During my twenty-six years of teaching at Florida State University, I have witnessed extensive changes in the pedagogical landscape; no past shifts, however, have been as destabilizing and troubling as those that teachers have been facing in Florida since 2022. The state legislature’s invasive and pervasive laws targeting higher education have undermined faculty members’ core sense of purpose and their control over curriculum. New laws in Florida purport to uphold academic freedom, but in practice these measures curtail faculty members’ role in decisions about what and how to teach. By sharing personal reflections on the chilling effects of this climate of censorship on my teaching, I aim, here, to reflect on how the “culture wars” (to use James Davison Hunter’s expression) are reshaping humanistic teaching and curricula in Florida—from a faculty-centered system to a state-controlled system—and to offer advice about how faculty members can navigate this terrain.
As a tenured full professor, I recognize that Florida’s laws do not affect me the same way they might affect less-senior instructional staff members, especially my non-tenure-track and part-time colleagues. I have benefited from continuous employment, contingent on my passing of annual and sustained performance reviews, so my income is not precarious. Until recently, tenure protected me; now, however, post-tenure review has weakened my job security.1 New legal measures bring the possibility of intense scrutiny on curricula and department enrollment—or the superintendence of outside auditors, accreditors, or state regulators—which could result in restrictions on the courses I teach, or even the cancellation of the programs in which I teach. Even so, I feel compelled to share my perspective on these issues (of course, I do so as an individual rather than on behalf of my home institution). For now, being tenured gives me a moral obligation to support colleagues, to develop curriculum, to teach courses that others are more reticent to teach, and to continue providing spaces for undergraduate and graduate students to explore a wide range of ideas, in all their complexity. Not all faculty members share my response to the current climate; I know some who believe that classrooms have become too politicized and that the trend to reel in humanities departments will restore an equilibrium from a previous (golden?) age. While those are not my views, I respect my colleagues who see the situation differently.
When Ron DeSantis assumed his second term as governor of Florida in 2022, he identified education as “a major pillar of Florida’s future” and positioned himself as a leader in education reform (“Governor Ron DeSantis’ State of the State Address”). His plan began in earnest in July 2022, when the Florida State Legislature passed House Bill 7, the Individual Freedom Act (also known as the Stop WOKE Act or the Anti-critical-race Theory Bill), which restricts instruction on topics related to race and gender. A regulation governing post-tenure review took effect at the same time (see State University System of Florida). Senate Bill 266, passed by the 2023 legislature, banned state funding for “programs or campus activities that . . . advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion” (sec. 4) and regulated general education courses (secs. 9 and 10). This legislation also expands the power of university boards and presidents, at the expense of faculty self-governance. Also passed that year to control the spread of so-called wokeism, House Bill 931 banned diversity statements or “political loyalty tests.” The prioritization of the Western canon (which remains undefined in the legislation) is another key component of Florida’s reshaping of higher education (e.g., in Statutes 1007.25 and 1007.55). Some of the governor’s actions have targeted specific institutions, such as New College: DeSantis appointed trustees who fired New College’s president, Patricia Okker, and replaced her with a DeSantis supporter, Richard Corcoran, who previously vied for the presidency at Florida State University. The governor’s authoritarian approach to higher education and his attempt to control the curriculum has had a chilling effect on me, and on other faculty members in Florida; the actions at New College, Florida’s only public liberal arts college, signaled to us that higher education is the new battleground for the culture wars. The academic freedom I long took for granted, as a tenured faculty member at a research university, was under attack. That attack, so far, has effectively fomented a climate of uncertainty and anxiety among faculty members in all sectors, across the state, in the face of a new form of political correctness.
