivated Mr. Trump’s accounts.

Isn’t that an unconstitutional violation of the president’s First Amendment rights?

No. The First Amendment is specifically about the limits of what the government can do to regulate speech. Twitter is a private company, and is entitled to restrict its services to customers however it wants (subject to certain federal laws).

But Twitter is a public forum!

Not really. It is tempting to think of Twitter, and the internet generally, as the modern version of the town square. Many have made that analogy. But social media companies are corporations. So rather than a public town square, Twitter is a privately owned stadium where the Twitter corporation has built the facilities, hired the security, and handed out megaphones to everyone walking in the doors. They don’t charge admission, but it’s their property, and so they can let in – and kick out – whomever they want.

But aren’t they gagging the president by cutting him off from one of the world’s biggest social media platforms?

No. The president has unrivaled access to the media. Every broadcaster on the planet would leap at the chance to interview him. He has regularly called into programs on Fox News to chat live. And he has a White House press office with a press corps dedicated to reporting whatever he might say.

That’s not the same as Twitter. The press can filter him; on social media, Trump can say exactly what he wants.

That’s true. And the White House has a public website that could publish Mr. Trump’s words unfiltered. Mr. Trump has options – more than almost anyone else on the planet – to get his message out.

But what about all those other accounts being banned? They don’t have the same sort of options.

Let’s back up a moment to discuss what happened there. In addition to de-platforming Mr. Trump, multiple social media companies – Twitter being at the forefront – launched a campaign this weekend to ban users advocating misinformation and violence that led to the Jan. 6 riot, as well as users planning for a follow-up event on Jan. 17.

Twitter’s specific focus was on QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory alleging a cabal of satanist pedophiles in government. Many accounts were banned, including several high-profile ones like that of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump recount lawyer Sidney Powell. Many conservative figures complained that their follower numbers dropped by the thousands over the weekend, and accused Twitter of censoring conservatives broadly.

Well, isn’t it censorship?

Again, not in any legal way. Twitter can kick out whomever it wants to. And all of these users already agreed that Twitter could kick them out. If you’re a Twitter user, you have to.

Part of signing up for Twitter includes agreeing to its terms of service, which lay out a range of allowed and barred behaviors. You almost certainly didn’t look at them; most people don’t. But in a court of law, they would be considered effectual (so long as they’re reasonable – a term that included a promise to pay Twitter a million dollars wouldn’t fly). So all those people being thrown off Twitter already consented to Twitter’s decision, under the law.

But there are plenty of people on Twitter who violate those terms and haven’t been kicked off. Twitter is being completely arbitrary!

Yes, it is. Twitter, among others, has been very inconsistent in application of its rules, particularly regarding misinformation. Mr. Trump, for example, has had many tweets marked and/or hidden for misinformation, while it was only this weekend that Twitter deleted a Chinese embassy tweet that claimed Uyghur women were being “emancipated” by the ongoing internment of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.

Still, Mike Masnick, founder of the tech/legal blog Techdirt, writes that a couple of years ago, his team “took a room full of content moderation experts and asked them to make content moderation decisions on eight cases,” and they “couldn’t get these experts to agree on anything.” So while Twitter’s inconsistency is frustrating, it’s par for the course.

Ann Hermes/Staff/File

The Parler app prompts to connect with popular figures in the Parler community while setting up an account on Nov. 30, 2020.

What about Parler? It has minimal moderation, and now Big Tech is shutting it down.

Let’s discuss what happened to Parler, as it’s caught up in a different set of issues, mostly dealings between corporations.

Posts on Parler have shown that it was a communications nexus for planning around the Capitol invasion on Jan. 6. Several users have also made what appear to be violent threats against members of the government, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence, who were both inside the Capitol during the siege.

On Jan. 8, Apple warned Parler that if it didn’t institute a moderation policy to deal with violent threats within 24 hours, the app would be banned from its App Store. Google suspended the Parler app from the Google Play store shortly thereafter. Though Parler did delete some posts by Trump-connected lawyer Lin Wood about Mr. Pence, Apple removed the app from its store on Jan. 9. That same day, Amazon Web Services announced it would stop hosting Parler, effectively shutting the social media service down until it finds a new host.

Why isn’t that censorship?

