Politico
October 14, 2024
By Andrew Atterbury
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida’s public universities are purging the list of general education courses they will offer next year to fall in line with a state law pushed for by Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting “woke ideologies” in higher education.
These decisions, in many cases being driven by the university system’s Board of Governors, have the potential to affect faculty and thousands of students across the state. Hundreds of courses are slated to become electives after previously counting toward graduation requirements, which university professors and free speech advocates fear is just the first step toward those classes disappearing entirely.
The state’s involvement in a curriculum process — which has historically been left to universities — is riling academics and students who oppose how officials are using new authority to weed out courses like Anthropology of Race & Ethnicity, Sociology of Gender, and Women in Literature.
“This sort of state overreach could spell disaster for student and faculty retention, and the academic standing of Florida institutions,” said Katie Blankenship, who leads a state office for free speech advocacy group PEN America.
Yet the Board of Governors maintains that the state is merely carrying out the intent of the GOP-dominated Legislature, which in 2023 called for a wholesale review of general education offerings to ensure the courses stray from teaching “identity politics” and avoid “unproven, speculative, or exploratory” content.
“If their subject matter is prohibited by statute but is compelling, then students are going to elect to take it,” university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said in an interview. “But what is not going to happen in Florida — the students are not going to be forced to take courses that have these prohibited concepts in order to fulfill their general education requirements.”
This comprehensive course review, spanning hundreds of classes across 12 state universities, was triggered by a far-reaching higher education law passed by Florida Republicans last year that also prohibited spending tied to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. The policies are a key piece in Florida’s efforts, led by DeSantis, to reshape its higher education system through changes like a high-stakes post-tenure review system to put “unproductive” faculty on notice.
Florida’s law specifies that general education core courses — the foundation for bachelor’s degrees that is made up of credits in communication, math, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences — “may not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.” Democrats fought against the legislation, arguing it “politicizes higher education” and grants too much power to the university system Board of Governors, which is packed with DeSantis appointees. The state board’s first action under the law was removing sociology as an option for students as a core social sciences course late last year, replacing it with a history class.
Universities that keep general education courses against recommendations from the Board of Governors run the risk of losing critical state funding.
“You don’t just get to take taxpayer dollars and do whatever the heck you want to do and think that’s somehow OK,” DeSantis said in 2023 when signing SB 266 into law.
University leaders and faculty have spent months combing through course catalogs to gauge how classes fit into the fledgling state law.
That led to individual schools’ trustee boards approving an updated slate of general education offerings over the summer with scores of changes — including alterations to class descriptions and expected outcomes for students — and in some cases course removals. But those proposed course listings for 2025-26 were next sent to the Board of Governors, which oversees the entire university system. The state then made its own recommendations for school curriculum, like culling courses beyond what universities originally planned.
There is a gamut of reasons schools and the state are suggesting to remove courses from general education. For one, the state targeted any courses that were upper-level or too narrowly focused to be considered a “general” class, according to Rodrigues.
As examples, a “Chinese calligraphy” course at University of Florida is being recommended for removal, as is “Myth, Ritual, And Mysticism” at Florida International University and “Women in Literature” at Florida State University, all of which are upper-level undergraduate classes.
But the state and schools, under the purview of this law, also are pushing to scale back courses that have been frequent targets of DeSantis and Florida Republicans — like gender studies and sociology — and those that delve into hot-button social issues. UF, for example, has proposed removing courses like “Humanities Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality” and “Social Geography,” and several schools are expected to drop a “Social Problems” class that examines issues like racial and gender inequality, and crime.
Other courses tabbed for removal are more esoteric. Florida Atlantic University in August approved scrapping honors classes like “Magic, Witchcraft and Religion,” and the “History of Food and Eating.”
All of these are currently lower-level undergraduate general education courses that would become electives through the proposed changes.
Some school leaders have welcomed the reduction in general education courses. For Florida Gulf Coast University, where officials are removing at least 40 courses, or 25 percent of offerings, the changes could “positively impact student success,” Executive Vice President and Provost Mark Rieger told trustees in June.
FGCU adopted the philosophy that “offering fewer courses with better resources was better than offering many courses,” Rieger said, according to meeting minutes.
Yet the moves are generally puzzling faculty who fear their courses are being put on a path to elimination. It’s coming as a shock for academics to see the Board of Governors recommending courses for removal that schools originally approved, and who say the state is taking a heavy-handed approach in each school’s academic outlook.
At UF, Florida’s flagship school, many faculty found out in early October that the university is expected to strip the general education designation from 700 courses — the bulk of nearly 1,200 that were reviewed.
One of those is “Religion and Social Movements,” a course that UF created in 2020 to fulfill a general education requirement in social science. The class “focuses on the distinctive ways religion shapes social movement trajectories and outcomes” with specific attention on “the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against police violence,” according to a course description.
“I don’t understand how it could get through the [UF] approval process and now be rejected,” said Anna Peterson, a religion professor at UF who teaches the course. “That basically kills that class.”
Across the state at FIU, faculty and students last month urged trustees to reconsider the university’s updated slate of general education classes, contending the changes that were made to appease the state were a violation of the school’s autonomy and academic freedom.
Yet in a second sweep of general education courses, FIU trustees approved removing 22 classes including Anthropology of Race & Ethnicity, Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies, and Sociology of Gender.
The curriculum fight at FIU, which prompted a resolution by the faculty senate to raise the issue with trustees, has drawn the attention of groups like PEN America and the American Association of University Professors, which advocates for faculty. The organizations have slammed Florida for scouring through general education courses and predict the changes could have significant blowback, like faculty losing jobs and programs shuttering. Meanwhile, students are also pushing back on the decisions that ultimately limit what courses are available to them.
“It’s going to make it so people are exposed to fewer things they might be interested in,” said James Hernandez, an anthropology student and student senator at FIU who opposed the general education recommendations.
The Board of Governors under Rodrigues disagrees that the state’s involvement in curriculum hampers academic freedom. Rodrigues notes that, while trustee boards in some cases have already approved general education offerings, the decisions are not final until they score state approval in January, and further tweaks are expected.
“An infringement on academic freedom would be to say this course can’t be offered at the university,” Rodrigues said. “No one has said that in any of these scenarios. What we are saying is, we define what is general education. We define that based upon what the state statutes have laid out and we’re being compliant with that. And I think the courts have held that what gets designated as general education curriculum is up to the legislature who funds it.”