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Florida Plans to Eliminate Tenure in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2023 //
16

Florida is the state where freedom goes to die. The state university system intends to eliminate tenure and replace it with a five-year evaluation system. Theoretically, the review won’t include political views, but all professors will be expected to comply with state laws. Anyone who teaches courses about race, racism, gay studies, or inequality is unlikely to get a favorable evaluation because those subjects are banned by state law. Anyone who teaches or defends critical race theory is likely to be ousted.

Florida’s state university system is making major changes to long-time tenure protections, meaning that established professors would have to undergo a review every five years to determine the faculty members’ “productivity.”

However, Florida-based professors and other advocates say that the new rule, approved by the Florida Board of Governors Wednesday, could hurt academic freedom and impact a faculty members’ livelihood.

The issue of Florida’s five-year post-tenure evaluations, among other changes to the state’s universities, is getting nationwide criticism from multiple organizations, including American Association of University Professors, the American Psychological Association, Modern Language Association, and American Historical Association and a dozen others.

Faculty in other states are even voicing their opposition to Florida’s new higher education policies, such as the University of Rhode Island Faculty Senate and the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York.

“Over the past two years, Florida elected officials have attacked the independence and integrity of the state’s public higher education institutions…introducing a requirement for five-year post-tenure reviews, they have undermined tenure and academic freedom,” the Professional Staff Congress said in a written statement.

The American Association of University Professors explains that tenure serves as a “safeguard” for a professor’s academic freedom.

“A tenured appointment is an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation,” the AAUP explains on its website.

It continues: “When faculty members can lose their positions because of their speech, publications, or research findings, they cannot properly fulfill their core responsibilities to advance and transmit knowledge.”

But new rules adopted Wednesday by the Florida Board of Governors tasks each university board of trustees to adopt policies that evaluate tenured professors on a handful of unified goals from a statewide standpoint.

The rule adoption is due to a new law from the 2022 legislative session, which was pushed by then-Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., who added in a last-minute amendment calling for the 5-year tenure review. Then Sen. Ray Rodrigues was a co-sponsor. Diaz is now the Florida Education Commissioner. Rodrigues is the Chancellor of the university system.

Under this new rule, faculty are to be evaluated on “productivity,” “meeting the responsibilities and expectations associated with assigned duties,” and “compliance with state laws, Board of Governors’ regulations, and university regulations and policies.”

The chief academic officer of the university, often referred to as the ‘provost,’ would make the final call on a professor’s performance, according to the rule.

But the Florida higher education system has experienced an overhaul by the DeSantis administration, facing a mountain of changes that cater to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ conservative views regarding a variety of concerns, including tenure protections. That’s why some Florida professors are concerned that the state is becoming a hostile environment for current and prospective faculty.

The rule says that a professor evaluation “shall not consider or otherwise discriminate” based on a professor’s “political or ideological viewpoints,” but some are skeptical on whether that provision will be adhered to.

“The way that many of our faculty are looking at it is that this is intentionally designed from the ground up to allow bad actors to cull faculty from departments with whom they personally disagree or who have politics that are inconvenient to the institution,” Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida, told the Phoenix.

“Or, as we’ve seen with the narrative that’s been coming out of Tallahassee, who have politics that disagree with those of the governor,” he added.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education

Professor Amy Wax Makes Racist, Homophobic, Sexist Statements: Should She Be Fired?

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2023 //
88

The New York Times published an article about a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Amy Wax, who has frequently made statements that are racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, the whole range of prejudices, not what you expect of someone who supposedly teaches students that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

Amy Wax, a law professor, has said publicly that “on average, Blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites,” that the country is “better off with fewer Asians” as long as they tend to vote for Democrats, and that non-Western people feel a “tremendous amount of resentment and shame.”

At the University of Pennsylvania, where she has tenure, she invited a white nationalist to speak to her class. And a Black law student who had attended UPenn and Yale said that the professor told her she “had only become a double Ivy ‘because of affirmative action,’” according to the administration.

