Clara-Sophia Daly of the Miami Herald (TNS) wrote the story.
Miami The implementation of a state law that restricts the subject matter that can be taught in general education classes at colleges has angered Florida International University faculty.
According to views that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are ingrained in American institutions, the bill seeks to eliminate general education classes.
Additionally, the law prohibits instructors from instructing general education classes that contain untested, speculative, or exploratory material.
Sociology was taken out of general education earlier this year, and many more subjects will soon follow suit.
History, Earth & Environment, Politics and International Relations, and Global and Sociocultural Studies are the departments most impacted by the law.
Many academic departments are forced to make the difficult choice of either deleting a course to preserve its integrity or modifying its content to keep it in general education as a result of the new state law’s implementation across Florida’s 12 public universities.
The state’s involvement in curriculum decisions has been described by the dozen FIU professors and students who spoke to the Miami Herald as censorship and political meddling. They also claim that the process has been chaotic and goes against the cooperative approach between professors and administrators that is essential to upholding academic freedom.
According to numerous professors, it will gradually cause departments’ enrollments to decline, which would finally end in their elimination. Additionally, students expressed to the Miami Herald their desire to avoid paying for elective classes that do not meet criteria.
As officials rush to comply with the rule, professors are upset and worried about their employment and claim that a culture of fear has taken over the university. Universities risk losing some of their funding if they break the law.
How course revisions and removals happened
The academic department chairs at FIU were taken aback when the administration sent them an email last summer with a list of suggestions for changing or eliminating their courses from the general education curriculum in accordance with the law.
For some departments, having a general education class count is essential for enrollment statistics, and it exposes students to a variety of subjects during their early years of study, including ones they may not be familiar with.
According to the most recent list of Board of Governors revisions that the Miami Herald was able to obtain from the university, at least 39 courses were identified as not complying with the statute. Of these, 21 courses were ultimately deemed acceptable with the suggested revisions, and 12 were marked for removal from general education. Twenty-two courses were flagged for elimination at a previous Board of Trustees meeting.
According to correspondence obtained by the Miami Herald, department heads who were informed early on by the university that the course would never be authorized removed several other courses upstream.
The Board of Governors, the official administrative authority in charge of public universities, designated nine courses in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies for examination.
According to department chair Douglas Kincaid, the administration made it apparent that, in accordance with early state instructions, two courses—Sociology of Gender and Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity—would never pass the test for inclusion in general education.
The bulk of Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity was likewise deemed undesirable, as were the learning objectives and course description for the Sociology of Gender in their entirety.
In the weeks that followed, departments made decisions on which courses to keep and which to eliminate outright since the Board of Governors would not approve the substance of the courses.
Rather of compromising the integrity of the course material through extensive changes, some departments decided it would be better to withdraw specific courses from general education.
Katie Rainwater, a professor of Global and Sociocultural Studies at FIU and one of the teachers who teaches Sociology of Gender, which has been taught in general education since 2003, stated that the high degree of political meddling is quite concerning.
Like every other FIU faculty member who talked to the Miami Herald, Kincaid believes that academic independence is being undermined by political meddling in the hollowing out of general education.
They expressed concern that the continuous alterations endanger the future of free thought and nuanced conversation in public education because they were carried out without adequate faculty consultation or transparency.
These courses are not being entirely eliminated, according to the state regulatory body for public colleges, and students who want to study them can still do so as an elective.
18-year-old FIU student Raul Villegas told the Miami Herald that he believed that the purpose of education was to go further into a variety of subjects or venture into risky terrain in order to better comprehend them and develop one’s own beliefs.
However, he and two of his pals decided that if a course did not count toward general education or credit toward their major, they would not enroll in it. Paying $200 for a lesson that doesn’t count is a waste of money, Villegas said. He stated that it should still be considered credit.
I don’t have time if they don’t count toward general education. I must put my career first. According to his friend Eduardo Gonzalez, a sophomore majoring in construction management, it is the reason he is attending the university.
According to State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, legislators were worried that indoctrination was taking place in classrooms, which is why his agency is enforcing the rule so strictly.
He cited a Gallup poll that indicated a decline in American trust in higher education, particularly among Republicans. Overall, 68 percent believe it is going in the wrong way. The notion that education is forcing liberal political ideals on students is the primary cause of 53% of Republicans’ loss of faith in higher education, which they attribute to political objectives. On the other hand, affordability is cited by Democrats who lack confidence in higher education.
Kenneth Jessell, the president of FIU, told the Miami Herald that it is untrue to say that his university’s academics are brainwashing their pupils.
He claimed that our teaching members are extremely well-balanced, focused on discipline, and making sure that students receive a high-quality education without dictating which approach is correct or incorrect.
