Last week, officials ordered several public universities in Florida to examine courses for “antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias,” reported The Chronicle.
The directive, issued on Friday, ordered the leaders of 12 public universities in the State University System of Florida to provide the system’s board of governors with a list of “related instructional materials” for any course whose description or syllabus contains the keywords Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, and Jews.
In a follow-up email sent later that day, the system’s chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, clarified that schools should instead have a faculty committee “review relevant course resources such as textbooks and test banks for either antisemitic material and/or anti-Israeli bias before the beginning of fall semester,” according to The Chronicle.
Rodrigues added that the goal was to “look at courses on terrorism, Middle Eastern studies, religion, and government,” using a keyword search method to “ensure that all universities are reviewing the same courses, and nothing falls through the cracks.” Faculty are expected to review the course content, “flag all instances of either antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias identified, and report that information to my office.”
According to The Chronicle, “Rodrigues’s email did not say how the faculty review should be carried out, how ‘antisemitism’ or ‘anti-Israeli bias’ would be defined or assessed, or what will happen to courses that are deemed to include such content. It’s also unclear who or what began this process.”
The directive highlights the intense pressure university officials are facing to stamp out disfavored views on Israel, even months after controversial anti-Israel demonstrations swept many American college campuses. It is also unsurprising that this kind of speech-quashing order came from Florida, considering Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attempts to censor disfavored views on race, gender, and other controversial subjects in a doomed provision of the Stop WOKE Act.
The order, in addition to being obviously unconstitutional, puts universities in a particularly nasty bind. If schools comply—and especially if they end up forcing professors to change the content of their courses over allegations of anti-Israel bias or antisemitism—they’re likely to face lawsuits from censored professors.
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