MOVING TO FRONT FROM FEBRUARY 1–USEFUL LINKS IN COMMENTS, AND MORE INFORMATION WELCOME

Not really, but there may be a silver lining for them in the latest rain cloud:

DeSantis’s proposals include requiring that students at the colleges take certain core courses “grounded in actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped Western civilization"….

Last year, the state passed a bill that allowed Florida’s Board of Governors to require professors to go through post-tenure review every five years. On Tuesday, DeSantis proposed giving college presidents more power over faculty hiring and allowing presidents and boards of trustees to call for a post-tenure review of a faculty member “at any time with cause.”

The governor said he would recommend the legislature set aside $100 million for the state universities to hire and retain faculty members. He recommended $15 million for recruiting students and faculty members to the New College of Florida, a small, public liberal-arts college whose governing board DeSantis recently overhauled with the appointment of six new members. One of the new trustees then wrote that he intended to see if it would be legally possible to fire everyone at the college and rehire only “those faculty, staff, and administration who fit in the new financial and business model.”

“We are also going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said without specifying what “DEI and CRT bureaucracies” were. “No funding, and that will wither on the vine.”

DeSantis presented eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion projects as a way of saving wasted money, although a previous Chronicle analysis found that such projects make up 1 percent or less of the state universities’ budgets.

Contrary to CHE's implication, 1% of a university budget is rather significant, and would likely amount to millions of dollars.  Be that as it may, what of the legality of all this?   As we have seen, DeSantis is not abashed about acting illegally, and there will surely be legal challenges to these latest developments.  Can the state mandate courses on the history and philosophy of Western civilization?  Almost certainly they can, the question will be whether competent philosophers and historians will be hired to teach them.  (Texas, as I recall, used to require college students to take a course on Texas history, at least if they were history majors!)   Permitting post-tenure review "at any time with cause" may or may not constitute a breach of the tenure contract:   tenured faculty can be fired "for cause," so if there is litigation it will have to be on a case-by-case basis, but the net effect of this threat will be a massive chilling of faculty speech.   

Can the state defund all "DEI" bureaucracies?  Probably, although this may be vulnerable to challenge as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination; certainly any attempt to prohibit teaching of CRT (both the real thing and the bogeyman) would be unconstitutional.  The New College "trustee" [sic[ who thinks they can "fire everyone…and rehire only those…who fit the new financial and business model'" is, of course, thinking like a fascist, but will presumably be informed that this would constitute a massive breach of contract, as well as probably involving massive First Amendment violations.

Comments are open for information and/or links from readers who know more about the details of these proposals and what's happening on the ground.