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Dr. John W. White
PEN America
At the University of North Florida, where I serve as a professor of education, I was told, along with my colleagues, to alter our syllabi to remove the terms “diversity” “equity” “inclusion” and “culture.” “It’s only three or four words,” the university administrators said. “It’s the law and we must follow the law.”
This semester, it became clear to me that Florida universities, and the faculty who teach there, are being muzzled by zealous policy makers and by over-complying administrators. These four words – “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion,” and “culture” – have been deemed inappropriate as subjects to discuss in a college classroom at University of North Florida. This censorship is a harbinger of what’s to come: a threat to the pursuit of knowledge and academic inquiry everywhere.
There is a growth sector in American higher education. The number of “Civics Centers” has exploded in the last decade, and especially since 2021.
What are these civics centers, and what explains their proliferation now?
Heterodox Academy (HxA), the leading non-partisan higher education reform organization in the US for faculty, staff and students, championing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement, has decided to provide some answers.
In February of this year, a few colleagues and I co-founded a group called Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff (CJFS), which now has more than 200 members on more than two dozen campuses. Our group, which is predominantly made up of academics at Massachusetts colleges and universities but includes members from across New England, is one of several such efforts nationwide that have coalesced into a new National Campus Jewish Alliance.
We recognize that Jewish safety is inseparable from the safety of all people, and we work to foster academic environments that reduce antisemitism by treating educators as partners, not as suspects.
The months since Charlie Kirk’s murder on Utah Valley University’s campus in September have seen a deluge of firings and suspensions of teachers, faculty, and staff across the country for celebrating the assassination, or just for being insufficiently mournful. As the dust settles and court cases proceed, more details are emerging about the political pressures universities faced to punish protected political expression.
In Iowa, lawmakers were so incensed by one Iowa State University staff member’s speech about the shooting that they outright dismissed the possibility of a lawsuit.
