The Florida legislature is looking at a bill that would eliminate majors in useless subjects like Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, or Intersectionality at all state funded universities and colleges. The left is losing their shit and calling it a ban that threatens academic freedom. Bullshit. It isn’t a ban. If you want to spend five figures on a major like Women’s Studies, knowing that you will never get a job as a result of that degree, you can do so. Just not at a taxpayer funded college.
Another part of the same bill changes how universities will be able to hire their professors. In the future, professors would be recommended for hiring by the college President, but the board of trustees would have the final say in hirings and firings. The bill would also allow a professor’s tenure to be revoked. The bill explicitly bans state colleges or universities from using woke policies like diversity, equity, and inclusion statements, Critical Race Theory rhetoric, or other forms of political identity filters as part of the hiring process, including as part of applications for employment, promotion and tenure, conditions of employment, or reviewing qualifications for employment.
In other words, there will be accountability, and college professorship will no longer be a liberal jobs program and professors will not be eliminated for failure to be woke enough.
Additionally, the bill bans use of university resources to “promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities…that espouse diversity, equity, and inclusion or Critical Race Theory rhetoric,” whether directly or through grants, contracts, or service agreements. Done are the days when taxpayer money can be used to support liberal causes.
The times, they are a changin’