Laws that target higher education in Florida form an interconnected and dangerously restricting web. Without a clear understanding of what is forbidden, faculty members are self-censoring to avoid crossing an invisible line in the sand. If the Individual Freedom Act (House Bill 7), which is currently in litigation, is fully implemented, it would prohibit instruction that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” students to believe any of eight “specified concepts” (each based on race, color, sex, or national origin; sec. 2, pt. 4(a)), because such instruction would be presumptively discriminatory under the amended statute. The bill proscribes teaching in such a way that makes students feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.” The bill requires each university in the Florida State University System to create a regulation to implement the statute.2 Many of my colleagues and I have experienced that House Bill 233, on “viewpoint diversity,” which passed in 2021 and authorizes students to record, but not publish, “class lectures” without the instructor’s consent (sec. 3(g)), has had the effect of chilling speech in the classroom. Other laws have restricted expenditures related to diversity and inclusion, union dues and certification, hiring of certain foreign nationals as faculty members or graduate teaching assistants, and post-tenure review (e.g., Senate Bill 256, Senate Bill 846, and Statute 1004.06; see “State Board”; Moody, “DEI Spending”).
In early January 2023, the state legislature asked my university to submit spending data on courses and programs related to diversity and inclusion, presumably in pursuit of regulation; two of the courses I teach were on the list the university generated. It did not seem to matter that the titles of these courses, until recently, would have been unremarkable: French Women Writers, and Literature and Sexuality. When I created the course French Women Writers in the late 1990s, there were no courses on women writers offered in the French program at Florida State University, where I was a new hire. I specified in the course description that the content would address “race, gender, and class,” to indicate the course’s intersectional approach to world literature by women of French expression taught in translation. In my original version of this class, I included works in translation such as Claire de Duras’s Ourika and Simone Schwarz-Bart’s The Bridge of Beyond (Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle; Bray). The course has been revamped since then, but the catalog description remained unchanged. The tide has turned, and terms such as race, gender, and class (or intersectional, for that matter) that were once torchbearers are now red flags.
In early summer 2024, the university determined that the course descriptions and learning objectives of these two courses—both part of the statewide general-education curriculum—needed to be revised to conform to university regulations for compliance with new state legislation. Alignment with the Western canon must feature clearly in course descriptions. It was suggested that I find broader substitutes for terms such as race, class, and gender, as well as the term sexual identity; I did so expediently, since I would like to continue to offer these courses in the general-education curriculum. Was that the right decision? I was offered the choice of teaching the courses without revision and preemptively removing them from the offerings available to fulfill statewide standards, but I declined. It turns out this was a false choice, as I learned this fall: some thirty courses offered by my department (including the courses I teach) have been stripped of their humanities general-education designation, leaving only three options to fulfill the requirement though coursework in modern languages. What further restrictions will be imposed incrementally to reduce students’ choice and agency? Will the governor or legislature scrutinize courses approved by individual institutions as part of university-specific or department-specific requirements?
The academic freedom I long took for granted, as a tenured faculty member at a research university, was under attack. That attack, so far, has effectively fomented a climate of uncertainty and anxiety among faculty members in all sectors, across the state, in the face of a new form of political correctness.
No one has told me that I cannot teach these courses; on the contrary, colleagues have encouraged me to continue to offer them, reminding me that student interest in these subjects has not changed. Still, I am worried about censorship of course material and class lectures on intersectional feminism and identity politics. We are on a slippery slope, and I don’t know whether we are at its base or its crest. Faced with this dilemma, I offer the following four pieces of advice to faculty members in the humanities.
1. Get Involved in Curriculum Approval
Who decides what should be taught and how curricula are approved in your state and at your university? Until recently, I believed I was free to implement the pedagogical strategies and best practices suited to my goals. I have come to understand the tensions that underlie faculty ownership of the curriculum: courses are initially created by individual faculty members, reviewed and approved by department and college-level faculty committees and the faculty senate, then submitted to the Florida Board of Governors for final approval. While the state oversees the general education curriculum in Florida, each institution can implement additional university-wide requirements. Since courses are hosted by specific institutions and for the most part exist only within those frameworks, universities own curricular offerings. Take the time to understand who approves curricula and how they are approved at your institution; then consider if and how new legislation impacts these approval procedures.
Faculty members at public institutions are more subject to government regulation than their counterparts at private institutions are. We serve the state’s educational needs, we depend on state funding, and we are state employees. Because of the interdependence of state government and educational institutions in Florida, the general-education curriculum is controlled by the state, even while faculty members also claim a sense of ownership over what courses are taught: we are invested in the academic mission of the university, and courses are generally proposed by faculty members, not administrators. Government overreach into areas where the faculty members feel they should be in control goes to the heart of the matter. The legislation passed in 2022 and 2023 has been perceived as an attack on faculty expertise. Increasingly, faculty members and the university, as instrumentalized by state legislators, are pit against one another.