This is all about private entities severing contracts with one another. Parler and Apple had a contract that Apple chose to end – the same with Google, the same with Amazon. In fact, it’s only Amazon’s termination that has affected the inner workings of Parler. The two store bans did not reach the service itself – Parler could have offered other means to users to access its services, perhaps a web interface, as Twitter does.

But let’s put that aside for a moment and look at what Parler’s corporate partners were specifically criticizing. Amazon wrote to Parler that “we cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others.” Apple and Google’s complaints were similar, and for good reason. Incitement to violence is not protected speech under the First Amendment. Parler users who were engaged in such speech were not exercising their rights.

Admittedly, the line between hyperbole and incitement is blurry. Parler would need moderators to determine which side of the line users fall on. But that just goes to the point Apple raised with its initial 24-hour warning.

So now conservatives don’t have a social media home. Doesn’t this just make things worse?

Yes. While everything that has happened is legally sound, the social media upheaval, particularly Parler’s deactivation, raises societal concerns.

There’s a reason that people have drawn the comparison between social media and the town square – it’s a 24-hour version of the “market place of ideas” coined by Justice William O. Douglas. The launch of Parler was the start of a major fracturing of that marketplace into ideological camps, and its involuntary shuttering threatens to deepen the fracture.

Parler’s CEO, John Matze, has said the service will relaunch once it finds new hosting services. And it will undoubtedly find ways to circumvent the bans by Google and Apple to reach its users once again. But the new Parler will likely end up more isolated from the rest of the social media ecosystem, with a more embittered user base. That may only exacerbate problems that social media companies cannot solve.

Before becoming Europe editor at the Monitor, Mr. Bright was the research attorney for the Digital Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is one of the highest profile Cabinet members to resign from President Donald Trump’s administration, writing in the wake of the rampage at the Capitol, “Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us.” 

“There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” she wrote to the president on Jan. 7.

Her departure on Friday was a dramatic finale for one of the longest-serving, and most controversial, members of President Trump’s senior administrative team – ending one of the most highly charged tenures in the history of the Education Department. 

For four years, scholars say, Ms. DeVos used the bully pulpit of the department to fundamentally shift the American conversation around schools. In her dogged pursuit of what many saw as a radical, free market approach, she unraveled a decadeslong truce between Republicans and Democrats when it came to education policy. She advocated for school choice, including vouchers for private and parochial schools, and regularly attempted to cut the funding of her own department, saying publicly that she would be happy to work herself out of a job. On her way out the door she made available $2.75 billion in funds earmarked for non-public schools in the relief act signed into law in December.

While many supporters praised her resignation as courageous, and offered glowing reviews of her tenure as secretary, critics called the move “hypocritical.” Her rhetoric, they claimed, had helped fuel the anger and anti-government sentiments that many of the Trump supporters expressed Wednesday. Many on the left also saw Ms. DeVos as undermining what had long been a bipartisan commitment to public schools and also systematically dismantling civil rights protections for students.

All of this could have significant implications for the American school system and its roughly 50 million students – and for the person who soon steps into the role Ms. DeVos has vacated. Pundits had already been comparing her to President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for the role, Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona, and wondering how and whether he will face what one editorial called “the herculean task of clearing away the wreckage left by his predecessor.” 

“Looking at what she has said over the past four years, and what she got away with saying – she’s a bellwether,” says Jack Schneider, assistant professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and co-author of the 2020 book “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School.” “Times have really changed,” he says. 

A messenger, a lightning rod

Throughout her tenure, Ms. DeVos kept to the central message that “public education” did not need to mean “public schools.” 

A billionaire philanthropist, and former chair of Michigan’s Republican Party, she had long advocated for charter schools and vouchers – a fact that, along with her lack of experience working in schools, prompted a storm of opposition to her nomination. (Vice President Mike Pence had to cast a tie-breaking vote at her confirmation hearing.) 

Although some of the policies she supported were not particularly radical – charter schools, for instance, have enjoyed bipartisan support for years – Ms. DeVos’ open disdain for what she saw as a one-size-fits-all, wasteful school system made it easy for opponents to paint her as “anti-public school.” 

Darrell Sapp/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/AP/File

Christian Carter leads a group of fellow Pittsburgh high school students during a protest on the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education on Feb. 8, 2017. Ms. DeVos won confirmation by a slim margin, pushed to approval only by the historic tie-breaking vote of Vice President Mike Pence.

And she did little to counter that narrative, says John Bailey, co-founder of the educational strategy firm Whiteboard Associates.

