In your head
Wrap a police tape perimeter around Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. His anti-woke mania is a crime scene.
Greg Sargent explains:
In recent weeks, plaintiffs who are suing to invalidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop Woke Act” have been confronting its defenders with a seemingly loaded question: Would the law, which restricts school discussion of race, prohibit a public university professor from endorsing affirmative action in a classroom setting?
Surprisingly, lawyers defending the DeSantis administration just answered this question with a qualified “yes.” Which exposes a core truth about his anti-woke directives: They really do constitute efforts at state censorship, not just of concepts he likes to call “woke indoctrination” but also of viewpoints that are contested yet remain squarely within mainstream academic discourse.
A provision in the law prohibits instruction that “espouses” or “promotes” certain ideas. Affirmative action, for instance:
The state’s filing essentially agrees that this provision could potentially ban public agreement with affirmative action. It reiterates the state’s argument that public university professors are state employees, giving the state broad control over what they teach. And it says this:
If by “affirmative action,” plaintiffs mean … “discriminating against” a person “by virtue of his or her race … to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion”… then yes, the state may prohibit its educators from endorsing racial discrimination while speaking on behalf of the state, in a state classroom, and in return for a state paycheck.
That has the air of a snide joke, and the reasoning is qualified — if affirmative action is “discrimination” in pursuit of DEI, then endorsing it could be prohibited. But nonetheless, it’s a significant admission. It suggests that in certain scenarios, the state actually could determine that a professor’s agreement with affirmative action constitutes unlawfully espousing discrimination, notes Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute.
DeSantis has already fielded election police. They’ve come up empty, says the Brennan Center, in uncovering any “shadowy network of deep state operatives” working to unbdermine elections. The few cases of citizens caught voting after being approved to do so have been thrown out. No matter. Increase their funding 20 percent.
What DeSantis’ Florida needs now are Thought Police. Maybe re-education camps.
Jeffrey Sachs, a political scientist who tracks state-level censorship efforts, points out that under the state’s own interpretation of the Stop Woke Act, professors would plainly not have to worry about expressing opposition to affirmative action, but at a minimum would have to be cautious about supporting it.
How are Floridians putting up with this bozo?