2. Cultivate a Middle Ground and Avoid Further Polarizing the Issues
When faculty members and policymakers are at odds in a culture war, it may seem as if there’s no room for a middle ground. In January 2023, Governor DeSantis’s website announced legislation that claimed to
elevate civil discourse and intellectual freedom in higher education, further pushing back against the tactics of liberal elites who suppress free thought in the name of identity politics and indoctrination. Amongst its many provisions, the legislation will ensure Florida’s public universities and colleges are grounded in the history and philosophy of Western Civilization; prohibit DEI, CRT and other discriminatory programs and barriers to learning. (“Governor DeSantis”)
No one has told me that I cannot teach these courses; on the contrary, colleagues have encouraged me to continue to offer them, reminding me that student interest in these subjects has not changed. Still, I am worried about censorship of course material and class lectures on intersectional feminism and identity politics. We are on a slippery slope, and I don’t know whether we are at its base or its crest.
Terms such as “tactics” and “indoctrination” in this announcement imply militaristic or ideological scheming on the part of “liberal elites”—a term meant to lump faculty members into one privileged camp. Colin Dickey’s essay on the word indoctrination as applied to education, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in June 2024, shows the long-standing and deep-seated distrust of institutions of learning in DeSantis’s loaded language. DeSantis’s rhetoric, which performs and creates the very divisiveness it condemns, fuels the culture wars rather than abates them. Partisan politics and the new culture wars dominate discussions about higher education in the public sphere, and polarization shapes the debate in unhealthy ways. My colleague Robin Truth Goodman recently published an article on her experience as a plaintiff in a case against the intellectual viewpoint diversity legislation (House Bill 233). Goodman is spot on when she writes that such legislation reduces scholarly inquiry to partisan advocacy and defines the pursuit of knowledge as a two-track enterprise that pits liberal ideas against conservative ideas, with no middle ground. As Andrew Gothard, president of the United Faculty of Florida, told Inside Higher Ed, “If you actually believe in freedom of thought, we shouldn’t be banning any subject matter” (qtd. in Moody, “DeSantis Higher Ed Bill”). As a teacher-scholar grounded in French critical theory (especially poststructuralism and deconstruction), I am reminded how binary oppositions are defined by mutual exclusion, and that cultivating difference often requires nonbinary thinking.
The trickle-down effect of partisan politics in the public sphere affects department culture as polarized thinking moves into, and dominates, approaches to curricular renewal at the department and program levels. Should individual faculty members make diversity and inclusion primary components of their courses at the risk of retaliation (being reported by students or sanctioned by their institutions)? Should faculty members strategize about word choice or course titles? And how far are individual faculty members prepared to compromise about curriculum when faced with state censorship? Or the flip side, must faculty members become enforcers and see to it that all faculty members make diversity and inclusion part of every course, every lesson they teach? When the middle falls out, the gap between these poles visibly widens, even when the reality remains complicated.
3. Look for Perspective from Historical Trends and Other Contexts
We must stay aware that the war on higher education extends beyond Florida. Some of our colleagues have chosen to leave Florida and seek academic appointments elsewhere; there seems little doubt that these legislative measures are intended to force higher education faculty members out of the profession to make room for more conservative replacements or to shrink humanities programs.3 Will those who move to another state find greener pastures? Few states are entirely immune from political meddling in education. With the rise of nationalism in the last decade, culture wars have also become a global phenomenon. Moreover, the crusade against universities and intellectuals is not a new trend—anti-intellectualism was a notable part of McCarthyism and was common in southern states, including Florida, during the civil rights movement.4 Although understanding the geographic scope and historical longevity of attacks on universities throughout the world does not reduce the confusion, such an understanding does put our current crisis in perspective.
