In 2021, U.S. Sen.Ted Cruz compared critical race theory — an academic subfield that examines the role of racism in American institutions, laws, and policies — to the Ku Klux Klan, the most notorious homegrown terrorist organization in U.S. history. In doing so, he opened a playbook that resembles one put into practice by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others: Attack ideas that are unfriendly to a narrow view of the world, and do so by eliminating them from our school curricula and public conversation. The movement against critical race theory has now swallowed up high school Advanced Placement African American Studies in several states and threatens the teaching of basic facts about U.S. history. And this movement has devolved from pundit tough talk into authoritarian policies to ban books, modify curricula, and threaten intellectual freedom across the country (and world).

By now, many realize that these policies are a harbinger of things to come —  even for fields ostensibly unrelated to African American studies, like biology. Modern breakthroughs in biology are producing a picture of life that is increasingly incompatible with authoritarian preferences for neat boxes that dictate what people are and how they should behave. Consequently, biologists must shed the naive belief that our work is apolitical and recognize that the recent attacks on how to teach U.S. history are a battle in a larger war on ideas that includes the natural sciences.