Professor Wax has denied saying anything belittling or racist to students, and her supporters see her as a truth teller about affirmative action, immigration and race. They agree with her argument that she is the target of censorship and “wokeism” because of her conservative views.

All of which poses a conundrum for the University of Pennsylvania: Should it fire Amy Wax?

The university is now moving closer to answering just that question. After long resisting the call of students, the dean of the law school, Theodore W. Ruger, has taken a rare step: He has filed a complaint and requested a faculty hearing to consider imposing a “major sanction” on the professor…

For years, Mr. Ruger wrote in his 12-page complaint, Professor Wax has shown “callous and flagrant disregard” for students, faculty and staff, subjecting them to “intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic actions and statements.”

The complaint said she has violated the university’s nondiscrimination policies and “standards of professional competence.”

The article goes on to cite the many times that Professor Wax has offended women, Blacks, gays, foreign students, or anyone else who does not agree with her idyllic view of the culture of the 1950s. Implicitly she means an era when Blacks were subservient, women were compliant wives, gays were in the closet, and foreigners were tourists.

What should the university do?

…many free speech groups, including the Academic Freedom Alliance, PEN America and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have criticized the dean and said that Professor Wax should not be fired because of her public statements.

My view: She should not be fired. Perhaps she should be admonished for behavior that is insulting to students, but her academic freedom and tenure protect her job.

Academic freedom protects not just the views that one likes, not just the views of the majority, but the views you hate. I might wish that Professor Wax were open-minded and wish that she had a keener sense of humanity, but I defend her right to be offensive, inconsiderate, and obnoxious. Students are not required to take her courses. Those who take her courses should challenge her views if they disagree.

But academic freedom must prevail.

Voltaire: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Reform, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Language, Pennsylvania

Florida: Where Art, History, Books, and Freedom Go to Die

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2023 //
36

The principal of the Classical Charter School in Tallahassee was told to resign or be fired after a parent complained that a sixth grade art class saw a “pornographic” photograph of a sculpture. It was a picture of Michelangelo’s masterpiece “David.” Considered one of the greatest sculptures in the world, “David” is a massive piece of marble that is the centerpiece of the Accademia Gallery of Florence (Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze) in Florence, Italy.

The Tallahassee Classical Charter School follows the Hillsdale College curriculum, supposedly based on the classics. The “David” is certainly a great classical work of art.

Dan Kois of Slate interviewed the chairman of the school’s board, Barney Bishop III. This is a small excerpt. Kois’s questions are in bold.

I tend to think of a classical education as being the mode in the 17th, 18th century, where you study the Greeks and Romans, and Western civilization is central. A tutor or teacher is the expert, and that teacher drives the curriculum. You’re describing something where it seems the parents drive the curriculum. How does your classical education differ from the classical education as I think of it?

What kind of question is that, Dan? I don’t know how they taught in the 17th, 18th century, and neither do you. You live in New York?

Virginia.

You’ve got a 212 number. That’s New York.

I lived in New York when I got the cellphone, many years ago. Now I live in Virginia.

Well, we’re Florida, OK? Parents will decide. Parents are the ones who are going to drive the education system here in Florida. The governor said that, and we’re with the governor. Parents don’t decide what is taught. But parents know what that curriculum is. And parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture.

Parents choose this school because they want a certain kind of education. We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia. The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities, you’re on better drugs than me.

Please read the full interview.

I would like to give credit for the meme below. I found it on the Twitter feed of “Trump is Putin’s Puppet.” The person who posted it said was time to add Art to the list of bans.

Categories Academic Freedom, Art, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, DeSantis, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education, Literature, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

Florida: English Professor Fired for Including Discussion of Racial Justice in His Writing Classes

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2023 //
39

The Orlando Sentinel reported that Professor Sam Joeckel was fired by Palm Beach Atlantic University, a private Christian university where he has taught for more than two decades. A student complained that he discussed”racial justice” as a topic for his students to write about.