“Whereas other secretaries have highlighted the success of public school, I think she has highlighted the places where public schools have failed some kids,” says Mr. Bailey, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Ms. DeVos was unapologetic even in the criticism of her own department.

“The 40 years since this department has existed, there’s been over a trillion dollars spent to close the achievement gaps,” she told Reason magazine in an August 2020 interview. “They haven’t closed one little bit. They’ve only opened in multiple areas. So why would we continue to advocate for doing more of the same thing and expect something different?”

Part of a larger change

Although the vast majority of K-12 school governance, and funding, lies in state and local school districts’ hands, scholars saw her work as fundamentally changing the American conversation around schools.

For years, Democrats and Republicans have basically had a treaty when it comes to public schools, says Professor Schneider. Democrats softened their unilateral support for teachers unions, while Republicans backed off from their support of vouchers and their push to allow religion in public schools. Meanwhile, the two sides came together to agree on different types of performance management and accountability standards through testing, and some level of market-based competition through charter schools.

But Ms. DeVos broke this contract, he says. She was not particularly interested in testing, and for her, public charter schools were only one small part of a market-based landscape. In this way, he argues, she was the tip of the iceberg of something larger taking place in education across the country. 

Evan Vucci/AP/File

President Donald Trump listens as then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks during a discussion on the Federal Commission on School Safety report at the White House in Washington, Dec. 18, 2018. Ms. DeVos, who resigned Jan. 7 because of the violence at the Capitol and the role she saw Mr. Trump's rhetoric playing in it, was one of the longest-serving of the president's Cabinet members.

Right-leaning think tanks, philanthropists, and advocacy groups, including those connected to Ms. DeVos and her family, he says, have long pushed a free market ideal around schools – one that took funding away from a public school system and instead let parents make their own decisions about how to spend education dollars. This movement has supported some public debate, but more so bolstered a steady, below-the-radar effort to change state legislation, influence policy, and expand public acceptance of for-profit education ventures. Professor Schneider compares it to the decadeslong, quiet, and highly-strategic effort by the right to shift the judiciary.

With Ms. DeVos, he says, these efforts have become public and mainstream.  

“She spent four years using the megaphone of the secretary of education [position] to talk about a future that previously seemed so out of bounds to both parties, at least at the federal level,” he says. “Now it seems to be the de facto position of the Republican party. I think she has totally succeeded in her aims. She has changed the terms of the debate.”

Those who support DeVos’ efforts say there is no grand conspiracy here, that she simply believes in enabling parents to do what’s best for their children. Pouring billions of dollars into a one-size-fits-all system simply doesn’t work, they say – particularly not for disadvantaged students. And the resistance to Ms. DeVos, they say, is more about adult priorities and jobs than it is about the well-being of children.

“I remember talking with a group of young African American students in a school where they were benefiting from the Milwaukee voucher program and looking outside at a sea of middle-aged, white protestors who apparently thought those students didn’t deserve that opportunity,” Ms. DeVos said in an interview with Rick Hess of AEI published by Education Week in December. “I think that’s a pretty good microcosm of what my experience in office was like.” 

The situation in Milwaukee is more nuanced than that, of course. Many Black residents protested that day; Black teachers in Milwaukee have strongly criticized the local school voucher program, pointing out it has done little to narrow the gap between Black and white student achievement. 

Matt York/AP

Betsy DeVos speaks at the Phoenix International Academy charter school in Arizona, Oct. 15, 2020. During her time in office, Ms. DeVos championed educational innovation and giving families the ability to decide where and how to educate their children.

But more fundamentally, critics see this sort of rhetoric as an attack on public schools, and therefore democracy itself.  

“The next secretary of education must understand – must understand – that public education is not only the foundation of democracy, but it’s a common good for our country,” says Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.

Mr. Cardona seemed more than cognizant of this sentiment when he accepted President-elect Biden’s nomination. “For too many students, public education in America has been a flor pálida: a wilted rose, neglected, in need of care,” he said. “We must be the master gardeners who cultivate it, who work every day to preserve its beauty and its purpose.”

A legacy of ed policy changes

One long-standing impact of Ms. DeVos’ tenure, some educators say, is a hardening of lines around education policy. And that, many worry, will be the real legacy and challenge for the next secretary of education.

