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.
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.