Politics | Education
Saving America’s Universities From Incremental Politicization
Why intellectual censorship is a burgeoning threat to democracy.
I recently attended a department party for the University of South Florida. We hung out at a professor’s beautiful home, which was filled with colorful objects from global travels and trinkets from archaeological digs. My partner is an assistant professor, so I’m often the plus one and get a front row seat to university drama, and feel a bit uneducated in the process.
The home owner was celebrating being cancer free for 20 years, and publishing 220 articles since his diagnosis, hence the party’s name, The 20/220 Party. While there, I met a professor from the infamous New College, which is only an hour away. The school is a flashpoint in Governor DeSantis’s war against higher education or, as he calls it, “The War Against Woke”. The governor replaced its entire school board with hardline conservative supporters. One third of New College’s professors left within a year of the new draconian policies, leaving the school scrambling to find replacements.
The professor I spoke with had filled one of those many vacancies, and admitted to feeling like a bit of a sellout. He went on about the strange things happening on campus, with…
