Florida’s House Bill 999 offers a terrifying preview of the conservative agenda for higher education. The bill, which was passed in early May as this issue of The Progressive goes to print, would grant the Florida Board of Governors sweeping control over course content, employment, and programming across the state’s public universities. It would transform the state’s public education system into an incubator for far-right politics.
The bill joins a wave of legislation across the country attacking gender studies and critical race theory (CRT), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and academic tenure. It builds on Republicans’ long-standing efforts targeting K-12 education. The same day HB 999 was passed, Florida’s Senate voted to expand last year’s Parental Rights in Education law, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Conservatives’ three-part strategy for colleges and universities targets different components of campus life—teaching, student services, and faculty employment—but together they conspire to make higher education a hostile environment for people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups. In the long run, such measures will compromise the education of all students, prevent schools from attracting faculty and funding, and increase bias within and beyond higher education.
New College of Florida offers an instructive—and terrifying—precedent. Until this year, the Sarasota liberal arts school was known as a haven for queer and transgender students. In January, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis filled New College’s board of trustees, which governs the school, with conservative activists. They immediately ousted the college president and replaced her with a Republican politician, Richard Corcoran.
Following the same playbook as conservative legislators, Corcoran and his administration have focused on abolishing DEI, weakening faculty governance, and censoring classroom content. They dissolved the office in charge of diversity and equity and fired the chief diversity officer and the college librarian. They denied tenure to five faculty members whose cases the prior administration had already approved. The college has also received $15 million from the state legislature for student scholarships and to recruit faculty who will overhaul the curriculum.
This weaponization of education is a core component of conservatives’ political strategy. That’s not an opinion; it’s a quote. When Corcoran spoke last year at Hillsdale College in Michigan, he told the audience, “Education is our sword. That’s our weapon.” By no coincidence, Hillsdale is the conservative Christian school after which New College’s “reform” is modeled.
Other members of New College’s new leadership have echoed Corcoran’s sentiments. Christopher Rufo, a rightwing strategist and now New College trustee, described his appointment as a start to “reconquering public institutions.” On Twitter, Rufo announced his plan to “recruit new students who are mission-aligned” with “an uncompromising new conservatism.”
The aggressive takeover of higher education by conservatives requires dismantling DEI and CRT programs because access to diverse materials and social contexts fosters critical thinking. Overwhelming evidence shows that research teams with varying backgrounds, areas of expertise, thinking styles, and skill sets are not only more innovative but also come up with more accurate predictions and better solutions.
Mirroring these efforts, Florida’s HB 999 and Senate Bill 266 would enable DeSantis and his allies to pursue some of their New College strategy across the state. The bills would allow the Florida Board of Governors to shape the curriculum for all twelve universities in the state system.
On May 15, at New College, DeSantis signed SB 266 into law, banning public colleges and universities in Florida from spending state or federal funds on DEI programs.
As of this writing, twenty states have proposed legislation so far this year that would dismantle DEI initiatives. States that have already passed laws censoring college teaching—what PEN America calls “educational gag orders”—include Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Tennessee. North Carolina legislators introduced a bill to end tenure at all public universities and colleges. In Texas, where I live, state senators have passed bills on all three measures, attacking CRT, DEI, and tenure.
If conservative politicians seize control of state college systems, the educational, financial, and cultural fallout will hurt everyone.
If conservative politicians seize control of state college systems, the educational, financial, and cultural fallout will hurt everyone.
Dismantling DEI programs will deprive all students—not just people of color and queer folks—of crucial resources. DEI represents a wide range of initiatives that ensure people can participate more fully in their roles on campus. It is central to resources like food pantries; support for veterans and first-generation, rural, and disabled students; mental and physical health care; and offices that address harassment or violence.
Without offices and programs to facilitate equitable working and learning conditions, public universities will be exposed to expensive lawsuits. Legal experts are already debating whether anti-DEI measures will make it harder for institutions to defend against discrimination claims.
Politicians frame academic concepts such as systemic racism and queer theory as “divisive,” but in reality, they’re established areas of study steeped in peer-reviewed research.
By ignoring pressing social problems, educational gag orders could make universities ineligible for major educational or research grants. Prestigious awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Education Association, and the MacArthur Foundation require recipients to address matters of diversity and inclusion or to tackle structural inequities along the lines of race, gender, and disability.
Finally, eliminating tenure makes colleges and universities especially vulnerable to partisan control. As a means of protecting academic freedom, tenure enables professors to pursue unpopular ideas or challenge existing dogma. It is central to educational equity because retaliatory firings have historically been weaponized against minoritized faculty.
Even when not providing protection against overt bigotry, tenure confers the safety and time to pursue visionary work. It enables cutting-edge faculty to push against disciplinary consensus and to undertake projects that take a long time to complete. Universities without tenure will have to provide other costly benefits to compete for leading scholars.
In 2016, when Wisconsin weakened tenure protections, the University of Wisconsin–Madison paid nearly $9 million to retain faculty members who would have otherwise taken $18 million in research grants to other schools. A professor told Wisconsin public radio: “Other universities have basically gone shopping.”
While tenure review was scrapped from the final bills that passed Florida’s House and Senate in May, many states are already looking to poach talent from the state. Writing for the Miami Herald, the provost of New York’s Binghamton University declared his plans to aggressively recruit students and faculty who feel threatened by Florida’s political climate. Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, also offered admission to all New College students and will match their current tuition—a major discount for out-of-state students. Meanwhile, enrollment has fallen at New College.
Elsewhere in Florida, professors report having to censor important course content, searching for other jobs, and discouraging other faculty from coming to their state. In Texas, newspapers have interviewed professors who are leaving or who’ve had trouble recruiting new colleagues for their departments. At the University of Texas at Austin, job applications for the electrical and computer engineering department dropped by 17 percent from last year, despite increased outreach.
Some rightwing leaders might be satisfied with these outcomes. Those who disagree with conservative ideologies will, in Rufo’s words, “self-select” out.
I’m not ready to give up on Texas. I was born here, attended college here, and in 2020, I accepted a position at the University of Texas with every intention of staying. It’s a minority-majority state and is home to the second-largest number of LGBTQ+ people in the United States. The students here are independent thinkers who have consistently resisted the state’s attempts at educational obstruction. Texas Students for DEI, a newly formed student-led coalition, drafted a petition that insists: “We represent every background and deserve to thrive in learning environments that welcome, support, and embrace differences.”
In this respect, Texas looks like the future of this country. In the United States, a majority of K-12 students are now people of color. The number of people identifying as LGBTQ+ increases with each generation. And 26 percent of U.S. adults identify as having a disability. The United States is moving toward a more diverse future, regardless of conservatives’ regressive campaigns.
We need state leaders who will address the needs of a changing country—which includes supporting educators who speak to diverse histories and prepare students for more inclusive futures. We need university leadership that will help grow educational spaces alongside new generations of thinkers and leaders. Without a concerted resistance to rightwing corruption of university governance, conservatives will not only “conquer” but destroy public higher education.