“FIU is drifting toward right-wing political dominance. Unfortunately, most students and faculty won’t notice until it’s too late.” | Courtesy of Conor Moore, PantherNOW
PantherNOW Editorial Board
FIU is drifting toward right-wing political dominance. Unfortunately, most students won’t notice until it’s too late, despite the faculty’s continued efforts to raise awareness of the issue.
Two years ago, the DeSantis administration flagged 22 courses, targeting them for discussing topics such as systemic racism, misogyny, and privilege.
Last year, FIU police officers were granted the ability to deport students under Agreement 287(g). From going after academic freedoms to the students themselves, the state government continues to escalate its meddling in university affairs across Florida.
The metaphor of “boiling the frog” describes this situation perfectly: danger creeps in gradually until it’s impossible to escape. These actions remain part of a deliberate strategy, framed by the DeSantis administration to assert control over academic freedom, inch by inch.
Not that it’s their fault, either. This is part of a deliberate strategy by the DeSantis administration to ensure control over academic freedom in a game of inches.
Consider the Adam Smith Center, a non-partisan think-tank that hosts primarily right-wing politicians and leaders.
The state is perfectly willing to spend money on bringing in former politicians and journalists to speak, which is, of course, welcome, but the state refuses to invest a dollar in diversity or equity despite FIU’s status as the nation’s largest Hispanic-serving Institution.
Or, SB-266, prohibiting any public university in the state of Florida from spending money on DEI and so-called “woke ideology” programs.
Moreover, the removal of sociology from UCC requirements reinforces the ongoing infringement on university autonomy throughout the state.
This academic oversight goes all the way to University President Jeanette Nuñez herself, DeSantis’ former Lt. Gov.
While we do not wish to indict University President Nuñez herself, the picture painted is clear: Tallahassee wishes to exert more and more control over the academic lives of students and faculty by putting one of their own in.
At worst, it reveals how deeply DeSantis has committed to ensuring that MAGA ideology seeps into every classroom, where academic censorship reigns supreme under the guise of “protecting” adults from “woke” and “DEI”.
“We have been pressured to monitor and regulate the information we include in our learning objects. Recently, the BOG Regulation 9.016 on Prohibited Expenditures has been applied to the creation of library research guides,” said Christopher Jimenez, an associate librarian at FIU’s library system, in an interview with PantherNOW.
BOG Regulation 9.016 bans state universities from using state or federal funds on programs or activities that involve DEI, political or social activism, or anything deemed to advocate for those concepts, with only narrow legal and accreditation-related exceptions.
“This atmosphere is ripe for self-censorship practices through overcompliance,” said Jimenez.
When the shift toward right-wing political dominance remains so acute that it involves FIU PD being legally deputized to act as ICE agents, it is a clear sign that things have gone too far and need correcting.
Taken together, these cases represent a sustained effort by the DeSantis administration, committed to reducing universities, previously considered bastions of free thought, into superficially apolitical propaganda machines that tacitly endorse conservative ideology from the top.
As a campus, we should urge our Student Government to more actively advocate for university autonomy and syllabus control in the face of state interference and to stand with faculty who continue to protest in defense of academic freedom.
FIU is the boiling frog. And unless we act soon, the pot will finish boiling with all of us in it.
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