The state’s new education laws come straight from the culture war battlefields, including Senate Bill 266. It makes significant changes to state colleges and universities in the name of what Gov. Ron DeSantis calls the indoctrination of students.
When he signed the bill into law last month, DeSantis called college Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs a primary source of so-called woke ideology.
“This has basically been used as a vehicle to impose an ideological agenda and that is wrong, in fact, if you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination and that has no place in our public institutions,” DeSantis said.
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“Faculty are concerned, faculty are worried that they will face repercussions for teaching, you know, ideas and theories in their classrooms and they’ll be punished for it later on,” said Dr. Melissa Ward, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Florida International University, who said the vagueness of the law leads to instructors self-censoring their topics because they’re not sure what’s allowed.
Ward says the law has already created a brain drain at Florida’s public universities.
“It seems like every week I hear about someone else who’s looking for somewhere else to go and do their research and teach freely and so that chilling effect, whether or not it was the intent of the bill, that is the real world impact that it’s having in our classrooms,” Ward said.
The law doesn’t just eliminate funding for DEI programs. In core classes, it bans “identity politics” without defining the term, and it limits what can be taught about history and race issues. Ward says if anything, it’s the state who is indoctrinating students by only allowing speech of which it approves.
“This is really about the freedom to learn and to teach and if we are the free state of Florida we should have the full ability to present a spectrum of ideas and theories to our students,” Ward said. “It’s crucial for democracy.”
DeSantis said the reforms would create greater accountability and improve outcomes for students at state universities.
“If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley, go to some of these other places, that’s fine,” DeSantis said at the bill signing last month.
So what happens to the DEI programs at state universities, which provide scholarships for hundreds of students and programs to make minorities feel welcome on campus? The law does not specify. It leaves it up to the Board of Governors and each university to figure out how to implement the new policies.