Joeckel walked into his office one day last week and discovered that his telephone and computer were gone. Apparently a parent complained that he was indoctrinating students by teaching about racism.

Joeckel had an idea something was up because he was called in by administrators to explain his rational for teaching about racial justice. There was also a rumor that he had said something positive about gay people,which the university forbids.

The president of the university, Dr. Debra Schwann, took a personal interest in the case.

The parent who complained had “a reasonable concern about Dr. Joeckel lecturing substantially on the history of racism and racial justice in a class designed to teach writing,” Schwinn wrote in the email.

Afterwards, she said, the dean and provost reached out to Joeckel and “shared their intention to schedule a time to review his syllabus with him so they could understand better the pedagogical rationale for including these lectures in a writing class.”

Later in the email, Schwinn went on to describe PBAU’s approach to teaching about racial issues from a “biblical worldview.”

His course consisted of four units: the one on racial justice, others on comedy and humor, gothic and horror, and gender equality.

Current and former students describe Joeckel as a beloved professor who was well known on campus. Several were confused by Schwinn’s email and the allegation that he was indoctrinating students.

Chrissy Perez, 22, a former honors student at PBAU who graduated in 2022, took many of Joeckel’s honors courses, which she described as a mix of philosophy and history. In one course, Joeckel taught about modern-day social justice movements, including racial justice movements, Perez said, but it was “nothing radical at all.”

“The only thing that was even kind of unique about the unit was that it presented documents that were written by people of color rather than history about people of color written by white people,” she said.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Curriculum, DeSantis, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Race, Racism

Florida: The Purge at New College Begins with Elimination of Diversity Office

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2023 //
27

Ron DeSantis seized control of the state’s smallest public institution of higher education. New College was created as a progressive outpost. The governor named six new trustees to the 13-member board and added the controlling vote when a political ally replaced a seventh member. The majority is packed with rightwing ideologues. They immediately sacked the president, an English professor, and replaced her with a Republican hack, Richard Corcoran, former Speaker of the House and former State Commissioner of Education. He was previously passed over when he applied for the presidency of the University of Florida because of his lack of academic credentials. He has been promised compensation of $900,000 a year. DeSantis takes care of his friends.

The Miami Herald reported:

New College of Florida leaders voted Tuesday to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion “bureaucracies” at the Sarasota honors college, the State University System’s smallest campus.

The school’s board of trustees — including six conservative members appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January — banned mandatory diversity trainings and ended “political coercion” in the form of diversity statements. They also prohibited “identity-based preferences” in admissions, hiring and promotions.

The school will disband the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, which is responsible for diversity initiatives. The office’s four staff members will be moved to other new or unfilled administrative positions, saving the school an estimated $250,000 per year.

It was the first trustees meeting for Richard Corcoran, the former education commissioner and Florida House speaker who became New College’s interim president on Monday.

The vote came as DeSantis and Republican lawmakers are pushing to remove diversity, equity and inclusion offices throughout the state college and university systems. Legislators have already begun to file bills to accomplish that aim during the session that begins March 7…

The school’s new policy will not affect the funding of academic instruction, research or student organizations, said Bradley Theissen, a top New College official who briefly served as interim president before Corcoran arrived.

The school’s general counsel will be responsible for overseeing diversity initiatives required by the state as well as the school’s compliance with federal non-discrimination laws “The objective [was] to remove the parts [of school policy and trainings] that we find to be discriminatory,” said trustee Matthew Spalding, a fellow at the conservative think tank the Claremont Institute….

Also Tuesday, board members addressed a wrinkle that developed late last week over Corcoran’s contract, which will pay him a base salary of $699,000, plus more than $200,000 in added benefits.

Most of that amount was intended to come from the New College Foundation, but the foundation’s finance chairperson noted that most of its funds are earmarked for other expenses.

