Newly signed law saying that politics will dictate the ideology of educators, with the power of money, hiring and firing, writes Professor John A. Tures
| Savannah morning news
This is a column by John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science at LaGrange College. He is a regular contributor to the Savannah Morning News.
Last week we learned that the Florida government will require public colleges and universities to consult professors and students on “intellectual freedom and variety of viewpoints.” Allegedly, the effort is in part to measure how comfortable students, faculty, and staff feel about sharing their political beliefs in the classrooms.
As someone who sponsors lectures for “Victims of Communism” and presents and publishes with the Cato Journal and the Association for Private Enterprise and the Journal of Private Enterprise, I should theoretically be on the safe side. Then why am I so upset?
Because this totalitarian policy of North Korea is wrong, whether it concerns liberals, moderates or conservatives.
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The law was signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on June 22nd. A Tampa Bay Times study of the language of legislation does not support the belief that professors would not be punished for their responses. The Times also doubts the anonymity of the survey of who gets the data and what they will do with it.
I know that in my 20+ years of teaching I have never been asked about my political convictions. I’ve never been in a room where someone had to stand up for any ideology. This is because I teach about research methods, statistics, data analysis, and reasoning.
If you interview my graduates, you will find as many conservatives as liberals, if not more conservatives. They get to know ideologies, but they are certainly not told which ideology is the “right” one. I doubt many of my colleagues do that.
But I don’t think that’s the goal of the survey. It’s more about “getting” political points. It’s about politics dictating ideology, with the power of money, hiring and firing. It would be just as wrong for the state of Oregon to enact something like ousting Conservatives from higher education, right? Of course it would.
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That is perhaps exactly what those who jumped on political propaganda want: a “two-state” solution in which north and south are divided into separate camps. Those who hold onto such false arguments online are not particularly adept at determining whose fingerprints are really all over them, be it the Russia of ex-KGB, Putin, or Communist China, both of America’s online world inundated divisive material aimed at in-fighting in the US
From every reading of the founding fathers and what they stood for, it is clear that they opposed such “ideological conformity”, especially when it claimed to support “ideological diversity”. Let us decline this political seizure and pray that the Floridians hold their elected officials responsible for this terrible legislation that could undermine America’s colleges and universities.
Contact Tures at jtures@lagrange.edu. His Twitter account is JohnTures2.
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/florida-law-will-survey-college-professors-and-students-on-political-beliefs/
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