BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE

Years ago, I was speaking with a colleague about one of the paradoxes of university life: tenured faculty enjoy more job security than almost any other occupational group in US society, yet they are often afraid to fight for their interests as a group. My colleague accounted for this lack of collective spine by archly observing that academia does not select for courage. We were speaking of faculty, but the principle seems to apply doubly to administrators, as evident in a joint statement recently issued by the presidents of twenty-eight Florida community colleges and four-year state colleges “pledging not to fund or support initiatives, instruction, and activities that promote critical race theory or related ideologies,” as reported by Inside Higher Ed.

This statement was not prompted by any substantive objection to critical race theory, which it seems clear the administrators have no real understanding of. The statement was prompted, rather, by fear of budget cuts under Florida’s reactionary “Stop WOKE Act,” a piece of culture war legislation that serves nicely to divide middle- and working-class voters and distract them from the plunder of our commonwealth by corporations and the wealthy. As the presidents’ joint statement attests, academia is now succumbing to the same divide-and-conquer strategy.

What the joint statement says, in effect, is this: “People at other colleges and universities might be indoctrinating students with this terrible critical race theory stuff—and feel free to punish them for it by cutting their budgets. But we don’t do that sort of thing; in fact, we abhor it, just like you. So please leave our budgets alone.” This is worse than cowardice. It is cowardice combined with betrayal of one’s compatriots and the principles of academic freedom and truth-seeking that make academia of special value to a democratic society. With leaders like this, there is not even a battle to be fought; the first move is capitulation and a craven request that the enemy shoot the other guy.

The administrators’ statement makes no attempt to explain or defend anything that might actually be happening by way of higher education in their institutions. “Our institutions will not fund or support,” the statement says, “any . . . practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality, or the idea that systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and improved upon.” What, if anything, could this verbal muck mean at the level of classroom teaching?

The quoted passage suggests that an instructor who teaches the concept of intersectionality is doing what right-wing propagandists claim: foisting a wrongheaded and pernicious ideology on students. But what, in fact, does it mean to teach about intersectionality? It means teaching that to understand inequality in America, it’s crucial to take the connections between race, class, and gender into account. That’s all the concept of intersectionality asserts. It’s akin to teaching that to determine the force of a moving object one must take velocity and mass into account. Any faculty member who teaches this material could have explained this to the presidents.

Likewise, the statement’s claim that “systems of oppression” are the “primary lens” through which leftist professors analyze teaching and learning is nonsensical on its face and further feeds the right-wing fantasy. “Systems of oppression” are of course not lenses; they are patterns of human interaction that can be studied and their effects documented. To believe in the reality of such systems is not a matter of embracing political dogma; it’s a matter of accepting evidence that comes from empirical observation. But this idea too—that there is a difference between ideology and evidence-based belief—is sacrificed to political expediency. The presidents’ joint statement thus echoes the right-wing notion that social scientists offer no verifiable truths about the social world, only opinions that are no more valid than those of anyone else.

Do these kinds of public statements really matter? A charitable interpretation would be that they are no less cynical than the culture-war potshots of right-wing politicians trying to rile the folks back home. Maybe kowtowing administrators are more politically savvy than they seem; maybe they are just trying to erect a façade behind which faculty can continue to deploy their expertise—about race, racism, inequality, and related matters—free from legislative censorship. But this seems unlikely. Course offerings and teaching practices are already being affected in Florida’s universities. One result will be less knowledge transmitted about how inequality is perpetuated in our society and how the pursuit of justice is thwarted.

So, no, these are not harmless statements; they are a message from administrators that faculty members who anger right-wing legislators will not be protected. If you draw on your disciplinary expertise to teach truthfully about race, racism, and inequality—and if by so doing you put the institution’s budget at risk—you will be putting your livelihood at risk. Forget academic freedom as a real thing. Do as we do: pay lip service to academic freedom but keep your paycheck foremost in mind.

It’s tempting to see what’s happening in Florida as a result of extremist posturing by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who is angling for the national spotlight as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination. But the right-wing attack on higher education and academic freedom in Florida is hardly unique; it represents one state-level front in an effort that is coordinated, at least ideologically, at the national level. In this sense, Florida is not an outlier; it’s a harbinger. Unless we work now to resist the divide-and-conquer strategies that weaken faculty as a group—the group whose knowledge and work make universities what they are and should be—today’s Florida may become tomorrow’s norm.

Michael Schwalbe is professor emeritus of sociology at North Carolina State University.