Regardless, the College Board announced last week that it had removed the contested material from the finalized curriculum.

Regardless, the College Board announced last week that it had removed the contested material from the finalized curriculum.

Books for students taking AP African American studies at Overland High School in Aurora, Colo. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

In response, critics have explained that the concepts (Black queer studies, intersectionality, Black Lives Matter) and scholars (bell hooks, Angela Davis, Ta-Nehisi Coates) that DeSantis slammed as “divisive” are in fact, as an article in Vox put it, “core to modern Black studies and essential to include in any college-level survey class” (which AP courses are meant to emulate).

“[These are] complicated works of sociology and philosophy. They’re highly contested polemics,” Joshua Zeitz wrote in Politico. “We read them to sharpen our capacity for analysis and argument. Contra Gov. DeSantis, being assigned a text is not an exercise in indoctrination.”