FIU professors weigh showdown with DeSantis over ‘censored’ sociology course
Professors at Florida International University are debating whether to pick a fight with the DeSantis administration over a state-created sociology curriculum that places substantial limits on how race and gender can be taught in one of the subject’s foundational courses.
At issue for FIU’s sociology department is a new ultimatum from the Miami school’s top academic officer: teach the state’s version of the class, or oust it from the university’s general-education curriculum at the risk of cratering enrollment and tuition revenue.
Faculty now must decide whether to defy Gov. Ron DeSantis or adopt a top-down proposal they say runs roughshod over academic freedom and waters down honest classroom discussions about identity and structural inequality.
“The censored version didn’t live up to the standards of the field,” sociology professor Matthew Marr told the Herald/Times on Tuesday after a heated Faculty Senate meeting. “That’s doing a disservice to our students. We’re giving them a subpar, poor curriculum.”
The curricular tug-of-war unfolding on South Florida’s flagship public campus is the latest example of how faculty and administrators across the state are grappling with Republican-backed restrictions intended to steer curriculum away from progressive orthodoxy.
The clash at FIU’s Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday centered on a directive by the university’s provost, Elizabeth Béjar, to adopt a new state-designed framework for “Introduction to Sociology.” The proposal aims to bring the class into compliance with a 2023 state law aimed at scrubbing “identity politics” from core general-education courses.
“We can teach our students what we want — as long as it’s not in the core,” Béjar told faculty senators. “If it’s in the core, we have to comply with state regulations.”
The new curricular framework, issued by the State University System’s Board of Governors, includes a template syllabus and a heavily edited version of Florida’s existing sociology textbook that removed nearly 400 pages related to race, class and gender.
The materials emerged from a fuzzy process driven by a statewide “working group” composed of six sociology professors and education officials from the DeSantis administration. At one point, Education Commissioner Stasi Kamoutsas removed a professor from the group after complaints about teaching “instructional content which promotes gender ideology” in his “Introduction to Sociology” course.
The Board of Governors previously voted in 2023 to nix the introductory class from the university system’s six core-course requirements. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has long derided sociology as a squishy subject run amok by left-wing ideas, called the removal “sensible.”
State officials have suggested that sociology departments could sidestep the restrictions by offering introductory sociology as an elective rather than a general-education requirement. But general-education courses play a pivotal role in a department’s ability to recruit potential majors, pull in tuition revenue and negotiate hiring additional faculty.
In a broader sense, FIU faculty say acceding to Tallahassee would set a dangerous precedent and be a disservice to students.
“They are not going to get the rich choices that contribute to a liberal arts foundation,” a social work professor, Jennifer Abeloff, told the Herald/Times Tuesday. In Abeloff’s view, resisting the state’s approach is necessary.
“If you don’t stand up, you’re complicit.” Abeloff said. “And, also, things will spread.”
The dispute came to a head Tuesday when faculty senators considered a proposal to remove introductory sociology from the general-education curriculum over adjunct faculty teaching the course — a move some described as an administrative “loophole” to avoid the content fight.
Marr, the sociology professor, said adjuncts are teaching the course because full-time faculty are refusing to teach the “censored” content. Senators ultimately tabled the proposal, punting discussion of the issue to its next meeting rather than decide the course’s status Tuesday.
Tuesday’s meeting follows a contentious back-and-forth between Béjar and academic leaders at Florida International over the state’s reworked sociology curriculum.
In January, the Faculty Senate endorsed a six-page letter by the FIU’s Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies arguing that the state proposal omitted “core sociological concepts,” including race and structural inequality, that are essential for students pursuing careers or graduate study in the field.
The letter also disclosed that full-time sociology faculty declined to teach the introductory course amid the political environment, leaving adjunct instructors to “take on the risks of teaching under the watch of the state.”
Faculty senators also passed a resolution urging FIU’s administration to, among other things, refrain from developing a “uniform syllabus or reading list for any course for any reason” or form a group “designed to curtail faculty academic freedom.”
The provost deflected.
In a March 4 letter, Béjar wrote that the Faculty Senate had acted “intentionally and irresponsibly under the cover of academic freedom,” basing its motions on “factual inaccuracies and inflammatory inferences.” Among those claims, she wrote, was the suggestion that the state-created syllabus was mandatory.
Béjar added that she would “immediately request” a review of how the introductory course is currently being taught to ensure compliance with state rules.
“At this institution we regard academic freedom as a foundational principle,” she wrote. “However, it is not absolute and should not be invoked to encourage conduct that conflicts with state law or institutional obligations.”
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