Last year, lawmakers passed legislation that requires universities and state colleges to “annually assess the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity at that institution” through a survey created by DeSantis-appointed state bureaucrats. One must wonder what his administration will do with the survey results — and we doubt universities won’t pay the price if they are deemed too liberal. The state will compile and publish that information starting on Sept. 1. The new law also allows students to secretly record professors for use in a criminal or civil proceeding.
The point of House Bill 233 is to prevent universities from shielding students from “ideas and opinions that they may find uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.” That sounds great on paper. But what “diverse” points of views will professors be forced to entertain? As a University of Florida computer science professor explained to the Herald, could a geography instructor be challenged by a student who believes the Earth is flat?
This new law is only one piece in efforts to reshape education according to an ideological mold. House Bill 7 will regulate classroom instructions on race and gender. Universities risk losing funding, for example, over lessons that may be construed as telling college students they bear responsibility and “must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex or national origin.” DeSantis dubbed the law the “Stop WOKE Act,” but it might be best described as the “Snowflake act.”