One of the major challenges in defending academic freedom is that attacks come swiftly, doing immediate damage, while the defense often requires a longer process of pursuing justice.
As dark as things seem sometimes, we are seeing numerous examples of justice emerging following coordinated efforts to resist.
In a lot of ways, Florida was the first mover when it came to suppressing faculty and student rights as the DeSantis administration got going before Donald Trump even returned to office. DeSantis himself has denied even the existence of “academic freedom” as a principle. These attacks are specifically political and ideological, and, as I wrote three years ago at Inside Higher Ed, a way to make public higher ed in the state into a system running on cronyism that literally enriches his allies.
Last week, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that legislators attempting to micromanage what professors teach violates the Constitution. Upholding a lower court decision, the 11th Circuit rebuked Florida’s so-called “Stop WOKE Act,” a law designed to censor speech about race and gender that some conservatives found controversial. At MSNOW, Victor Ray argues that this decision is a victory for higher education and a warning to other state legislators attempting to control classrooms.
Victor Ray, who previously helped us understand the “textbook madness” in Florida around attempts to restrict the teaching of sociology, explains how significant this legal ruling is in a piece at MS Now.
In her scathing ruling, Grant correctly pointed out that the law would truncate learning opportunities. “Hearing an idea you disagree with is not discrimination; it is an opportunity to come up with a better idea, or maybe even change your mind,” she wrote. Of course, changing minds about controversial issues such as racism is exactly what so many conservative legislators are trying to stop.
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The views expressed in this newsletter are those of individual contributors and not those of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) or the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom.
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