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A new report from the American Association of University Professors says the politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education in Florida are damaging the quality of Florida’s public higher education. If sustained, the efforts threaten the “very survival of meaningful higher education in the state, with dire implications for the entire country,” the report notes.
The preliminary report includes four main findings:
- The Florida governor and state legislature are using the takeover of the New College of Florida as a test case for future encroachments on public colleges and universities across the country. This “takeover” has proceeded through Governor DeSantis’s appointment of a slate of six highly partisan trustees, five of whom live outside the state and are publicly known as right-wing activists, to New College’s board of trustees. Their goals are to transform New College into a flagship right-wing institution by restructuring the administration and academic departments, developing a “new core curriculum,” and eliminating all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
- Academic administrators throughout Florida’s public university and college systems, from the highest to the lowest levels, not only have failed to contest these attacks but have too frequently been complicit in and, in some cases, explicitly supported them.
- The Florida legislature has passed a series of bills that, taken collectively, constitute a systematic effort to dictate and enforce conformity with a narrow and reactionary political and ideological agenda throughout the state’s higher education system. These efforts grievously undermine basic and long-standing principles of academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance. A key component of this agenda has been an effort to destroy college and university programs that serve minority communities and to banish from classrooms ideas and information about race, gender, and sexual identity that fail to conform to the prejudices of politicians.
- Although several pieces of legislation proposed by the DeSantis administration have been stalled by legal challenges, the resulting self-censorship and fear are damaging the quality of public higher education in the state and are now spilling over into private institutions in Florida.