I recently came across an edition of Ourika prepared by Mercer Cook in 1936, when he was a professor of French at Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black institution in the pre-civil-rights South. Originally published in 1824, Duras’s novel tells the story of a formerly enslaved Senegalese child gifted to a noblewoman in France and raised as the noblewoman’s daughter in an all-white aristocratic society. As a teacher-scholar at an HBCU, Cook sought to create French curricula and textbooks that would be meaningful to his African American students. By curating little-known French texts about Black protagonists, Cook laid the groundwork for what would become the global Black French studies curriculum (see Moore). When Cook’s textbook anthology appeared, one review perceived the textbook as threatening “inter-racial relations”: “The most serious adverse criticism is that the book is not one which will promote a better inter-racial feeling. The reviewer felt many times that, were he a Negro, he would feel hatred and a desire for revenge on the white race arising within him” (Mills 249). The reviewer cannot look past his own guilt to see the literary or educational merits of the publication. His comments are remarkably close to the language of House Bill 7, which prohibits instruction of concepts that make individuals feel guilt because of their race. Florida professors may now have less say in what they teach on these topics than Cook did in 1936.
The curriculum is and has been a prime site for a tug-of-war between stakeholders in a politically divided country. Comparing our circumstances with those in other historical or geographic contexts is a useful pedagogical strategy to approach an emotionally charged topic.
4. Be Intentional about Not Being Neutral or Objective as a Modern Language Teacher and Scholar
At issue in the culture-wars debate is faculty members’ ability to remain impartial—meaning that their commitment to present all sides of an issue, to provide evidence-based arguments, to maintain a space for open discussion, and ultimately to promote “intellectual freedom” (in the sense that DeSantis uses the term; see “Governor DeSantis”) is in doubt.5 I find the research of Julie A. Reuben helpful as I try to understand guidance I receive from my administration, and as I consider the risks of indoctrinating my students if I am not neutral. On indoctrination, Reuben writes, “When critics say that faculty members are indoctrinating students, they point to instructors who explicitly share their political views, typically in courses related to race, gender and other charged topics. Critics believe that faculty members who share their political views do so to make their students adopt those views.” She goes on to explain that it was once the norm to remain impartial, but younger scholars have “challenge[d] the presumption that maintaining apparent neutrality avoids indoctrination.” This group of younger scholars prefers to be more transparent and expects that students will, as Reuben recounts, be “better able to critically assess what they [are] taught when professors [are] transparent about their own beliefs.” Reuben’s research, however, shows that those who opt for transparency are more likely to be charged with indoctrinating students, even though a superficially impartial lesson plan may be designed to impart a liberal (or conservative) worldview as well.
In the humanities classroom, sharing one’s perspective on issues and on literary works—indeed, communicating one’s passion about a particular text or one’s partiality for one author over another (whether that is Victor Hugo or Duras)—is more common than in the classrooms of fields such as law, math, or physics. Amid a controversy with no middle ground, I feel it is impossible to remain impartial. Rather, I view the assault on academic freedom as an opportunity to think deeply about, and give voice to, what we do as members of a humanities teaching faculty. We have an opportunity to be intentional about what we are doing in the classroom—to decide what we, as teachers, care deeply about and to communicate our convictions. Faculty members should let students know where they stand on issues of diversity and inclusion, while making it clear how they have arrived at their own conclusions based on experience and evidence, rather than through the adoption of a given mandate. The humanities instill critical thinking and problem-solving skills in students so that students can better evaluate arguments and distinguish fact from fiction, rather than fall back on unexamined beliefs and unfounded arguments. As teachers, we inspire students to practice thinking critically on their own. If I teach Ourika again, I will embrace the opportunity to help students learn to navigate contradictory arguments and gray areas where right and wrong are hard to identify. Renewing the work of Duras and Cook, I will remind students that art, literature, and theater are great means to teach empathy and grapple with nuance.
Notes
I would like to thank Pauline de Tholozany and David Coombs of Clemson University for their kind invitation to deliver an initial version of this paper as part of a workshop series funded by the Teagle Foundation.
1 Tenured faculty members in Florida undergo post-tenure review every five years, according to the State University System of Florida Board of Governors Regulation 10.003(2), to “ensure continued high standards of quality and productivity among the University’s tenured faculty.” I was randomly selected and will undergo post-tenure review in spring 2025.
