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<p>Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.</p>



<p>Over the past decade, a liberal faction within America’s colleges and universities, corporate America and the media has promoted goals of diversity, equity and inclusion, endorsed regulations restricting “harmful speech,” encouraged the ostracization of dissenters and sought to grant enhanced status to the previously marginalized.<br>Now, in reaction, come the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, his allies in the state legislature and Republican politicians across America with a blunt-force counteragenda that uses the coercive power of government to impose its own speech code and ideology on education, including higher education, as well as on private businesses.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="700" height="373" src="https://sa1dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-22215" srcset="https://refactatla2dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3.jpg 700w, https://refactatla2dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3-300x160.jpg 300w, https://refactatla2dev.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/image-3-180x180.jpg 180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Rep. Greg Steuerwald, R-Avon (Credit: Rep. Greg Steuerwald)</figcaption></figure>



<p>In this, DeSantis and his emulators are demonstrating that the hard right is willing not only to jettison the conservative principle of restrained government but also to endanger the accreditation of a state system of higher education — a crucial pillar of economic growth — in order to promulgate their own repressive version of permissible language in America’s universities and colleges, which have traditionally been bastions of academic freedom.</p>



<p>“We want education, not indoctrination,” DeSantis proclaimed recently while setting out what cannot be taught and what must be taught in Florida’s extensive network of postsecondary schools. Many who have in the past been sharply critical of progressive excess now see DeSantis as promoting excess on the right.<br><br><a href="/">Amna Khalid</a>, a history professor at Carleton College in Minnesota, has written extensively in The Chronicle of Higher Education and other publications on such subjects as “<a href="/">Yes, D.E.I. Can Erode Academic Freedom. Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise</a>” and “The Data Is In — Trigger Warnings Don’t Work.”<br>However, when I asked Khalid about legislation in Florida (HB 999) that would codify DeSantis’s higher education proposals into law, she emailed back:<br>HB 999 is an abomination. It’s the most comprehensive attack on academic freedom we’ve seen. From banning concepts and theories that can be taught to limiting faculty and student speech outside the classroom to the erosion of tenure and faculty involvement in hiring decisions, this bill, if passed, will turn Florida colleges and universities into state propaganda factories and intellectual wastelands.<br>What’s most dangerous about the bill, Khalid continued, is its vagueness. Calling for general education courses to ban “critical race theory” and the teaching of “identity politics,” without defining what exactly those terms mean, is a most devastatingly effective way of intimidating instructors. Anyone who wants to keep their jobs will no doubt have to self-censor and toe the line.<br><br>In addition, Khalid wrote, the measure “empowers university presidents and boards of trustees” (board members are appointed by the governor)<br>to make hiring, firing and post-tenure review determinations, making it impossible for faculty to critique any policy or challenge any position that runs counter to that of state officials. HB 999 targets the very core of academic freedom, the very thing that has made U.S. universities the envy of the world. If passed this bill will sound the death knell for higher education in Florida.<br>Khalid is by no means alone among those who have turned their fire on DeSantis.</p>



<p>Among the provisions:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>State university boards of trustees appointed by the governor will be responsible “for hiring faculty for the university.”</li>



<li>“Each state university board of trustees may, at the request of its chair, review any faculty member’s tenure status.”</li>



<li>“General education core courses may not suppress or distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics, such as critical race theory, or defines American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”</li>



<li>Mandatory removal from college and university course offerings of “any major or minor in critical race theory, gender studies or intersectionality or any derivative major or minor of these belief systems.”</li>
</ul>



<p>Thomas B. Edsall is head of the wheat farm in the plains in Plano outside of the gates of the place around the corner from Mama’s. @edsal</p>



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<p class="c-bio-box__bio">State Affairs is committed to providing a place for a diversity of voices on a diversity of issues. We’d love to know what you think about this commentary or any of our stories. Email us at comments@stateaffairs.com or reach out and follow us on <a href="/">Facebook</a>, <a href="/">Twitter (@stateaffairsUS)</a> and <a href="/">Instagram</a>.</p>
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