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“University of Florida Eliminates all DEI-Related Positions,” read a March 2, 2024, New York Times headline. The article documented how Florida’s decision to terminate funds for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) related programs resulted in the University of Florida removing all DEI-related positions from their campus. This is but one of a series of stories about how states such as Alabama and Indiana are working to eliminate DEI programs and content in education. While the anti-DEI efforts have received much media coverage, little attention has been paid to how educational technologies (ed-tech) undermine the mission of DEI advocates.

DEI work is an outgrowth of affirmative action policies born of the 1961 Executive Order No. 10925, signed by President John F. Kennedy. The order and subsequent legislation resulted in schools largely voluntarily adopting affirmative action policies that, in education specifically, sought to increase the representation of historically underrepresented groups, such as women and people of color. Work done in the name of affirmative action never settled comfortably into the United States’ hyper-individualist culture. Since its passage, the courts wrestled with affirmative action, culminating in the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which effectively outlawed affirmative action on the grounds that current policies “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

Like affirmative action, DEI has been skewered by individuals who do not believe in its mission. What is rarely discussed is how DEI advocates are often bamboozled by the ed-tech rhetoric into adopting tools and platforms that undermine the mission of DEI. The biggest ed-tech platforms and companies claim that their products adhere to DEI principles, but in practice, they counter the mission of DEI.

Today, students and teachers are monitored—and monitor each other—by a complex set of surveillance tools found in common classroom software and hardware, such as Turnitin, ClassDojo, Illuminate Education and G Suite for Education, Chromebooks, and Apple tablets, that enable technology management, law enforcement, teachers, students, and families to monitor classrooms, school libraries, and reading lists. This, in addition to one’s personal devices which listen as well.

Rather than enhance education, these tools undermine the autonomy of students, teachers, and families and reduce them to data repositories to be mined by Big Tech corporations. Big Tech’s economic viability rests on tracking and surveilling users, then selling that data and its analysis to predict and modify human behavior. Entering classrooms, especially the classrooms of minors, enables unprecedented access to precious data. Despite this invasiveness, it is perfectly legal, thanks to 2012 changes to the student privacy rights bill, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), that allowed ed-tech companies to access the private information of enrolled students.

Because compulsory education makes the vast majority of young people in the United States a captive audience, the changes to FERPA transformed schools into a testing ground for new surveillance technologies. Often introduced under the guise of safety, surveillance technologies collect copious amounts of data beyond what might be needed for educational purposes. For example, Bark, a product specifically designed to monitor students’ communications, can read all student data, including emails, web searches, and social media posts made on their school-issued and personal devices.

In their pursuit of profit and access to data, ed-tech companies undermine equity, which refers to the campus commitment that all students receive the unique support needed to achieve student success. Due to algorithmic bias, the unfair and discriminatory outcomes that result from the bias coded into algorithms, ed-tech companies produce inequitable outcomes for historically marginalized communities. For example, research has shown algorithmic bias in ed-tech, such as admissions platforms incorrectly concluding that students of color and students with disabilities are more prone to criminality and diagnosing LGBTQ+ students with mental health problems. It is also worth noting that surveillance in schools is inequitable as poorer students’ economic challenges force them to depend on school-issued digital devices and platforms, while wealthy students can skirt school surveillance by purchasing personal devices.

In addition to being inequitable, ed-tech tools often undermine inclusivity. For example, school-issued devices can and do alert campuses to student web searches about sexuality and in the process, have outed students’ sexual preference. As a result, the school closed down one of the few spaces that could potentially be inclusive for these students to explore their identity. Similarly, when surveillance is a prerequisite for education, students whose migrant status is in question face the additional challenge of protecting their place of residence, including any relatives whose status may also be contested.

Despite their rhetoric, ed-tech companies seem disinterested in promoting diversity. For example, Proctorio, a browser extension used in remote learning situations to scan the room via facial and gaze detection to determine if a student is cheating, seems to have not been coded to account for students with disabilities. Indeed, there have been cases where a student with a disability is scanned, and the program inaccurately accuses them of cheating. This discriminatory accusation creates an extra challenge for students with disabilities, who not only have to complete their education but also clear their name for an offense they did not commit. Relatedly, school districts have used algorithms in an effort to diversify their student body. Still, research has revealed that algorithmic biases in these platforms promote homogeneity, especially in terms of class and race, in schools.

