Hands off University of Florida’s curriculum on race — and anything else, lawmakers | Opinion
Some days, I hardly recognize the University of Florida, my beloved alma mater.
If any institution in this state was going to stand up to the unrelenting threats inflicted on our democracy by political ambition, I thought UF would be the one.
Through the decades, the university has been a beacon of openness, a pillar of academic freedom, leaders and promoters for Florida’s public records and Sunshine Laws, to name an area of national distinction.
Yet, here we are, another week and another political battle is brewing at the university, this time over how the teaching of critical race theory might impact vital state funding from the GOP-led and dominated Florida Legislature.
Anti-critical race theory bills
At a time when Republican lawmakers are introducing bills to quash CRT discussions in state institutions, instead of standing on the side of academic freedom, university officials have asked faculty members to not use the words “critical” and “race” in curricula to avoid political backlash.
So claims UF College of Education Associate Professor Chris Busey in a grievance filed through the faculty union.
I can understand the concerns over legislators taking away funding as punishment, but submitting to blackmail is hardly admirable.
Silencing and censuring professors is shameful enough in itself, but doing so to enable elected leaders to enact laws that weaken our democracy is unforgivable.
More damaging political stunts
And it seems like operating at Tallahassee’s behest — to the detriment of faculty and, ultimately, the students not served — is becoming a trend at UF.
Only a few weeks ago, university officials tried to pull another damaging political stunt.
They prohibited three political science professors from testifying in a voting-rights lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration. After a national uproar and a federal lawsuit on grounds of First Amendment violations, the university rescinded its ban.
But the damage to UF’s reputation was done.
And there’s more.
Before these last two incidents, DeSantis and his administration, I’m told by a source in the medical field, also used UF to ram through an appointment for the governor’s questionable new surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, at the UF College of Medicine.
“The new surgeon general is an ideologue and zealot, making him perfect for DeSantis,” this insider told me. “Faculty there are aghast and remorseful — and fearful of retaliation if they speak out.”
A Faculty Senate committee report released Monday gathers even more serious allegations that affect public safety, including that researchers felt “external pressure” to destroy COVID-19 data and faced “barriers” in accessing, analyzing and publishing numbers.
When answering media queries about the highly contagious, deadly disease, UF employees were told “not to criticize the Governor of Florida or UF policies related to COVID-19.”
The report by a six-member panel concluded that these problems “inhibited the ability of faculty to contribute scientific findings during a world-wide pandemic.”
Unforgivable.
Clearly, DeSantis and his lawmakers are all too comfortable using a nationally, top-five ranked public university as a tool for their partisan errands. And they’re putting that ranking at risk by exerting undue influence and meddling with academic freedom.
What UF stands for
Forgive me for taking it all personally, but I feel as if my hard-earned degree has been tarnished. And a question comes to mind: Should I return my Distinguished Alumni medal?
After all, our politics don’t coincide.
I’m on the side of the basic American founding principles I was taught at UF to defend. And no, one of them wasn’t to hide the inhumanity of slavery, the ugly side to the birthing of this country, America’s original sin, along with the genocide of Native Americans. And I certainly wasn’t taught at the College of Journalism to hide racism’s lingering, generational effects on modern-day USA.
In fact, even when it wasn’t diverse at all back in the late 1970s and 80s, the university had African American and women’s issues studies. Now we’re harking back to...what exactly?
The people that university officials are working so hard to please, on the other hand, stand for total political domination of the state. There’s nothing sacred on the road to turning Florida not just red, but very red. Not voting rights, not fair representation in redistricting, not the right to protest.
Critical race theory is only the latest target, one of the dog-whistle political talking points along the midterm campaign trail Republicans want to pound. Most people don’t even know what it really is, and the GOP counts on ignorance to exaggerate its controversial aspects.
Republican leaders like DeSantis and GOP party chair Sen. Joe Gruters of Sarasota are in a perennial state of anxiety over the national reckoning with race and racial issues. They don’t even hide it.
“Garbage,” Gruters calls CRT.
In their view, teaching the horrible truths about slavery and discussing the inequities still ingrained in society today somehow offends the sensibilities of their white children.
UF’s role isn’t to be the nanny to their insecurities.
The GOP bid to exert political control over education calls for courage, not cowardice, University of Florida.
If anything, the university should be sounding the warning bells through scholarship and placing its efforts where they belong — in the study of the rise of right-wing extremism in F-L-O-R-I-D-A.
Then, maybe again we can shout with pride, go Gators!
This story was originally published December 3, 2021 at 1:06 PM.