The revelation raised questions about the foundation’s ability to help with Corcoran’s salary, but trustees said Tuesday they expected foundation members to “cooperate.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article272628795.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, DeSantis, Equity, Extremism, Florida, Higher Education

Mercedes Schneider: DeSantis Launches Attack on Studies of Gender, Race and Whatever Else He Dislikes

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2023 //
23

Mercedes Schneider writes here about Governor Ron DeSantis’s shameless moves to wipe out courses in K-12 and in higher education that he does not like. He is leading an audacious attack on academic freedom that has not been seen in this country since the early 1950s during the Joe McCarthy era. Then the enemy was Communism, now it is fear of those who want to investigate the roots and practices of social and political injustice.

Such people, to DeSantis, are enemies of the social order. They are WOKE, awake to inequity; they make students want to change the status quo. They cannot be tolerated. Their ideas must be eliminated. DeSantis is leading this purge, he says, to protect “freedom.” The language is Orwellian. He means to stamp out the freedom to teach and learn while boasting of his love of freedom.

In addition, he wants to transfer the power to hire new faculty from the faculty to college presidents, whom he appoints. The entire state university would become subservient to his authoritarian impulses.

Schneider describes what is happening, mostly under the radar, as DeSantis wages war on freedom of inquiry:

The current ultra-conservative education platform seeks to stifle all formal or informal discussion of diversity, equity, or inclusion in public K12 and postsecondary education, with Florida apparently leading such efforts.

Though as of yet not a formally-declared 2024 candidate, Florida governor, Ron DeSantis is in the GOP polls as an assumed and formidible GOP presidential primary candidate.

DeSantis, and the Florida legislature are working hard to exercise power over what courses or majors could exist in Florida universities, with legislative efforts to kill womens and gender studies and, as the Insider notes, “gut” a variety of majors. Meanwhile, the February 24, 2023, Tampa Bay Times reports that the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) “told school districts to produce detailed information about the programs and materials they use to address some of the state’s most hotly debated subjects.” Continuing:

In an email delivered late Tuesday, the department instructed superintendents to fill out a 34-question survey identifying titles of books and programs they have relating to sex education, social-emotional learning, culturally relevant teaching and diversity, and equity and inclusion, among other topics. It asked for specifics for student courses and employee training.

The department requested names and examples from district and charter schools.

FDOE wants the information by Monday, February 27, 2023, though it did not offer any reason.

The FDOE request came on the same day that Florida HB 999 was filed by Alex Andrade (R-Pensacola). The bill would remove faculty input from the hiring process; prohibit hiring based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); remove majors and minors related to Critical Race Theory, gender studies or intersectionailty.

This rewrite of the previous bill seeks to remove any mention of “politics,” including striking through statements such as, “Motivate students throughout the Florida State University to become aware of the significance of government and civic engagement at all levels and politics in general”; “Provide students with an opportunity to be politically active and civically engaged”, and “Nurture a greater awareness of and passion for public service and politics.”

DeSantis does not want to encourage students to become engaged in civic action. He wants to nurture complacence and passivity “in this best of all possible worlds.

Please open her post to read the gory details of this audacious attempt to put the governor of the state in charge of whatever is taught in his state.

What DeSantis is doing is not conservative. It is radical. It is authoritarian. He shows no respect for critical thinking or debate. He is unwilling to allow students to learn anything he does not like. His desire for control of what can be taught or learned is dangerous to democracy. He is attempting to establish a dictatorship and has a super-majority of both houses in the legislature who will give him whatever he wants.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Higher Education, Ignorance, Inequity, Injustice, Racism

Florida: Christian College Cancels Concert Because One Singer Is Gay

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2023 //
92

Pensacola Christian College canceled a six-man group of a capella singers because it had reason to believe that one of the singers was gay. The concert was cancelled two hours before it was scheduled to begin. An audience of more than 5,000 people was expected. The group had performed there in the past. Actually, the group acknowledged that two singers were gay. Why the College found it objectionable to hear a gay man (or two) singing in an ensemble is not clear. Did college officials worry that the sound of his voice might turn students gay? It seems likely that the bigoted Governor DeSantis has lowered the standards of civility across the state.

