Professors fleeing from academic accountability in Florida head to blue states and Canada
Well, this is undoubtedly a net positive!
Yesterday, The Daily Mail reported that the “sun is setting on liberal professors in the Sunshine State” as Ron DeSantis’s anti-woke initiatives in education have begun to take effect. From the article:
The sun is setting on liberal professors in the Sunshine State as Ron DeSantis’s war on woke starts to bite, with some accusing the governor of ‘open hostility’ to higher education.
Turnover has jumped by a quarter in the last two years at the University of Florida after a slew of new laws cracked down on diversity, trans rights and jobs for life.
And the number of tenured professors leaving Florida State University is up by half with college authorities struggling to attract replacements, and the state’s academics look as far as Canada for new opportunities.
They’re actually leaving the state, sometimes even the country (sorry about your bad luck Canada). Is this how we clean up academia? Or at least the colleges in “red” states? Seems like a pretty good start.
Then, from an article in The New York Times, we read this:
Many are giving up coveted tenured positions and blaming their departures on Governor DeSantis and his effort to reshape the higher education system to fit his conservative principles.
What’s funny though, is those “conservative principles” are really just Western values and disciplines—call them “secular” if you like—and they’re exactly what made American education great in the first place. Without an understanding in masonry, engineering, or chemistry, would we have Memorial Hall in Cambridge? Without courses in Western politics and war, history, or ethics, would we have a Declaration of Independence or a Constitution?
Since the left has been at command of the “education” ship, what began as a dumpster fire is now a 5-alarm fire—Harvard offers “Taylor Swift” courses, Princeton teaches you about “Getting Dressed” in the morning, and at Emerson College, you can learn about “Deconstructing TV’s Buffy” for real college credits, all while the taxpayer satisfies the terms of your loan—even Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post was forced to report on the “alarming decline” in education.
As Christopher Rufo noted of the departures, “Good riddance.”
Hat tip: Arnold Cusmariu.
Image generated by AI.