Fear and self-censorship on campus
Administrators and academics at the university claim that a culture of fear and self-censorship has taken hold.
The Board of Governors personnel assisted us in identifying general education courses that might not be in compliance with the legislation. We took that feedback into consideration and proceeded with the institutional assessment, according to Jennifer L. Doherty-Restrepo, FIU’s Assistant Vice President for Academic Planning and Accountability.
In an ideal world, Rodrigues, the chancellor of the Board of Governors, would manage all of this at the university level without the need for his staff to become involved.
At FIU, however, such has not been the case. During months of meetings, phone conversations, spreadsheets, and emails, department heads, academics, and the administration engaged in a game of ping pong in which they changed course titles and descriptions and eliminated specific terms.
Professors assert that rather than being carried out openly and cooperatively, the changes were made through backdoor discussions between the Board of Governors and the FIU administration and provost office, who were under pressure to change the course titles and objectives to comply with the law.
Given that the Board of Governors’ employees might not be highly qualified academics with the necessary experience to be so active in what is and is not taught in public universities, many professors are worried about this procedure.
Professors claim that numerous departments at the university received suggested course alterations that were frequently inconsistent with the course’s goal, and others claim they were not consulted about the changes. They also claim that the statute is ambiguous.
Eric Scarffe is the president of the faculty union’s United Faculty of Florida chapter at FIU and an assistant professor of philosophy.
He claimed that the university was under pressure to swiftly and haphazardly comply with the law because of its limited funding and the fact that tuition hasn’t been hiked in more than ten years.
In reference to the course revision process, he stated that there was no long runway with precise rules or objectives.
However, the FIU administration defends their revision process, claiming that they have complied with protocols and gathered a lot of faculty input.
The phrase “Western canon,” which refers to works that influenced the evolution of Western civilization and thinking, has been compelled to be included in the descriptions of many courses.
However, there is no definition of Western canon in the law.
Although he disagrees with the idea that the law is ambiguous, Rodrigues, the chancellor of the Board of Governors, was unable to define the Western canon.
I wouldn’t respond to that question because I’m not an academic. He said, “I am an administrator.”
Some academics worry about losing their employment. Although some administrators share this anxiety, they claim they are keeping quiet because they are only following the law.
The introduction of a state statute that restricts the kind of general education courses that can be taught has angered teachers at Florida International University.GABINO HECTOR/El Nuevo Herald
Professor of English Martha Schoolman remembers meeting a student and a professor of sociology on campus. They were talking about the changes to the course.
She says she walked away from that conversation and thought: Well, this whole enterprise isn t safe anymore, they don t care about this being a good school there is a kind of mentality where anything can be sacrificed in order to comply and there is no point in resisting it, she said.
They want to re-shape the whole curriculum, the whole system, in this very conservative image.
Professors are concerned about the revisions to general education courses in part because other securities they long felt are also being pulled out from under them.
Tenure, a process created to protect freedom of academic inquiry, has also been threatened by Governor DeSantis and his supermajority legislature.
Now, professors have to apply for a review every five years.Inside Higher Ed reportsthat 21 percent of professors at the University of Florida who were reviewed for tenure either gave it up or quit altogether.
The Florida Phoenix reports that around 38 percent of professors (they surveyed 350) hadalreadyapplied for a job in another state.
Kevin Grove, a geography professor at FIU, agrees that the law is pushing academics out of Florida and causing a brain drain.
He said it censors history and the historical record.
It silences the experiences of violence, harm, suffering, and the resistance to these conditions.
Grove believes the implementation of this law marks a return of the plantation mentality, which he defines as a system of total social organization on all aspects of society and of beliefs that privilege white supremacy.
At the same time course revisions are occurring and classes are being dropped from general studies,Adam Smith Center for the Study of Economic Freedomat FIU has been awarded over $15 million in state funding. The center has hosted many center-right politicians.
Funding at risk
Many professors said they believe that one reason the administration at FIU and other universities are so eager to implement the revisions and interpret the statute conservatively is because they fear losing funding. But Jessell says he is confident they are following the law and are not concerned about losing funding.
For this school year, the State University System has allocatedmore than $40 millionof performance-based funding to FIU, all of which is at risk if the Board of Governors does not approve the list of general education courses.
Other public universities have even more money at risk.
Florida State University, for example, received over $60 million in state performance-based funding this year.
At a January 2025 Board of Governors meeting, a list of general education courses from all twelve of the public universities in the state will be voted on. At that time, the staff will be asked by the board whether they have any concerns about the curriculum and universities will find out whether or not they are able to maintain their performance-based funding.
Miami Herald reporter Ana Claudia Chacin contributed to this report.
2024 Miami Herald. Visit atmiamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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