Javier C. Hernandez wrote in The New York Times:

The King’s Singers, a renowned British a cappella ensemble, looked forward to its appearance last week at Pensacola Christian College in Florida, the final stop on the group’s four-city tour of the United States.

Instead, the college informed the ensemble two hours before the concert was to begin on Saturday that it was being canceled because of concerns about what it called the lifestyle of a singer, who is gay. Students, parents and staff members had complained to the administration, saying that hosting the group would run counter to the college’s Baptist values.

The school’s decision has drawn backlash, with artists, gay rights activists and the ensemble’s fans denouncing the college for homophobia and discrimination. The King’s Singers issued a statement on Monday expressing hope that “any conversations that follow might encourage a greater sense of love, acceptance and inclusion.”

In an interview on Tuesday, Jonathan Howard, a member of the six-person group, called the cancellation “really shocking” and “hurtful.” The singers led a workshop for Pensacola students on Saturday and had started rehearsing for the concert — a crowd of more than 5,000 was expected — when they were pulled aside by college officials and informed of the cancellation, he said.

Howard said it was the first time in the group’s 55-year history that an engagement had been canceled for reasons other than bad weather, war or the coronavirus pandemic. He also said the group had performed at Pensacola before….

Two members of the ensemble are gay, Howard said, though a statement by Pensacola Christian College made reference to only one. The statement provided by the school said it had canceled the concert after learning that one of the singers “openly maintained a lifestyle that contradicts Scripture.” It said it had treated the artists with “dignity and respect,” and that they were paid for the performance.

A section in the school’s articles of faith that refers to several verses in the New Testament says the community believes that “Scripture forbids any form of sexual immorality including adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, and use of pornography.”

Will future performers on the Pensacola Christian College campus be screened to see whether any of them have committed adultery, fornication, bestiality, incest, or used pornography? Give them a lie detector test, and while they are at it, they should screen the college’s administrators, faculty, staff, and students.

Categories Arts Education, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Higher Education, Hypocrisy

Florida: The Hostile Takeover of New College by Rightwing Zealots Threatens Academic Freedom Everywhere

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2023 //
11

Ron DeSantis is a dangerous ideologue and a wannabe Mussolini. He speaks of freedom but practices coercion and cancel culture. In Florida, you are free to echo his beliefs but not to disagree. He is a bully.

This frightening story by Kathryn Joyce in Vanity Fair is a MUST-READ. DeSantis engineered the right-wing takeover of New College, a small, progressive college by installing new board members and ousting the President of New College. The extremists are portraying their swift decapitation of a left wing college as a model for other red states. Their plan is to turn New College into its ideological opposite, the “Hillsdale of the South.” Public colleges and universities in other red states should be on high alert. Vanity Fair (to which I subscribe) is usually behind a paywall, but this article is a one-time freebie.

The article begins:

It took New College president Patricia Okker three attempts to deliver her farewell remarks. She kept being interrupted during last week’s board meeting in Sarasota, Florida, including once by a member of the school’s board of trustees, making a motion to terminate her without cause. Okker had been addressing the dozens of students, faculty, and parents who’d come to defend her record—and the hundreds more outside who weren’t admitted—saying she was sorry to disappoint them, but she couldn’t represent the mandate New College was being given through this “hostile takeover.” And she refused to support the claims of right-wing critics that the school had been indoctrinating its students.

In the audience, supporters hugged one another and students left in tears. The trustees moved on, voting to replace Okker with interim president Richard Corcoran, Florida’s recently departed education commissioner who, in a 2021 speech at Michigan’s right-wing Hillsdale College, came close to calling for the collapse of the public school system through student attrition and said the political war “will be won in education.” The trustees replaced the board chair too, made plans to replace the general counsel, and instructed administrators to start preparing to dismantle the college’s diversity offices. null

It was hard to imagine a starker change in leadership for New College, the small, nontraditional honors college of the Florida public university system, known for its lack of grades, individualized majors, and leftist student body, but which has also been eyed skeptically for years by Florida’s conservative-dominated legislature for its low enrollment and graduation rates. But that was exactly the transformation intended when Governor Ron DeSantis last month appointed six new trustees to the school’s 13-member board, in hopes they would remake New College into a right-leaning “classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the south,” as his education commissioner Manny Diaz put it.