As critical scholars, we argue that it is imperative to analyze, assess, and evaluate ed-tech tools and acknowledge their complexity. We do not aim to eradicate digital technologies from schools. However, the research is clear: Ed-tech, in its current form, does not support DEI. As a result, in addition to combating the anti-DEI efforts, DEI advocates must reflect upon how their use and support for ed-tech contributes to anti-DEI outcomes.

Allison Butler is a Senior Lecturer, Director of Undergraduate Advising, and the Director of the Media Literacy Certificate Program in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst, MA, where she teaches courses on critical media literacy and representations of education in the media. She is a contributor to The Media And Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People (2022) and co-author with Nolan Higdon of Surveillance Education Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools (Routledge, 2024).

Nolan Higdon is a founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, Project Censored National Judge, author, and university lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. He is a contributor The Media And Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People (2022) and co-author with Allison Butler of Surveillance Education Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools (Routledge, 2024).

(DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip) — An Israeli strike on a school in northern Gaza on Saturday killed at least 22 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while the Israeli army said it targeted a Hamas command center in what used to be a school.

Another 30 were wounded in the strike on the school in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City, the ministry said in a statement. Most of the casualties were women and children, it said. It wasn’t immediately clear which hospital the dead and injured were taken to.

Video taken by The Associated Press showed dozens of people including children digging through the rubble of the building — its ceilings caved in, walls knocked out and a mess of wires and metal rods visible. Outside, others gathered around shrouded bodies. Some covered their faces as they wept for relatives killed in the strike.

“A missile, a missile from the plane hit us, and another missile,” said Ferial Deloul, who is displaced. “We saw the whole world covered with smoke and stones and we saw people and children cut up. … What should we do? What is our fault for this to happen to us?”

Read More: Exclusive: Netanyahu at War

The Israeli army said earlier Saturday that it struck Hamas’ “command and control center, which was embedded inside a compound that previously served” as a school. It said steps were taken to limit harming civilians, including using precise munitions and aerial surveillance.

Also on Saturday, the Gaza Health Ministry said five of its workers were killed and five others wounded by Israeli fire that struck the ministry’s warehouses in the southern Musbah area.

Contesting narratives over the use of schools and hospitals

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, the Israeli army has struck several schools, packed with tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders. The conflict has left 90% of Palestinians in Gaza displaced, according to figures from the United Nations.

The military has continually accused Hamas of operating from within civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including schools, U.N. facilities and hospitals. The contesting narratives over the use of schools and hospitals go to the heart of the nearly yearlong conflict.

Read More: Fact-Checking What Benjamin Netanyahu Said in His 2024 Interview With TIME

Earlier this month, an Israeli strike hit a school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 14, according to Palestinian medical officials. The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas militants planning attacks from inside the school.

In July, Israeli airstrikes hit a girls’ school in Deir al-Balah, killing at least 30 people sheltering inside. Israel’s military said it targeted a Hamas command center used to direct attacks against its troops and store “large quantities of weapons.”

The war began when Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. They abducted another 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians.

Escalating tensions in the region

Tensions soared in the region on Friday after an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in Lebanon killed dozens of people, including civilians and Ibrahim Akil, who was in charge of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force. Also killed was Ahmed Wahbi, another senior commander in the group’s military wing.

Read More: ‘It Sounded Like Gunfire.’ Fear Grips Lebanon After Deadly Pager and Radio Blasts

The strike came hours after Hezbollah launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted most of the rockets.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel had struck more than 400 rocket launchers in Lebanon on Saturday.

Tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated on Saturday night in Tel Aviv and at several smaller protests across the country, demanding a cease-fire and the return of the roughly 100 hostages still being held in Gaza. The protests, which happen every Saturday night, attracted a similar crowd compared to previous weeks despite the tense security situation on Israel’s northern border.

