DeSantis: Champion of academic free speech?
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a chilling bill last week giving him the right to police free speech at state universities, said Eric Lutz in VanityFair .com. The new law requires public colleges and universities to survey students, faculty, and staff each year to find out whether “competing ideas and perspectives are presented”—that is, conservative ideas DeSantis agrees with. Arguing that colleges have become “intellectually repressive environments” force-feeding students socialism, Marxism, and “false history” like the 1619 Project, DeSantis claims he’s protecting “free speech” on campus. His authoritarian survey will do just the opposite, said Sarah Jones in NYMag.com. DeSantis threatened that if survey results disappoint him and Republican legislators, “budget cuts could be looming.” At least DeSantis “is an honest warrior” with a clear goal: “punishing speech he doesn’t like.”
Actually, this survey will address a real problem, said Scott Shackford in Reason.com. It will gauge ideological diversity on campus, and whether people “feel free to express their beliefs.” Isn’t that how liberals would describe the bedrock ideals of higher education? Critics of DeSantis claim he’s out to punish liberal professors, but “the entire
First Amendment, and a bunch of Supreme Court case law,” clearly protects professors’ right to say whatever they want. But on many campuses, intellectual repression is becoming the norm, with some rather mainstream ideas and beliefs being deemed microaggressions or “hate speech” that must be silenced. A recently exposed University of Oklahoma training session encouraged professors to tell students, “You don’t have the right to say that, stop talking right now.” Is that really how we want taxpayer-supported colleges to operate?
What a hypocrite DeSantis is, said Charles Pierce in Esquire.com. He recently signed a law banning critical racial theory from being taught in Florida public schools. How’s that for intellectual diversity? DeSantis is an “opportunistic charlatan” who knows that “ginned-up hysteria over imaginary educational bogeyfolk” will play well on Fox News. After impressing conservatives by keeping most of Florida open during the pandemic, said Chris Cillizza in CNN.com, DeSantis is throwing more red meat to the Trump base with this attack on colleges. DeSantis is running neck and neck with the former president in 2024 straw polls, and it’s clear that DeSantis “is actively positioning himself to be the rightful heir to Trumpism.”