Whittington on the new Florida higher-ed bill

The filed version of HB 999 matches the principles DeSantis announced several weeks ago. Keith Whittington (Princeton and chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance) analyzes the constitutional and academic-freedom problems. His analysis is spot-on. I will highlight two things.

First is his closing line: "In the name of prohibiting political litmus tests for faculty, the reform will wind up imposing political litmus tests for faculty." That is the point--DeSantis and his minions do not intend or desire to prohibit political litmus tests or stop indoctrination; they want to impose their preferred indoctrination and litmus tests.

Second, he says in the closing ¶: "Hard to imagine that this kind of micromanagement of how universities operate will be very workable in practice, even if it were a good idea." Much depends on the university presidents. If they decline to exercise this new power and allow faculty governance to proceed as it has, this may do less practical than rhetorical damage.