Florida Worldwide College’s Board of Trustees voted final week to drop 22 programs from the core curriculum, together with Anthropology of Race & Ethnicity, Introduction to LGBTQ+ Research, and Sociology of Gender. The transfer follows final yr’s passage of SB 266, a sweeping increased ed invoice that, amongst different issues, limits the scope of common schooling programs permitted at public universities.
The FIU vote handed regardless of issues by school and the American Affiliation of College Professors, who allege that directors are overstepping on curricular issues, that are historically the purview of the professoriate. Solely two trustees voted towards the transfer.
Critics have raised many issues about Florida’s SB 266, which lower off funding for variety, fairness and inclusion programming, launched post-tenure evaluation for school members, and undercut collective bargaining. However its provision to reshape the final schooling curriculum has gone comparatively unnoticed, taking part in out quietly on campuses over the summer season and fall in a course of that some school see as a betrayal of shared governance norms.
The state has already dropped Rules of Sociology from all common schooling choices; final yr state officers declared the self-discipline inherently liberal. Now extra programs are on the chopping block: Beginning subsequent fall, college students throughout Florida’s 40 public establishments may have many fewer gen ed choices to select from, notably on the topics of race, gender, sexuality and variety.
The revisions are pushed by a Florida statute established as a part of SB 266 that states core programs “might not distort important historic occasions or embody a curriculum that teaches id politics … or relies on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent within the establishments of the US and had been created to keep up social, political, and financial inequities.”
Tensions at FIU
In an announcement eventually week’s FIU Board of Trustees assembly, College Senate chair Noël Barengo argued that the curricular revisions appeared to transcend what is named for by state legislation, alleging that the method was clandestinely pushed by the Florida Board of Governors.
“This seems to be … an arbitrary opinion of the [Board of Governors] workers unsupported by something in writing. If the BOG needs to ascertain such a regulation, they will achieve this,” he mentioned. “Nevertheless, this proposed regulation must be correctly vetted, together with a public remark interval. The absence of such written tips makes our job of revising the final schooling curriculum unattainable.”
Till the BOG establishes such tips, he advised that “these pressured adjustments to our [core curriculum] be delayed.”
Barengo additionally disputed the notion that any of the canceled programs included distorted historic occasions or had been primarily based on unproven, speculative or exploratory content material, which might run afoul of state legislation.
Katie Rainwater, a professor within the International and Sociocultural Research Division, teaches two programs that will likely be affected by the change: Introduction to Sociology and Sociology of Gender. She worries about what chopping them from common schooling will imply for college students.
“Studying about race, gender, LGBTQ+ points, problems with low-wage employees is related and vital to our college students,” Rainwater mentioned. “We’re a majority-minority college. Most of our college students come from working-class households. I believe this type of content material helps them make sense of the social world, to grasp techniques of oppression and to find out about social actions which have created potential for folks from these teams to expertise extra freedom. I believe it’s a giant loss.”
However FIU has defended its processes.
At a College Senate assembly final month, Provost Elizabeth Béjar argued the college had labored to incorporate the professoriate within the strategy of dropping or altering programs, noting that she thought different establishments had not engaged school to the identical diploma.
“We’ve accomplished our stage greatest to maintain the college knowledgeable,” Béjar mentioned.
“At FIU we worth and respect school governance,” Jennifer L. Doherty-Restrepo, FIU’s assistant vp for educational planning and accountability, wrote in an announcement to Inside Greater Ed. “The Workplace of the Provost and College Senate convened subject-matter school workgroups in Fall 2023 to evaluation common schooling programs to make sure alignment with the requirements outlined within the relevant state statutes.”
After they recognized which programs to drop or change, “the President and Board of Trustees reviewed and authorized an inventory of common schooling course choices to be thought-about for approval by the Florida Board of Governors,” she wrote.
State Outlook
FIU shouldn’t be alone in making sweeping adjustments to its common schooling curriculum; all Florida’s public establishments had been required to bear related revisions. However few others have reported on or shared their efforts to adjust to SB 266.
Of the dozen members of Florida’s State College System, most didn’t reply to a request for remark from Inside Greater Ed, or didn’t present statements on how adjustments had been enacted. The Florida Board of Governors additionally didn’t reply to a request for remark, and a public data request on revisions throughout all 40 establishments was not fulfilled previous to publication.
In addition to FIU, solely the College of North Florida and Florida A&M College supplied an announcement on the adjustments.
“UNF started an institutional evaluation of its common schooling choices in Fall 2022, which was a semester earlier than the laws was handed. A college-led activity drive was constituted to finish this evaluation, and when the laws was carried out, members of the duty drive remained to draft and evaluation choices for common schooling curriculum choices that adhered to the state’s new tips,” spokesperson Amanda Ennis wrote by electronic mail. “Programs had been eliminated for varied causes, together with in the event that they match the state’s new definitions for the core classes.”
Florida A&M spokesperson Alonda Thomas shared a hyperlink to course adjustments and cuts authorized final month. “We weren’t adversely affected by the final course adjustments,” she wrote. “The method concerned collaboration between program school, program leaders, and the Division of Tutorial Affairs to evaluation current common schooling programs and guarantee they conform to institutional and State necessities.”
Native and nationwide media have largely ignored the story, apart from some protection on adjustments to common schooling programs at Florida Atlantic College and the College of South Florida.
However the matter has attracted the eye of the American Affiliation of College Professors.
Isaac Kamola, director of the AAUP’s Heart for the Protection of Tutorial Freedom and a political science professor at Trinity School in Connecticut, spoke nearly to the FIU Board of Trustees eventually week’s assembly. He raised issues that the “College Senate was bypassed” and that revisions had been pushed by BOG workers.
In an interview with Inside Greater Ed, Kamola pointed to SB 266 for example of a legislative assault on increased schooling, which he has written about prior to now. Kamola cited the sweeping adjustments carried out throughout Florida in response to the legislation, from the closure of DEI workplaces to content material restrictions, which he views as an assault on educational freedom.
“This appears to be one other instance of the Legislature giving larger authority to political appointees to make choices over all points of the college, together with curriculum,” he mentioned.
Kevin Grove, a geography professor at FIU, supplied an identical view.
Grove mentioned the revisions are a part of a long-term effort “to dismantle increased schooling and impose ideological agendas and to impose state censorship on what will be taught inside public increased schooling techniques that’s being directed from the very best ranges of state authorities.”
Although none of his lessons had been affected, Grove is anxious about FIU’s International and Sociocultural Research Division. The cross-disciplinary division integrates anthropology, geography and sociology. Well-liked lessons—together with Sociology of Gender —enroll greater than 100 college students, supply a number of sections and function an introduction to the self-discipline. With out these programs, departmental numbers will fall, and fewer majors will probably enroll with out an introductory class. As numbers fall, so will the funding that flows from the state to particular person departments.
However Grove suspects that’s exactly the purpose of scaling again common schooling course choices.
“As they’re faraway from the core curriculum, you’re going to see a man-made enrollment crater that’s being manufactured by the Board of Governors. This has long-term implications, not just for the well being of departments, however for the very existence of departments comparable to sociology, anthropology, ladies and gender research, African American and diaspora research,” Grove mentioned. “These are all packages whose very existence may very well be known as into query sooner or later.”
