\u201cSociology as a discipline is now social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy,\u201d Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System, said at the board meeting at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. As a discipline, he added, sociology has been \u201cideologically captured.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the latest move in Florida\u2019s Republican-led attacks on undergraduate curricular offerings\u2014with a particular focus on sociology\u2014that they claim advance a \u201cwoke\u201d left-wing agenda preoccupied with attributing inequality to systemic racism and sexism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Florida Legislature passed<\/a> Senate Bill 266, prohibiting general education courses from including topics that \u201cdistort significant historical events,\u201d teach \u201cidentity politics\u201d or are \u201cbased on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.\u201d Then, in January 2024, the Board of Governors voted to remove sociology<\/a> from the state\u2019s approved core course requirements. One year later, the board removed hundreds<\/a> of additional courses, including many focused on race and gender, from general education offerings at all state universities.<\/p>\n However, universities were allowed to keep sociology as part of their institution-level core course requirement offerings. Most kept it, while the University of South Florida, Florida A&M University, the University of North Florida and Florida Gulf Coast University requested to drop it. <\/p>\n But last summer, the state asked to review the syllabi, textbooks and other course materials that would be used to teach Introduction to Sociology at all of its universities during the fall 2025 semester. The review found that none of the course materials aligned with state statutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Soon after, a working group composed of sociologists and state board administrators formed to provide recommendations on how the courses could come into compliance with state law. The result was a controversial state-approved framework and companion textbook<\/a>, which critics characterized as \u201csanitized.\u201d In February, the state told all of its 28 public colleges and 12 public universities that they must use the materials starting this summer<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But on Thursday, Rodrigues cited faculty complaints about the new sociology framework and textbook\u2014some have described it as \u201csubpar\u201d and an \u201caffront to academic freedom\u201d\u2014as part of his motivation for calling to ban sociology from institution-level general education offerings altogether, The Miami Herald reported. He also mentioned hearing reports that some faculty plan to still teach restricted topics, which he said undermined his confidence in keeping sociology as part of universities\u2019 general education offerings.<\/p>\n The change doesn\u2019t apply to the state’s 28 public colleges, which can still offer introductory sociology as a general education course using the state-approved framework.\u00a0Meanwhile, the universities will still be able to offer sociology as an elective course. But faculty have already warned that removing it from the general education list will likely lead to lower enrollment and even less support for sociology departments across the state.<\/p>\n ![\"subscribe\"](\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/themes\/custom\/ihe\/assets\/images\/svg\/envlope.svg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students at Florida\u2019s 12 public universities will no longer be able to fulfill their general education requirements by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18025,113,684,28,30,29,18024,960,115],"class_list":["post-211367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-career","tag-education","tag-events","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-higher","tag-jobs","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}