After the Republican-controlled Board of Governors appointed a seventh trustee, the new majority represented a team uniquely qualified to carry out DeSantis’s scorched-earth, right-wing education wars. There was Manhattan Institute fellow and anti-critical race theory hype man Christopher Rufo, who has most recently turned his efforts to laying “siege” to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; one of Hillsdale’s graduate school deans, Matthew Spalding, who also helped lead Donald Trump’s short-lived 1776 Commission; Charles Kesler of the right-wing Claremont Institute, which spent the Trump years retconning an intellectual platform for the MAGA movement; a senior editor at a religious right magazine; the Catholic author of a book accused of “fram[ing] LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness”; and a private Christian school cofounder with a penchant for Covid disinformation.

Following his appointment, Rufo immediately began speaking in martial terms: that conservatives were “recapturing higher education,” mounting a “landing team” to survey the school as well as a “hostage rescue operation” to “liberate” it from “cultural hostage takers.” Another new trustee, the private Christian academy cofounder Jason “Eddie” Speir, started a Substack to chronicle the transformation, sparking further panic in late January with a post proposingthe board declare a financial emergency, firing the entire staff and rehiring only those professors aligned with the school’s new business model. (Speir also used his newsletter to propose banning USA Today affiliates from covering campus events over a reader comment suggesting people throw dog poop on the new trustees; to request the entire board be given his essay, “‘Florida, Where Woke Goes to Die’ What Does It Mean?” as “supporting material”; and to ask if any readers had a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order he could borrow.)

Students, faculty, and alumni from New College and far beyond decried the takeover as an attack on academic freedom with national implications. Multiple scholarly organizations, including the American Anthropological Association and the American Historical Association, denounced it as “an orchestrated attack on academic integrity.” The University of Florida graduate assistants’ union tweeted a message of “Solidarity with New College students, faculty, and staff as DeSantis appoints a card-carrying fascist to the presidency.” At a campus rally preceding last Tuesday’s meeting, former Democratic state representative Carlos Guillermo Smith warned, “New College is their first test, their first trial run.” Repeating a Twitter hashtag protesting students had used, Smith added, “your campus is next.”

As though to prove them right, on February 1, Florida Republican state representative Spencer Roach—who cosponsored a recent Florida law mandating ideological surveys of public university campuses to “stem the tide of Marxist indoctrination”—tweeted that Okker’s termination should be replicated “at every university of the state.” In a January essay published in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Rufo touted the opportunities for emulation as well, writing that “If we are successful” in carrying out the mission of “institutional recapture,” what happens at New College “can serve as a model for other states.”

One horrified alum, Cayenne Linke, who attended New College in the 1990s, compared the takeover to a violent assault. “I feel like I’m standing at the precipice of the Fourth Reich, and I’m mostly powerless to fight back,” Linke said. “I weep for our nation if DeSantis wins a presidential bid and inevitably installs Rufo as education secretary.”

Please open the link and read the article in its entirety.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Funding, Higher Education, Lies, Religion, Republicans

Florida: DeSantis Wants to Create a State Military, Under His Control

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2023 //
146

Florida has become a Petri dish for potential fascism. DeSantis has made war on African Americans, on gays, on transgender people, on drag queens, on public schools, on higher education, even on private corporations (Disney). He likes to stand behind signs that declare Florida is “free,” but no one is free to disagree with him. That’s not freedom.

Now DeSantis has proposed to create a military force that answers only to him. To call out the National Guard, he must get federal permission. That’s not good enough for him. He wants a Florida state guard. Some other states have them, but they are not in the hands of a would-be dictator whose vanity knows no limits.

