With measures borrowed from history’s totalitarian regimes, political leaders in Florida are taking unprecedented steps to indoctrinate students and prevent them from learning about the world in ways that may lead them to question the leaders’ ideology.
The State University System of Florida’s Board of Governors recently developed a newly revised edition of a textbook and syllabus for introduction to sociology courses at the system’s schools. Their adoption is mandatory at the state’s public colleges, while the administrators at the state’s universities will decide whether to also adopt them.
Reportedly, Florida State University and Florida International University adopted the textbook, while the University of Florida has not.
According to the Independent Florida Alligator,
The state-approved textbook is 267 pages—compared to about 665 pages in the original Openstax Introduction to Sociology… Faculty say the new version removes entire units on media and technology, global inequality, race and ethnicity, social stratification, gender, sex and sexuality [and] it also eliminates a section addressing the government-led genocide of Native Americans.
On the social media site Bluesky, Zachary Levenson, associate professor of sociology at Florida International University, said, “those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.” He shared an excerpt from the curriculum:
What we have here is a branch of the Florida government forbidding the discussion of a wide range of sociological topics and theses in sociology courses.
It is a violation of academic freedom and freedom of expression backed by the force of law and with the aim of curtailing knowledge and enforcing a political ideology. It is, in short, a strategy of totalitarianism.
Wow, this is awful. Are the faculty able to sue to restore their (hopefully contractually guaranteed?) academic freedom?
What we need is for one of the schools or systems to refuse to go along with this and then take it the courts if they pay a price. But realistically, it will more likely come down to individual faculty members willing to risk getting fired and then suing. And then we hope we don’t see judges saying what faculty do in a classroom isn’t protected speech because it’s part of their job.
Suing for what? I’m curious that the legal theory is going to be here, specifically as pertinent to Florida law (or the First Amendment). Wouldn’t *Garcetti* seem to favor the universities?
Whether Garcetti applies to faculty in the classroom is the million dollar question. For now there’s a circuit split, and it’s hard to say what the Supreme Court would do if it took up a case where that was the clear, overriding question. Given the current makeup of the Court and the prevailing political environment, I wouldn’t want my job to depend on a faculty friendly ruling, but it might come down to that if there’s to be a legal victory in Florida.
Hey, Fritz–since Garcetti the lower courts have tended to distinguish between K-12 state schools and state colleges and universities. SCOTUS left the question open concern tertiary teachers, suggesting they have broader protections. Post-Garcetti (according to FIRE), the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th Circuits have indeed “recognize[d] the importance of protecting academic freedom by treating speech of public college and university faculty differently from that of other public employees when it comes to limits or sanctions imposed by their government employers…. In the time since the Supreme Court left open the question of whether the First Amendment protects on-the-job speech of public university faculty, each federal court of appeals to confront the issue has answered it in favor of strong academic freedom protections for faculty.”
RH
It may favor the universities, but in Florida two-year colleges are run by the State Board of Education, the same way as K-12, so the state can throw their weight around at them. Universities are not, which is why it’s optional for them. The Florida “government” has been trying to control state colleges for years, which is part of why I don’t work there anymore.
At least for faculty union contracts (in Florida), state regulation takes precedence.
I taught college level psychology for 20 years. I am now retired. From an educational perspective, I put the Scopes trial at the top of the list to illustrate the potential conflict between government and education.
What this prohibits is intriguing. So far, red state government administrations have generally tried to present these policies as only prohibiting teaching that being white makes you guilty.
That can’t be the rationale for this policy, though. This one prohibits teaching that racism was constructed to maintain inequities. For example, you can’t teach that the demand for a justification of slavery in the Americas contributed to the rise of racist ideologies pertaining to the enslaved peoples.
The theory that’s thereby prohibited doesn’t say white people are inherently bad. It doesn’t attribute guilt for slavery to any race.
So then why wouldn’t they want these theories taught? In other words, who would want to protect racism from the theory that its function is to justify inequity? Maybe a motivation can be pieced together from the fact the Confederacy is popular amongst Florida Republicans and/or the groyperfication of the GOP.
Florida man goes to Tallahassee.
The land of the free strikes again. The country is becoming a parody of itself.
This is dumb. Even if all you care about is money. Now every intro to sociology class is the same product, roughly. Why shell out big bucks to go to a what used to be a better’ school, with ‘better’ gen Ed’s.
What I mean. Why would anyone pay to take intro to sociology at FSU when they can the same bottled course at any community college.
As someone who teaches at a community college, I’d just like to say our intro to sociology courses are a lot better than these will be.
Decreeing that a sociology textbook must not cover social stratification is roughly equivalent to saying that an introductory economics textbook must not talk about supply and demand. This whole thing is ludicrous and would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.
At the moment, or so it seems to me, there are two ways to defend freedom (academic or otherwise) in the US. In the courts or on the ground. The former I can’t speak to, see discussion above. As to the latter, one can resist by moving to states where the fascists don’t yet rule. In other words, making use of the federal system is an option. Of course, this is easier said than done for those on the ground. However, I see no realistic third option.
Yes, I know, vote them out of power. But is that even realistic in places like Florida? And anyway, the country as such is so badly messed up, that even a federal victory would not solve the underlying problems, which is that a large part of the population wants fascism and not liberal democracy. Unfortunately, late capitalism does not do you any favors if you keep third of the population in deep poverty and sign up to some weird libertarian credo. And there are of course, lots of other problems.
