Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to the media from the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office about Hurricane Milton aid on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024 in Fort Pierce. Photo: ERIC HASERT/TCPALM / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Florida’s 12 state universities are removing any classes that may “distort significant historical events” or “teach[] identity politics” in order to conform to S.B. 266, a law passed by the state legislature in 2023, which prohibits schools from spending state or federal funding on anything that advocates for diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) policies, promotes political or social activism.” The law has also resulted in the shutdown of LGBTQ+ student centers and cultural support programs on campus.
As a result, colleges and universities are removing classes like Anthropology of Race & Ethnicity, Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies, Sociology of Gender, Women in Literature, Chinese calligraphy, the History of Food and Eating, Humanities Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality, Social Geography, a class on “Magic, Witchcraft and Religion” as well as a “Social Problems” class that examines issues like racial and gender inequality and crime, Politico reported.
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The bill allows officials in the state’s university system’s Board of Governors — filled with appointees of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — to review colleges’ core curriculum classes for any “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.” If officials find such content, the curriculum can be removed, “realigned,” or expanded to stop such viewpoints.
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Some of the aforementioned classes were removed, while others have had their “general education” designations removed from them, meaning that they’re now only offered as electives to upper-level students majoring in specific disciplines rather than as an available class for all students to fulfill their general education requirements. Some of the classes have had their public descriptions and student outcomes changed to avoid violating the law.
The Board of Governors will look over each school’s proposed course listings for the 2025-26 academic year and make “suggestions” over which courses should altered or removed. Schools that refuse could lose vital state funding or be targeted by DeSantis and the board for other penalties.
Critics have said that the law violates academic freedoms, forces colleges to accept government-approved viewpoints, will drive talented educators and students away from Florida’s universities, and could even cause some schools to lose their national accreditation from groups that require DEI programs as a critical part of higher education. Other professors and department chairs have complained that the law is so broadly written that it’s unclear what’s allowed and what’s forbidden.
The power to make these decisions has traditionally been left up to colleges and universities. But the law is part of DeSantis’ war against DEI policies and his plan to shift his state’s schools toward a conservative ideology.
“[DEI] has basically been used as a veneer to impose an ideological agenda and that is wrong,” DeSantis said while signing the law in May 2023. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley, go to some of these other places… You don’t just get to take taxpayer dollars and do whatever the heck you want to do and think that’s somehow OK.”
In 2022, DeSantis also signed the so-called “Stop WOKE Act,” which forbids schools and businesses from offering educational programs on racism and gender-based discrimination. The law is currently on hold as a court considers its impact on our constitutionally protected rights to free speech.
Federal Judge Mark. E. Walker, who blocked the Stop WOKE Act in 2022, called the law “positively dystopian,” stating that it “officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.”
“Professors enjoy ‘academic freedom’ so long as they express only those viewpoints of which the State approves,” Walker said of the law.
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