Colleges have become cesspools of left-wing indoctrination.
The Sunshine State has begun to fight back.
And woke Florida colleges were forced to make one big change that left professors fuming.
Florida colleges drop woke classes after Ron DeSantis law
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has made it a top priority to root out woke indoctrination out of education.
He is trying to return the focus of schools to their original mission of education versus advancing a left-wing political agenda.
DeSantis signed Senate Bill 266 last year which banned diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at Florida’s public institutions of higher education.
The law banned state or federal funding to Florida colleges from being used for DEI or political activism.
“You don’t just get to take taxpayer dollars and do whatever the heck you want to do and think that’s somehow OK,” DeSantis said when he signed the bill in 2023.
Critical race theory, radical gender ideologies, and other DEI subjects were banned from college classrooms under the law.
“Florida is getting out of that game,” DeSantis said at the time. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley — go to some of these other places.”
Now, Florida colleges are starting to eliminate general education courses for the next year that run afoul of the law.
There are introductory courses that every college student is required to take for their degrees.
Classes such as Anthropology of Race & Ethnicity and Sociology of Gender are getting the axe for the 2025-26 school year for degree requirements.
Educational establishment fuming over losing the ability to push a political agenda
“If their subject matter is prohibited by statute but is compelling, then students are going to elect to take it,” university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said .“But what is not going to happen in Florida — the students are not going to be forced to take courses that have these prohibited concepts in order to fulfill their general education requirements.”
The law states that general education classes in areas like math, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences “may not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.”
One of the first changes under the law was that sociology was replaced as a general education requirement with history.
“This sort of state overreach could spell disaster for student and faculty retention, and the academic standing of Florida institutions,” PEN American official Katie Blankenship whined.
Classes that are getting eliminated from the approved general education coursework are of questionable academic value.
Florida Atlantic University is getting rid of Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion along with the History of Food and Eating as graduation requirements.
These courses will still be available as electives for students.
Professors have called the change an assault on academic freedom.
Rodrigues pointed out that the law is only about not forcing students to take these woke classes.
“An infringement on academic freedom would be to say this course can’t be offered at the university,” Rodrigues said. “No one has said that in any of these scenarios. What we are saying is, we define what is general education. We define that based upon what the state statutes have laid out and we’re being compliant with that.”
College students in Florida can avoid being forced to take useless classes that just serve as avenues of left-wing indoctrination.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