I think, in the end, the only solution, for those who can, is to leave states like Florida asap.
Faculty should strike. Walk out en masse and hold signs in front of admin buildings on campus until the police come. Then never come back.
I think that we are a lot more divided by disagreements over facts than we are over ideology. If you believe everything that you read on Fox (let alone Breitbart), a lot of the GOP’s actions look more reasonable. In the case of universities, there’s enormous misinformation about what actually goes on.
I wanted to add here that there is extra reason I don’t believe in winning in courts. The problem is that court judgments need to be executed. Who will execute them in states like Florida? I am skeptical.
I am afraid those who don’t flee must fight. Or give in. End of story.
Every time we see a story like this, the upshot is exactly the same: a conservative-controlled state government wants their preferred mythology upheld, so they try to grant its core assumptions immunity from critique. Yes, it’s anti-intellectual. Yes, it’s authoritarian. Yes, it’s disgusting. But at this point the performative moaning is also becoming rather trite. Nobody should be surprised that conservatives do this when they feel empowered. The safeguarding of his “traditional worldview” is, quite overtly, the conservative’s primary driving motivation. And, by extension, anyone whose activities pose a threat to the sanctity of his worldview, as any critical inquirer does, is an adversary. This was all preeminently predictable, and it won’t change until conservatism is driven from power. Anyone too shy to countenance that discussion should keep quiet about this sort of symptomatic problem.
Not that it matters much, but I wouldn’t call them conservatives. Fascists are not conservatives, in many ways, they are the opposite. Conservatives conserve systems and they don’t like change, certainly on the large scale. That is not what the repugs are these days in the US.
You’re right, of course. Although it seems that, in practice, fascist movements always involve a desire to revert to the putative stability of an older social order. I would classify this as a conservative (or “regressive,” I guess) impulse. The so-called “future-minded fascist revolutionary” seems to exist only in the realm of theory.
Yes, also historically, they offer a mixture of regression and progression, at least compared to the status quo. But say, in an oakeshottian sense, they are definitely not conservatives. In particular, their relation to the institutional structures of the status quo, which is today still some form of liberal democracy, is much more about destruction than preservation.
A lot of conservative voters believe that universities are politically indoctrinating students. That is what their news is telling them.
I don’t doubt this. My point was only that what these, perhaps genuinely conservatives voters support, the party and their policies, are not properly called conservative. That is all. As I noted, it is not much of a major point in this particular context.
True. How is this exculpatory? At best, this simply suggests that such individuals are being irresponsible knowers, lazily failing to check their beliefs against reality. At worst, they are actively collaborating with the propaganda-machine. Neither earns much sympathy from me. I happen to think we Americans should expect more from our compatriots. Ferociously inculcating the importance of education and critical thought would be a good start, but sadly this is precisely the opposite of our current trajectory.
It’s a long-running theme.
An interesting interview with the author: https://www.wlrn.org/government-politics/2026-02-13/florida-new-introduction-sociology-textbook-college
For those of us in states where this is happening, the author faces a familiar dilemma: save what parts of the discipline you can and create something that preserves “sociology” as a discipline that is offered, or refuse and then sociology itself is erased from the core.
A commenter above mentioned two options, courts or on the ground. But I make choices every day, balancing complicity with long term strategy, weighing whether this is a last stand or whether we survive to fight another day. And I think there are plenty of historical examples that show the outcome of major historical shifts in no small way depends on the choices we all make along the way. It is overwhelming when viewed from the grand scale. But there is another way to view it, from the standpoint of personal integrity and commitment to students. That is more tractable.
I don’t think we are yet in a position to know whether this author chose wisely. But I do admire her courage, to act for the good under duress.
It is a tricky balancing act. Unfortunately, if the system works well, sooner or later, these balancing acts become near impossibilities. That is just in the nature of well-designed repressive systems. This is why I suggested above the option of leaving the state. (I do not believe in courts so much and even less in the power of the vote, unfortunately. But maybe I am wrong.)
The balancing and the comprising also remind me of Havel’s great essay, The Power of the Powerless. It is a tragedy of the country that academics are becoming Havel’s shopkeepers (grocery, to be precise). But then again, this is – and worse – what academics have always been in the kind of systems Florida is now building.
Three things:
1. While I agree with your point about leaving in an ideal situation, this sounds like the suggestion to a budget shortfall of “have you considered making more money?” I can’t imagine any of us haven’t thought of this, or aren’t actively trying to leave. Forget leaving behind a life, there are no jobs to go elsewhere. Some have the privilege of doing that, but most do not. It is leave our profession or do our best where we are.
2. I completely agree with you that this is the function of these systems and the way they are being implemented will, if successful, make all of our efforts futile. And if you aren’t here, count your blessings that you don’t have to make such choices. But to live under the crush of futility is not my style. Yes, if the system is successful it crushes free thought, and yes the system is far more powerful than the individual. I do not operate under any illusion of grandiose success. But there still *are* things to be done. So get the death star plans if you can, etc.
3. I’ll read havel’s essay. My required reading right now is Lear’s Radical Hope. I aspire to courage, though it is unclear what shape it can take.
Havel would be on your side. But I think he would say that balancing is not the way to go. Opposition and dissent are the only workable options.
Anyway, you can judge it for yourself:
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/01/the-power-of-the-powerless.pdf
I don’t understand “This course does not violate discrimination against students.” Can anyone make sense of it?