Florida’s crackdown on higher education

On Feb. 21, House Bill 999 was introduced in the Florida Legislature, the latest in a slew of proposals aimed at reshaping the state’s public university system. PEN America maintains that the bill contains “the most draconian and censorious restrictions” yet, highlighting that it would ban majors and minors that espouse certain “belief systems” and allow political appointees far removed from the classroom to hire and fire professors at will.

One might, in fact, read the proposed law as a striking rebuke to the approximately 340,000 people studying at Florida’s 12 public universities, and the thousands of high school students who aspire to do so. All of them, HB999 suggests, need select government officials to dictate which information and resources they may access on campus. Incapable of making their own choices about rejecting or embracing certain ideas, their freedoms and opportunities should be more limited than many of their private university counterparts and fellow citizens.

The underlined portions of the draft legislation — the points HB999 aims to introduce to Florida law — are breathtaking in scope. Equally provocative are the sections of text crossed out in the draft — words it aims to remove from state law.

Take, for example, the bill’s section on the mandate of an institute for the study of politics at Florida State University. HB999 would strike from law its previously stated purpose — “to provide the southeastern region of the United States with a world class, bipartisan, nationally renowned institute of politics.”

Leaving the institute’s mission undetermined, the bill alters its goals. It should no longer aim to broadly “provide students with an opportunity to be politically active and civically engaged,” but instead, should, more pointedly, “foster an understanding of how individual rights, constitutionalism, separation of powers, and federalism function.” Some existing mandates of the institute — for example, that it should “create and promote research and awareness regarding politics, citizen involvement, and public service” — are stricken with no new suggested language.

Removing from the record terms like “civically engaged” and “bipartisan,” and prescribing a set of acceptable topics of study, raises questions. Are legislators aiming to limit the viewpoints that students can access? Do they intend to take away opportunities for them to learn about “citizen involvement” and “public service”? Why?

Compare HB999’s proposed language with the expansive mission statement of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, the prestigious private school where Gov. Ron DeSantis studied history. Among other aims, it strives to “inform democratic deliberation” and “illuminate new frontiers of knowledge.”

Of course, university institutes — and what they choose to emphasize about their missions — are unique, and state institutions may have more limited resources than well-endowed private ones.

Still, it is useful to consider the implications of empowering people who happen to control state legislatures to dictate which topics and perspectives can be accessed by students at relatively affordable schools.

Although the way HB999 re-imagines institutes is telling, it is also only a small part of the bill’s grand mission.

Peppered throughout the proposed law are now fiery terms like “critical race theory.” But HB999 does not just prohibit students from having the freedom to reject, accept or debate certain ideas in their core classes or during campus programs. As the edits related to the FSU institute suggest, it mandates doctrines of its own.

For example, all public university students would need to complete required general education courses, which, according to the bill, “may not … include a curriculum … that defines American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”

Such bewildering terms are reminiscent of those included in House Bill 7, passed by the Florida Legislature in 2022, portions of which have since been deemed unconstitutional by federal Judge Mark E. Walker.

Current and prospective public university students in Florida who expect to have freedoms at least equal to their fellow citizens, and their peers at private schools, may find hope in Walker’s ruling that, “The First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to … impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.”