Florida censors sociology
I read this article yesterday and I wanted to write about it. And perhaps I was motivated by the No Kings protests occurring across the United States today.
Florida has recently removed Introduction to Sociology as a requirement for graduation from state universities. This is part of a broader move by the authoritarian wing of the Republican party to take back education from the ‘Woke’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies that they claim are indoctrinating youth. The allegation is that the discipline is, according to university chancellor Ray Rodrigues, “social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy”.
Which, to be fair, it is social and political advocacy. And that’s the point - to introduce students to critical, systems-based thinking.
Aligning with state requirements
In 2023, the State of Florida passed Senate Bill 226. This bill, in addition to addressing various housekeeping concerns such as accountability, targeted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI):
"A Florida College System Institution… may not expend any funds… to purchase membership in, or goods and services from, any organization that discriminates on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, gender, or religion."
Which sounds reasonable on the surface, aside from the removal of the word ‘gender’, which is a tell. Gender being replaced with sex is a deliberate, transphobic decision. It goes on to add:
"A Florida College System Institution… may not expend any state or federal funds to promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities that… advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism…"
Professors of sociology in Florida have raised alarm bells about changes to the course textbooks, which removes wide swaths of sections about systemic inequality. The goal of these policies is to prevent critical thinking and introspection that would challenge an authoritarian social order.
A page out of an autocratic playbook
Authoritarian governments crack down on higher education institutions for the goal of controlling one of many potential sources of resistance. To quote Jennifer Ruth, published to the American Association of University Professors:
"Promoting misleading claims about what happens on campuses and caricaturing programs and bodies of work that do not enforce the patriarchal and racial logics favored by “strong man” leaders, authoritarians regularly discredit higher education by engendering public contempt for it."
This should sound familiar with the current culture war unfolding in the United States at the moment. The paper's thesis is about ‘sub-national authoritarianism’. I’ve lived in Texas pretty much my entire life, and I’ve been skeptical of Texas’s claims of small government and freedom for all of my adult life. What Texas, Florida, and many other states do is hide behind the Tenth Amendment, claiming that decisions of LGBT+ Rights, education, environmental protection, and many other issues are not addressed by the federal government and thus should default to the states. This is why, in the state of Texas, laws have been forced to require districts to put up Ten Commandments Posters if donated, use the terms ‘Before Christ’ and ‘Anno Domini’ rather than ‘Before Current Era’ and 'Current Era', has begun taking steps to ban gay marriage via the courts, ban THC, defund public education, restrict women’s health, and many, many more cases, including banning or criminalizing ‘obscenity’ (in reality, censorship of non-heteronormative activities and literature, or conversations about systemic inequality).
Should we be worried?
Absolutely. Even if you’re not in the former confederate states, the culture war promoting an authoritarian and patriarchal way of life is a growing focal point as demonstrated by the leadership at the national level, the state level, and the local level, which are staffed by right wing influencers, jingos, Christian nationalists, and bad faith actors. We are already seeing self-censorship among universities (such as the aforementioned sociology textbook in Florida or Texas A&M purging countless materials about gender or race), or the FCC’s equal time rule being used to justify blocking an interview between Stephen Colbert and rising Texas Democrat James Talarico. That last one is itself one part of a larger campaign by some media companies to silence voices critical of the administration.
This, of course, is caused by the prevalence of big media trusts that own so many of the outlets in the country and the increasing control of social media by right wing interests. Despite the financial troubles it has caused, the funding cuts for public media actually give me more faith in public media companies like NPR, who continue to report critically about institutions of power.
Credit where credit is due, quite a few journalists and journals are resisting these threats, as are professors, teacher unions, and educational institutions around the country. The front lines of authoritarian takeover are not in Washington DC, but in school boards and state university commissions across the country.
Pay attention to what happens in your community. We can be better.
Thank you for reading~