Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' office has requested data on courses and programs that include “diversity, equity and inclusion” and “critical race theory” despite legal challenges to his law restricting such content.
ABC News has obtained a copy of the Dec. 28 governor’s memo. . . . These public institutions are required to describe which programs and campus related activities are connected to these topics, and send how much these programs cost, how much state-funding is directed toward them, and how many employee positions are dedicated to them, according to the memo.
Schools are told to send this information no later than Friday, Jan. 13, according to the memo.
This memo comes almost two months after a judge temporarily blocked DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE” Act from restricting race-related curriculum and conversation in colleges and universities, which is still being battled out in the courts. WOKE in the bill stands for "Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees."
The law restricts lessons and training on race and diversity in schools and in the workplace, particularly anything that discusses privilege or oppression based on race, or whether someone “bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” due to U.S. racial history.
Those behind the lawsuit against the "Stop WOKE" Act, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, say the law restricts free speech.
A representative from the State University System of Florida Board of Governors confirmed that all 12 schools in the system received the memo.
An email from the University of North Florida’s Office of the Provost was first reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education that showed the administration asking university deans to compile lists of courses that fall under these themes of diversity and race.
A piece in The Atlantic looks at the chilling effect and defacto censorship DeSantis and his war on free speech and academic freedom is imposing on colleges and universities:
Jonathan Cox faced an agonizing decision. He was scheduled to teach two classes this past fall at the University of Central Florida that would explore color-blind racism, the concept that ostensibly race-neutral practices can have a discriminatory impact. The first, “Race and Social Media,” featured a unit on “racial ideology and color-blindness.” The second, “Race and Ethnicity,” included a reading on “the myth of a color-blind society.” An assistant sociology professor, Cox had taught both courses before; they typically drew 35 to 40 undergraduates apiece.
But a clash with state law seemed inevitable, once Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, proposed what he called the strongest legislation in the nation against “the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory.” Last April, DeSantis signed the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the “Stop Woke Act,” into law. . . . . it specifically bars portraying racial color-blindness—which the law labels a virtue—as racist.
Whatever one thinks of critical race theory, the state’s interference limits the freedom of professors who are experts in their fields to decide what to teach their students. Cox worried, not without reason, that the law effectively banned him from discussing his ideas in class, and that teaching the courses could cost him his livelihood.
A month before the fall 2022 semester was set to start, he scrapped both courses. . . . . Cox’s decision, along with another professor’s cancellation of a graduate course because of a similar anxiety, created an unusual gap in the sociology curriculum at UCF. Located in Orlando, UCF is Florida’s largest university, with almost 69,000 students.
Cox’s department chair, Elizabeth Mustaine, said she went along with the professors’ wishes because “I thought, I’m not going to stress anyone out about this. It’s crazy.” Still, she added, “it’s an absolute tragedy that classes like this get canceled.”
In just over two years, critical race theory has gone from a largely obscure academic subject to a favorite bogeyman for Republican candidates. Activists such as Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, conceived of targeting CRT to foment a backlash against measures enacted following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020.
The anti-CRT campaign quickly expanded from sloganeering to writing laws. Seven states, including Florida, have passed legislation aimed at restricting public colleges’ teaching or training related to critical race theory. Those laws face impediments. On November 17, 2022, a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the higher-education provisions of Florida’s Individual Freedom Act. “The First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark,”
[A]t the federal level, conservatives are drafting a “potential suite of executive orders in 2024,” in case the next presidential election goes their way, to “disrupt the national network of left-wing ideological production and distribution,” according to Rufo.
[T]he push against CRT is hitting academia after decades of declines in the proportion of professors protected by tenure, meaning that most faculty members are not in positions secure enough to resist political pressure. Now, forced to consider whether they face any legal or career risk, some are canceling courses or watering down content, keeping quiet rather than sharing their expertise with students.
“When you implement a law like this, you’re asking professors to leave out things that clearly happen or have happened in the past,” Grace Castelin, a UCF undergraduate who plans to introduce a resolution in the student senate condemning the law, told me. “It’s making us more ignorant in this generation and generations to come.”
As for the lunatics and extremists being appointed to state boards of education and university boards, a piece in Florida Politics looks at DeSantis' appointment of Rufo and other homophobes and white supremacy advocates to censor courses and educators:
Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed conservative activist Christopher Rufo and five others to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees in his continuing move to eliminate “political ideology” from public higher education.
With the six new members of the school’s Board of Trustees, the DeSantis admin plans to weed out concepts like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT).
Republican Party of Florida Vice Chair Christian Ziegler, a former Sarasota County Commissioner, commended DeSantis for taking action against the “liberal” school.
“Impossible to state just how bold and historical this action is,” he said in a statement. “It sets the tone that higher education can and will be reformed if conservative leaders are willing to step up, lead and act.”
Orlando Democrat Anna V. Eskamani, called Rufo a “political propagandist” in a tweet. “DeSantis is destroying higher education in Florida for his own political gain. It’s disgusting, bad for our workforce development (and) everyone — faculty, admin, alumni, students — need(s) to fight back,” Eskamani tweeted.
Here in Virginia Glenn Youngkin and Virginia Republicans seek to similarly dumb down and censor public education with the Democrat controled Virginia Senate being the only bulwark preventing a reprise of Florida's actions. Meanwhile, having just returned from vacationing in Key West, I find myself thinking that Florida is no longer a destination that I want to support with my hard earned money.
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