A dissident freed by Russia in the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War has vowed to return to the country.

Vladimir Kara-Murza told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg he thought he was being “led out to be executed” during his release in Siberia last month.

The dual British-Russian citizen realised he was one of 24 prisoners to be freed in the exchange when he was on the plane.

But in his first joint interview with his wife Evgenia in Europe since they reunited, he defiantly reveals to the BBC that he plans to return to Russia.

“You know, when our plane was taking off from Vnukovo airport in Moscow en route to Ankara on 1 August, the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service] officer who was my personal escort sitting next to me turned to me and said, ‘Look out the window, this is the last time you’re seeing your motherland,’” he told me.

“And I just laughed in his face, and I said, ‘Look, man, I am a historian, I don’t just think, I don’t just believe, I know that I’ll be back home in Russia, and it’s going to happen much sooner than you can imagine.’”

Kara-Murza, one of the Kremlin’s most vocal critics, was held in solitary confinement in a high security jail after receiving a 25-year sentence in April 2023 on charges of high treason.

The full interview will air on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

BBC Weather Watchers / Jake Allison

Met Office

Thundery downpours

BBC Weather Watchers / Stormchaser Al

Autumn equinox and beyond

A KIWI pilot held hostage by armed rebels in Indonesia has finally been rescued after 19 brutal months in captivity.

Phillip Mehrtens was kidnapped by gun-wielding fanatics who stormed his tiny plane after it landed in the remote region of Papua.

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The West Papua Liberation Army – the armed wing of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), snatched the pilot and set fire to his jet on February 7.

Rebel leader Egianus Kogoya kept him as a bargaining chip to push the Indonesian government to make Papua independent.

Officials refused and stood firm – insisting Papua would remain a “legitimate part” of the country.

Now Mehrtens, 38, is finally free to return home to Christchurch and reunite with his wife and young son after an international effort to secure his release.

Multiple government agencies in New Zealand worked with Indonesian officials to see him freed.

A joint military and police task force was sent to the village of Nudga early this morning to retrieve him.

Faizal Ramadhani, leader of a national task force working on the conflict in Papua, said today “We have picked up pilot Phillip, who is in good health, and we flew him from Nduga to Timika.”

He was taken to a police HQ in Timika to undergo a medical and psychological assessment.

Indonesian police released pictures of the gaunt pilot with a long beard following his rescue.

Footage on local media appeared to show him having an emotional call on FaceTime – possibly with loved ones back home.

The Foreign Ministry in New Zealand confirmed his safe release and said: “We are pleased and relieved to confirm that Phillip Mehrtens is safe and well and has been able to talk with his family.

“This news must be an enormous relief for his friends and loved ones.”

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with staff in both Indonesia and Wellington, has led a sustained whole-of-government effort to secure Philip Mehrtens’ release, and has also been supporting his family.”

He had been working for an Indonesian aviation company last year when he was seized after landing a single-engine Susi plane on a remote airstrip in Nduga.

Chilling footage released by West Papuan rebels at the time showed Mehrtens flanked by gun-wielding militants in the mountainous region.

He said in the hostage video “It’s me,” nervously laughing, before directly addressing his wife Maria and six-year-old son Jacob.

“I’m OK, they are treating me well… I’m trying to stay positive and I hope that you and Jacob are healthy and doing OK and getting support,” he said.

“I love you both lots and miss you both lots and hope to be able to talk with you soon.”

Images showed Mehrtens arriving at Halim Perdanakusuma Air Base in Jakarta in Indonesia late on Saturday.

During a press conference on Saturday Foreign Minister Peters said: “His family will be absolutely over the moon, I believe.

Speaking of the 19-month ordeal he said officials had to “hold our nerve, not getting too carried away and not doing anything that might imperil our chances”.

“There’s always a concern of ours that we may not succeed,” he said.

On September 18 the rebel group holding him captive asked the New Zealand government, police and army to collect him.

They also asked for local and international journalists to be involved.

It is not clear whether any kind of agreement or negotiations were made with the group to secure his release.

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