2 The statute, Chapter 2022-72: Committee Substitute for House Bill No. 7, is available on Florida State University’s website through the Office of Faculty Development and Advancement: fda.fsu.edu/hb7-and-classroom-instruction.
3 See, e.g., Susca et al. It is unclear, however, whether data support the claim that the mass exodus of faculty members is linked primarily to the political climate.
4 For an in-depth treatment of academic freedom at southern institutions, see Williamson-Lott.
5 And to quote some of the guidance I received: “provide a variety of evidence-based arguments,” “maintain a space for open discussion about the concepts,” and “teachers should not make students feel guilty about these concepts.”
Works Cited
Dickey, Colin. “The Specter of Indoctrination.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 June 2024, www.chronicle.com/article/the-specter-of-indoctrination.
Florida State, Legislature. House Bill 7. Florida State Senate, 1 July 2022, www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/7.
———. House Bill 233. Florida State Senate, 1 July 2021, www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/233.
———. House Bill 931. Florida State Senate, 1 July 2023, www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/931.
———. Senate Bill 266. Florida State Senate, 1 July 2023, www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/266.
Goodman, Robin Truth. “Higher Education as the Frontline of Democracy: The Case against Florida House Bill 233, the Anti-shielding/Intellectual Viewpoint Diversity/Student Recording Legislative Act.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, vol. 46, no. 1, 2023, pp. 64–84, https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2023.2245311.
“Governor DeSantis Elevates Civil Discourse and Intellectual Freedom in Higher Education.” Executive Office of Governor Ron DeSantis, 31 Jan. 2023, www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-desantis-elevates-civil-discourse-and-intellectual-freedom-higher.
“Governor Ron DeSantis’ State of the State Address.” Executive Office of Governor Ron DeSantis, 11 Jan. 2022, www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2022/governor-ron-desantis-state-state-address.
Hunter, James Davison. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Basic Books, 1991.
Mills, Gilbert E. Review of Le Noir, by Mercer W. Cook. The Modern Language Journal, vol. 20, no. 4, Jan. 1936, pp. 248–49. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/316031.
Moody, Josh. “DEI Spending Banned, Sociology Scrapped in Florida.” Inside Higher Ed, 18 Jan. 2024, www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/trustees-regents/2024/01/18/dei-spending-banned-sociology-scrapped-florida.
———. “DeSantis Higher Ed Bill Heads for the Legislature.” Inside Higher Ed, 26 Feb. 2023, www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/02/27/new-florida-bill-aims-enact-desantiss-higher-ed-reforms.
Moore, Celeste Day. “‘Every Wide-Awake Negro Teacher of French Should Know’: The Pedagogies of Black Internationalism in the Early Twentieth Century.” New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition, edited by Keisha N. Blain et al., Northwestern UP, 2018, pp. 25–40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv7tq4rv.5.
Reuben, Julie A. “What Is ‘Indoctrination,’ Anyway?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 Feb. 2024, www.chronicle.com/article/what-is-indoctrination-anyway.
“State Board of Education Passes Rule to Permanently Prohibit DEI in the Florida College System.” Florida Department of Education, 17 Jan. 2024, www.fldoe.org/newsroom/latest-news/state-board-of-education-passes-rule-to-permanently-prohibit-dei-in-the-florida-college-system.stml.
State University System of Florida. Active Regulations. Ch. 10, pt. 3, sec. 2, www.flbog.edu/regulations/active-regulations/?fwp_chapters=chapter-10. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024. PDF download.
Susca, Margot, et al. “Why Faculty Members Are Fleeing Florida.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 Dec. 2023, www.chronicle.com/article/why-faculty-members-are-fleeing-florida.
Williamson-Lott, Joy Ann. Jim Crow Campus: Higher Education and the Struggle for a New Southern Social Order. Teachers College P, 2018.
Aimée Boutin is professor of French at Florida State University, where she has been teaching French language and literature, liberal studies, and women’s studies courses since 1998. The author of Maternal Echoes: The Poetry of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Alphonse de Lamartine and City of Noise: Sound and Nineteenth-Century Paris, she specializes in gender, poetry, flaneurism, and sound studies.