But this isn’t just about professors; it’s about all of us. This is the most flagrant attack on higher education in my lifetime. Why are politicians reducing public colleges and universities to vehicles of state propaganda? Why are self-proclaimed proponents of free speech turning around and using state repression to enforce speech codes on our campuses? Why can’t we speak openly about our social world in sociology classes? Why are unqualified appointees from the business world dictating to Ph.D.-holding academics how they should teach and which textbooks they must use?
What we really need are people beyond the university itself — the general public — speaking out about how ludicrous this all is. We are now living through an era of state censorship, politically motivated firings, and state-produced propaganda materials. If this isn’t authoritarianism in higher education, I don’t know what is.
Opinion piece by Zachary Levenson is associate professor of sociology at Florida International University.
EDITED TO ADD (in case some miss my comment)
Imagine the following scenario: You’re teaching Introduction to Sociology at a community college in Florida, and today, you’re trying to explain the well-documented pay gap between men and women in the United States. You check the guidance you just received from your dean, who received instructions via email from the executive vice chancellor of the Florida College System. The instructions state explicitly that explaining “unequal outcomes between men and women” in terms of “institutional sexism” would violate state law.
This is an attack on access to the best understanding of objective reality that humans have ever known.
Schools will become propaganda machines.
Always have been.
Always will be.
The US should’ve become a socialist country in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Seriously!
Maybe we will get the chance during the Make America Great Depression again 2 the pedofile protection depression rebuild.
will become??
Instead of book burning, it’s book banning that modern fascists do. It’s less ominous and less obvious.
It’s not new either. Iirc certain books were fully banned in Boston (amongst other places) up until the mid-20th century.
A country founded on bass-ackwards puritans hellbent on making others suffer isn’t going to magically lose that DNA. Just remember they got kicked out of England because they were antisocial controlling assholes, not because they were “persecuted.”
Will? They’ve been for ages.
When you account for occupation and time raising children the gender pay gap is small, and most likely attributable to womens risk aversion to asking for raises.
The bigger problem I’d say is the drive to get women into the work force was deflationary, leading to looser monetary policy and lower interest rates, which ballooned asset values leading to two incomes now being required to afford the average mortgage.
So this means instead of getting more prosperous and having more time we actually have less, as technological deflation and an expanded work force went into higher home prices and stock valuations. The economy grew and many people got very rich, but those without assets had a wall of cheap debt put up in front of them, and its mostly people in their child rearing ages affected by this phenomenon.
Only one thing has ever stopped fascists.
No one is going to fight for their country. Americans have been trained since birth to obey their employers and government. they have no idea how to effect change.
there will be a few more completely useless protests, a completely rigged mid-term, most likely another 9/11 on american soil, and none of that will be enough to motivate americans.
we are truly doomed. beaten by a group of pedophiles and Israeli spys.
Please stop trusting corporate media (whether social media or otherwise) when they give the impression that nothing is happening and nobody is fighting for their country. Please stop trusting corporate media saying you’re all useless and incompetent and it isn’t worth trying.
The revolution will not be televised. If you’re American, join some of those “useless protests” and talk to people. You’ll be surprised what is getting done.
beaten by a group of pedophiles and Israeli spys.
Beat by a bunch of neo-fascists, religious fundamentalists, tech bro’s (“dark maga”), Russia, Israeli and the military industrial complex.
Did you really have a chance?
The democrats are clearly a controlled opposition. Controlled by AIPAC and other entities, running pretend attacks and counters all to create the image of an opposition but one that is completely ineffective.
Especially with how spread out everyone is. In the old days you had a areas filled with vast amounts of work class poor. Getting together for a good ole strike didn’t mean collecting your people scattered across a city. You lived with them.
Today, if you look at the socialist and leftist that inhabit a general city, you’re scattered across the four corners of the city. Furthermore those who work the last remaining manufacturing and primary industry jobs, seemed to be filled with people who aren’t willing to make a stand
And then you’re so easily divided and fooled. Look at the campaign against Kate Abughazaleh. The AIPAC directed billioniares to donate to her fund so they could trump up claims that she was taking money from MAGA.
