Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who earned two Ivy League degrees, has apparently decided that making Florida schools and universities the laughingstock of the country is good politics. The Republican already went after public school teachers with his “don’t say gay” bill, championed an effort to prevent instruction about history that might upset students (make that White students), and banned Advanced Placement classes in African American studies. Now, he has decided to shred the curriculums of Florida’s public universities, inviting students interested in unapproved subjects to go to California (!) or other states that don’t control what can and cannot be taught.
This week, he signed a bill banning state spending on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in public universities. The Post reported: “These programs often assist colleges in increasing student and faculty diversity, which can apply to race and ethnicity, as well as sexual orientation, religion and socioeconomic status.”
Worse: “The law also forbids public colleges from offering general education courses — which are part of the required curriculum for all college students — that ‘distort significant historical events,’ teach ‘identity politics’ or are ‘based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, or economic inequities.’”
Who decides what “distorts”? How can the state prohibit instruction about, say, the consequences of Jim Crow in a U.S. history survey class? Well, that’s up to the regime DeSantis has installed. We now see the full extent of the governor’s authoritarian impulse to control independent sources of information and to eviscerate professional standards that provide the basis for challenging state action and abuse of power.
DeSantis declared, “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley” — or presumably, to some other state system that features quality scholarship about topics that make right-wing purveyors of White male supremacy squeamish.
If newly installed University of Florida president and former Nebraska senator Ben Sasse had an ounce of integrity, he would resign in protest of this wholesale annihilation of academic freedom. (The Chronicle of Higher Education, however, reported recently that, a month into his tenure, “Sasse has made few public appearances and declined a number of interview requests from local media.” His obsequiousness to his partisan boss and contempt for academic independence should surprise no one.)
DeSantis is not alone in the assault on academic freedom; he is simply the highest-profile MAGA figure attempting to suppress freedom and dissent. The American Association of University Professors recently documented 57 bills in 23 states aimed at undermining academic freedom. The AAUP explained: “The current round of legislation reinforces a right-wing communication effort to attack public colleges and universities on the grounds that they are ideologically outside the mainstream, hostile to conservative views and focused on indoctrinating students into 'woke’ ideology.” The report added: “These bills are only one piece of a broader campaign to remake public higher education that includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hostile takeover of the New College of Florida.”
As with press freedom and democracy more generally, academic freedom is under assault around the world. The University World News recently reported that, “over the past decade, academic freedom has declined in more than 22 countries representing more than half of the world’s population, four billion people, says the Academic Freedom Index: Update 2023 (AFI).” Though the Czech Republic Luxembourg, Sweden, Peru, Portugal and Canada enjoy robust protection of academic freedom, the AFI report says, “autocracies like China, and increasingly authoritarian countries [from] India, to fully-fledged democracies like Britain and the United States” show measurable declines in academic freedom, a cornerstone of freedom of thought and democratic self-governance.
It’s not hard to figure out that the threat to vibrant, free discourse and to educational independence comes primarily from right-wing nationalists. “Since 2016, the year Donald J. Trump was elected president, America’s AFI score has declined from 0.92 to 0.79,” the University World News report found. “This figure puts the United States in the top third of the fifth quintile, below South Africa and above Kenya.”
Anti-democratic, nationalist movements have historically attacked universities as hotbeds of elite and foreign influence, seeking to bend instruction to the will of the state and turn academics into handmaidens of state propaganda. Right-wing pundits who have whined incessantly about the disfavored status of conservative academics (largely because of peer or student pressure) have had precious little to say about state-driven attacks against academic freedom from a petty autocrat. (Their caterwauling about political correctness on campus is the sort of projection and victimology that seeks to cast oppressors as victims and tyrants as saviors of Western culture.)
DeSantis might get his wish. Parents, students and businesses seeking well-educated workers might decide it is better to decamp from Florida for states that prepare students for the real world, help them function in a diverse society and foster intellectual excellence. Sadly, that will leave Floridians less prosperous and less capable of performing the obligations of informed citizenry. Perhaps that’s the point.
