Joseph McCarthy would’ve loved Florida’s new ‘intellectual diversity’ law | Editorial

The state government wants to know what political ideologies and beliefs university professors hold, and it’s giving the green light for students to secretly record lessons to later use what instructors say against them.

All of that is being done in the name of free speech.

Such twisted logic and targeting academia have been hallmarks of anti-democratic regimes.

Now they have also become the MO of Florida Republicans who passed a bill that requires public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff, to ensure “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on campuses. Gov. DeSantis signed the legislation into law Tuesday.

Republicans say that this all is being done because universities are “socialism factories.” They cannot, however, cite specific cases of what they described as “indoctrination” by Florida college professors, the Miami Herald reported, and they have been vague in describing a problem they deem serious enough to justify government overreach into classrooms.

Don’t worry, bill sponsors say, these surveys won’t be used against college professors or to threaten their employment, even though there’s nothing in House Bill 233 that guarantees that, or that survey responses will remain anonymous. University budget cuts might be looming if our supreme leaders — er — lawmakers don’t like what the survey results show, bill sponsor Sen. Ray Rodrigues and DeSantis suggested Tuesday.

Chilling effect

Although Florida requires consent to record a person in most cases, students now are allowed to record lectures without consent for educational purposes or to support a civil or criminal case against a higher-education institution.

College professors have got to be seeing the writing on the wall. We wouldn’t be surprised if they fudged their survey responses out of fear of retaliation or that their institution will lose funding for being deemed too liberal. That’s especially true for professors teaching liberal-arts degrees that conservatives consider a waste of time and were trying to make ineligible for full Bright Futures scholarship funding. (Luckily, that proposal failed during this year’s legislative session after student backlash.)

The intellectual-diversity survey will be selected by the Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, and the State Board of Education. It is supposed to be “objective, nonpartisan and statistically valid.” We cannot wait to learn the Board of Education’s definition of “objective” and “nonpartisan” given the Board’s highly partisan decision to heed DeSantis’ call to ban “critical race theory” from K-12 schools because it makes white people feel bad — and even though the theory was not part of school curriculum.

Liberal leanings

Of course, there’s no denying that many universities have traditionally been hotbeds of liberalism. It’s also likely that in any environment where one point of view is predominant those who think differently might feel shunned, as conservatives say they are on college campuses.

But there’s nothing new about college liberals — or government efforts to monitor academics.

University professors were a target of the post-war Red Scare. In 1949, the National Council for American Education published a booklet called “Red-Ucators at Harvard,” listing professors deemed subversive. In 1954, Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee sought to flush out communists among educators and questioned professors accused of having ties to the Communist Party.

Intellectual diversity should be something every university strives for, but we know the results of government officials policing educators: paranoia, persecution and the opposite of the free speech Republicans say they want to protect.

Perhaps their true intent is to paint faculty as indoctrinators at “socialism factories” because it appeals to their conservative base and voters who remember the horrors of what it’s like to be truly indoctrinated in countries they fled.

The irony is that, in doing so, Republicans have just become more like socialists they say they despise.

Trust us, lawmakers say? Not a chance.