Basically running conspiracy attack videos to undermine her standing with progressive voters.
The myth of the rugged individualist means I don’t give a shit about anyone but myself!
I was with you until “we.”
If you’re an American and you understand this, absolutely fuck you for doing nothing.
A healthy and broadly educated population, which feels safe and secure, is incompatible with, and toxic to, conservative and authoritarian ideologies.
They need you to be sick, stupid, and scared.
It would be so easy to write this off as a “Florida” problem that the author knew we all might:
Lest readers assume this is some kind of Florida exceptionalism, it is far from it. State governments and university administrations in Texas, Indiana, North Carolina, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, Tennessee, North Dakota, Georgia, and likely other states too are currently involved in similar efforts. In New Hampshire, the House just passed a bill named after Charlie Kirk that bans the teaching of “critical theories or related practices that promote division, dialectical world-views, critical consciousness or anti-constitutional indoctrination.”
“Dialectical world-views”
Capitalists are once again admitting that they’re fucking terrified of Marx.
None of those states surprise me though.
Also, isn’t it ironic that the “live free or die state” is banning “dialectical worldviews”? Ooooh, Marx used that word; it must be communist propaganda. Meanwhile, the defining feature of dialecticism: “discussion of two or more opposing ideas in dialogue with each other”. I wonder if therapists in New Hampshire are still allowed to practice DBT…
Oh, and I guess if “anti-constitutional indoctrination” is being banned then that makes maga illegal. Oh wait, it’s going to be interpreted exclusively by magas…
“Critical consciousness.” Do not think! let us do it for you!
Speaking out does nothing because the people in power have called our bluff. They know that no matter what they do, how many laws they break, how many lies they tell, how many elections they cheat, the only backlash will be words. There’s no reason to stop what they are doing because there’s no teeth in the opposition, only tongues. They risk nothing and gain everything. American educational indoctrination’s greatest win was convincing people that resistance had to be peaceful to be just. The Founding Fathers tried words for about a decade before recognizing “words ain’t doing shit”. DM me when you all realize we’ve hit “words ain’t doing shit”.
Go find some tar, I’ll start plucking chickens
Sigh. Because the Dumbest Common Denominator thinks Sociology leads to Socialism.
Simple fix is to rename your science something dumb. Something like The School of Why We Clump Up Like Dat.
I mean… sociology kinda does lead to socialism. Understanding the mechanisms of society, and factors that drive inequality and injustice, is kind of the entire purpose of the field.
They’re scared because the sociologists are right when they’re screaming that capitalism is going to cause society to collapse under the weight of the sickest, nastiest 1% of our species. They’re scared because sociologists make the argument that socialism is–shock and fucking awe–a logically sound economic system that is fundamentally better than capitalism.
We’re so fucking cooked.
I’m literally hoping for a nuclear war to end this all. We fucking deserve to die out.
Sure, it’d destroy most of the biosphere, but after some millions of years it’d recover, just like it has before.
Remember when trump wanted to nuke that hurricane off the coast of Florida? I think it would have solved a lot of thw countries problems…
Just cause your country is a dumpster fire doesnt mean we should all suffer. Nuke yourselves.
The world is a dumpster fire.
lol like everything isn’t a dumpster fire right now.
And I’m not even American
Some places are at least redeemable.
Outlawing sociology is just outlawing statistics. These people need to be delt with, and quickly. Remove them from every position of authority asap.
It feels very hard to believe that anything will change. The elite has won.
For conservatives, statistics mean “repeating the same racist anecdote/news until people think that it happens every day”.
Fahrenheit 451
This is sad. There’s not going to be those factory jobs for the uneducated either.
I was wondering how hoping until age verification gets used to block info on slavery and lgbtq but it is not going to be long at all.