CNN reports:

St, Petersburg, Florida (CNN) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to reestablish a World War II-era civilian military force that he, not the Pentagon, would control.

DeSantis pitched the idea Thursday as a way to further support the Florida National Guard during emergencies, like hurricanes. The Florida National Guard has also played a vital role during the pandemic in administering Covid-19 tests and distributing vaccines.

But in a nod to the growing tension between Republican states and the Biden administration over the National Guard, DeSantis also said this unit, called the Florida State Guard, would be “not encumbered by the federal government.” He said this force would give him “the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible.” DeSantis is proposing bringing it back with a volunteer force of 200 civilians, and he is seeking $3.5 million from the state legislature in startup costs to train and equip them.

States have the power to create defense forces separate from the national guard, though not all of them use it. If Florida moves ahead with DeSantis’ plan to reestablish the civilian force, it would become the 23rd active state guard in the country, DeSantis’ office said in a press release, joining California, Texas and New York. These guards are little-known auxiliary forces with origins dating back to the advent of state militias in the 18th century. While states and the Department of Defense share control of the National Guard, state guards are solely in the power of a governor.

Will DeSantis use his state guard to break up peaceful demonstrations? Will he send it to drag shows to close them down? Will he it to harass teachers accused of being woke? The possibilities are frightening.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Higher Education

Robert Hubbell on Ron DeSantis’s Re-education Camps

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2023 //
23

Robert Hubbell writes a thoughtful, informative blog. I’m posting this as part of my personal project to understand the new face of white supremacy. White supremacy has always been there, simmering below the surface. Trump invited them to show their faces and step into the daylight. They did, and DeSantis is sending them signals that he wants to be their champion.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has set his anti-education sites on Florida’s state colleges. Through a series of political and legal maneuvers, he has ceded control over Florida’s state colleges to ultra-conservative culture warriors like Christopher Rufo. In short order, DeSantis has announced that he will rid Florida state colleges and universities of curricula not “rooted in Western tradition” or that “compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality.”

Amid the torrent of reporting on Ron DeSantis’s attack on critical race theory and intersectionality, the quiet part is often left unsaid. So let me say it: DeSantis’s educational agenda is code for racism and white supremacy. (Other parts of his agenda seek to erase the dignity and humanity of LGBTQ people.) DeSantis’s invocation of “Western tradition” is meant to suppress knowledge regarding the people (and contributions) of Asia, Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. See Talking Points Memo, DeSantis Makes 2024 Ambitions Clear As He Pours Gasoline On His ‘Woke’ Education Fire.

Given DeSantis’s generalized ignorance, his call to focus on “Western tradition” is a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to the discussion of unpleasant truths about America. For example, the enslavement of Black people was a “tradition” in North America for 246 years—and the abolition of that evil practice is relatively recent (155 years ago). So, a college course that honestly addresses the Western “traditions” of North America should include an examination that the role of slavery played in the economic, social, and political development of America.

But DeSantis isn’t stopping at converting Florida’s colleges and universities into re-education camps in the worst traditions of the USSR. He is seeking to up-end centuries of “Western tradition” embodied in the Constitution and the English common law: the requirement of a unanimous jury to impose capital punishment. DeSantis has floated the idea that a less-than-unanimous jury verdict can impose a sentence of death—an unconstitutional proposal designed to inflict the death penalty on more Black and Latino Americans. See Vox, Ron DeSantis wants to make it much easier for the state to kill people.

DeSantis is willing to do all this because he wants to capture Trump’s loyal base—which is the only hope that DeSantis has of becoming a credible candidate. As Trump becomes mired in criminal prosecutions, DeSantis will become emboldened and radicalized beyond his already extremist views. Doing so ignores the lessons of the 2022 midterms: persuadable Americans are done with Trump and his MAGA extremism. Like all military generals, Ron DeSantis is fighting the last war (the presidential election of 2020) and has failed to heed the tectonic shift that occurred in the midterms.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Character, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, History, Injustice, Lies, Propaganda, Racism, Trump
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