“I don’t think she is this devil enemy of public education that she’s been painted to be,” says Michael Horn, senior strategist at Guild Education and the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. “But there is a real backlash. And I think that is a real worry and a real risk. Education was a very bipartisan issue some 20 years ago.” Cracks in that bipartisan truce between parties started to show during the Obama years, Mr. Horn says. And then, he says, it “slid off the cliff over the past four years.”

Charter schools, which were pushed by Democrats a decade ago, have become a toxic issue for many in the party. So has the issue of whether and how schools should reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Ms. DeVos also left her mark on higher education, an area where the secretary has significantly more power, especially with regard to student loans. Through the week she left office, she urged Congress against forgiving student loan debts; during her tenure she made it more difficult for individuals to get their loans discharged. Ms. DeVos also created controversy through her rule-making authority over both K-12 and higher ed, which she used to shift Obama-era policies on sexual assault and civil rights cases. Many of those changes are expected to be reversed under the Biden administration.

In some ways, the pandemic delivered what Ms. DeVos could not. With schools across the country closed, parents made different choices, turning to microschools, pods, and other educational innovations. But even with this unprecedented change in school-going behavior, many doubled down on their support – or criticism – of public schools. To some, Ms. DeVos’ insistence that schools reopen – without, critics say, sufficient federal support or guidance – seemed to be just another attack; to others, teachers union opposition to opening schools seemed further evidence that public education was more focused on the desires of adults than on children. 

It doesn’t need to stay like this, though, says Mr. Bailey. While the next education secretary will have to face the long-term impact from the pandemic, and from years of fighting, the position itself does not have to remain controversial. 

“I don’t think it has become a polarized position,” he says. “It requires the person who is secretary to understand we are in a polarized environment.” 

AP

An Israeli couple celebrates their Dec. 17 wedding in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a sign of warming Arab-Israeli relations.

For decades Israel and much of the Arab world have molded perceptions of each other through textbooks for schoolchildren. The books taught students histories that disparage one side or the other and helped entrench conflict in the Middle East. Now, as more Arab leaders find common cause with Israel and take steps to normalize relations with it, some of them may also realize they must mold public opinion in a more favorable way.

A hint of this shift comes from a partial survey of Saudi textbooks for the current academic year. It was conducted by Impact-se, a nongovernmental Israeli organization that tracks how Israelis and Jews are portrayed in Arab curricula. It notes some significant changes. Longtime anti-Semitic tropes have been removed, as have passages condemning gay people, glorifying jihad, and denying the rights of women.

That tracks with trends seen elsewhere in the region. A study of textbooks in the United Arab Emirates found a “dedicated focus” on issues the West does not normally associate with education systems rooted in Islam: civic engagement, critical thinking, pluralism, protection from extremism, equality, and compassionate justice. That study was published in July by scholars at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, and American University in Dubai. In September, the UAE normalized ties with Israel.

Such attempts to change thinking about Israelis or Western values are up against entrenched views. The latest Arab Opinion Index, a survey conducted in 13 Arab states and released in November, showed that 66% of Arabs think Israel and the United States pose the greatest threat to peace and stability in the region, while only 12% say Iran does. An aggregate of 79% of respondents say the cause of Palestinians under Israeli control concerns all Arabs, and 88% disapprove of recognition of Israel by their home country.

In two of the countries that have moved toward normalizing ties with Israel in recent months, Morocco and Sudan, just 4% and 13% respectively support that diplomatic shift. These findings are consistent with individual national polls.

In Israel, annual budgets and official statistics on class size and student academic performance reveal persistent systemic discrimination. Arab and Jewish students are generally taught in separate schools.

But some important shifts may be unfolding there, too. A small but growing number of schools are sharing resources across ethnic and religious lines and collaborating on projects. In recent years Israel’s Ministry of Education has worked with local groups to increase the number of Arab teachers in Jewish schools.

“Translating peacemaking into our educational systems,” argues Gershon Baskin, founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, in The Jerusalem Post, requires finding “new and positive ways to relate to the ‘Other’ within the region and among us, especially for the young generations of Israelis and Palestinians.”

Societies do not remain static. Perspectives shaped in the service of conflict can be reshaped in the pursuit of peace. If differences and hatred can be taught, so can common humanity and shared interests.

As stereotypes fall in the Middle East, so may tension between Israel and its neighbors. The cost of such progress is not high. It can start with more balanced textbooks and more classroom contacts between Israelis and Palestinians.