As Ron DeSantis and his compliant legislature tightens their control of tenure and academic freedom in the state’s public universities, many of the faculty at the private University of Miami have joined to protest the attack on their colleagues.
It has long been said that the states are “laboratories of democracy.” If you wonder why I post so much about Florida, it is because it has become a “laboratory of fascism,” where the state’s leadership is intent on controlling thought and expression, research and study.
Nearly 1,000 faculty, staff and students at the University of Miami have signed an open letter opposing a state bill moving through the Florida Legislature that they say is an “unprecedented attempt to exert political control over free thought and professional expertise in higher education.”
As a private university, UM isn’t funded or governed by the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the 12 public universities in the state. As such, it wouldn’t be affected by House Bill 999, and its companion Senate Bill 266, which could make it harder for professors to hold onto tenure and would give university presidents the authority to hire and fire faculty, instead of deans, department chairs and faculty committees currently making those decisions.
Because of these proposals and others in the bills, some of UM’s faculty, staff and students are “standing in solidarity” with their counterparts at Florida International University and the state’s other public universities.
“We affirm our commitment to the principles and practices of academic freedom and shared governance in all Florida institutions of higher education, whether public or private,” reads the missive, which a small group of UM faculty members started in early April and now want to share with as many people as possible, particularly elected officials…
Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at UM, said she stamped her name on the open letter because she sees the bills as an attack not only on education, but on democracy.
“I’m incredibly angry, and I’m concerned for students everywhere, and I’m particularly saddened for my fellow faculty members at public universities,” she said. “Florida is becoming known as a state where intellectual freedom goes to die.”
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article274450640.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The only free person in the “free” state of Florida is despotic DeSantis. Everyone else must kowtow to his whims or suffer attacks and potential loss of position. Everyone in the state serves as an at will employee with leadership and a network that would make the mafia proud. He steps on local control and puts his hand picked syncophants at the top of the organization he targets to “whip into submission.” DeSantis is a toxic tyrant with control issues.
Dangerously Deranged Despot DeSants has something in common with Putin.
A compliant legislature that does what the despot tells them to do.
The question on every voter’s mind in Florida and the United States if DDDD ends up running for president in 2024, should be when will DDDD start having those he thinks are his enemies poisoned, shot in the back of the head, tossed out of a twenty story window, or sent to a labor camp after a show trial.
In today’s news in FL, “pro-life” DeSantis just signed a bill that lowers the threshold for capital punishment from a unanimous jury to eight out of twelve jurors, which is the lowest threshold in the country.
Not sure I ever associated the words “intellectual” and “Florida,” even waaaay before DeSantis. Claude Pepper was called an “extrovert” in the late 1940s and it was considered to be a slur. Florida: Where curiosity goes to die.
Intellectual freedom in most of academia: the freedom to conform to far Left orthodoxy or lose your career.
The right is not the sole owner of intolerance, you are right. They are just better at it right now. However, what that has to do with what Desantis is doing is beyond me.
That’s why places like Regent, Liberty and Ave Maria exist. For “academics” who can’t engage in discussions based on empirical evidence or rely on the scientific method to explain things. Anything that doesn’t is, according to them, “far Left orthodoxy.” Perfect copout not needing explanation of any sort.
Hillsdale, Calvin College, Grove City, lots of Christian colleges where there is no “far left orthodoxy.”
Do the following fit- University of Dallas, Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, etc.?
The scandal involving the Republican club at St. Thomas University that embroiled the head of the state’s GOP- interesting reading.
Hillsdale appears to be greatly influenced by conservative Catholics. They may be more influential than protestant conservative Christians at the school.
Grace, do you have any evidence for your claim? How many colleges or universities have you taught in?
Grace’s comment illustrates the repeat of the tactic the right wing regularly uses. They transpose the failings of the non-thinking right onto the left, even though it doesn’t apply.
Grace is driven by a need to conform to her tribe so she assumes the same motivation drives others.
Those who tell Grace what to think and say won’t want her to read about the son of Oathkeeper, Stewart Rhodes, who found a way to escape control and to think for himself.
Grace-
Refuting your claim, Harvard Prof. Adrian Vermuele who is described as the nation’s most dangerous critic of liberalism, keeps his job despite saying Catholics should be given preference in immigration.
The family and friends I respect have political views on the left. They support equality for the religious like protestant Christians etc. and for women and LGBTQ. They oppose current economic policies that have resulted in the bottom half of the country’s households having just 1% of all of the wealth of the country.
If you believe otherwise, that’s on you.
Grace, that’s just silly. Universities have professors of extraordinarily variant points of view, WITHIN REASON TYPICALLY. Anyone who has actually spent time in or around universities knows this. Anyone who knows them only from reports by Tucker Carlson, well, . . .
Guardian reported that Uihlein is the money behind Ryan Girdusky’s 1776 Project. But, Uihlein’s money and right wing religion’s influence didn’t prove successful in Illinois. Seventy percent of the Democratic -backed school board candidates won. There were similar results in Wisconsin.
The potential race between Tammy Baldwin and Mike Gallagher for her US Senate seat will be the same match-up – democracy and rights for women/LGBTQ against plutocrat/hardcore conservative religious sects protecting patriarchy the richest 1%.
And, ofc, it’s not just intellectual freedom that is endangered by DeStalinist authoritarianism.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/florida-town-cancels-annual-gay-pride-parade-as-desantis-set-to-sign-anti-drag-ban/ar-AA1aawmW?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=e29058d107994d789e3c0bbba78c4f68&ei=41