Ron DeSantis 
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
5/23/2023
Scholars Stage Teach-in on Racism in DeSantis's Back Yard
Yohuru Williams and the Institute for Common Power, directed by Terry Anne Scott, convened a 24-hour teach-in in St. Petersburg to draw attention to the connections between inclusive history lessons and functioning democracy.
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SOURCE: The Nation
5/23/2023
How to Fight Back Against the Right's "Parents' Rights" Moral Panic
by Jennifer Berkshire
Parents' fears about losing control over their children have been the raw material for potent politically-motivated moral panics for a century and more. But those panics aren't irresistible, because parents everywhere still value public schools as democratic community institutions.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
5/21/2023
Trump and DeSantis Two Peas in a White Nationalist Pod
by Clarence Lusane
Any Republican candidate will need to lean in to the politics of white Christian nationalism ascendant on the right; Trump has needed the MAGA movement as much as it's needed him.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/21/2023
Ron DeSantis's Book on the Founders has been Disappearing Online. We Found a Copy
by Gillian Brockell
Written during his days as a Tea Party Congressman, DeSantis's 2011 book cherry-picks quotes from the Washington and Hamilton to argue that Barack Obama was engaged in an unconstitutional power grab that would have appalled the founders. It also makes bad arguments about the centrality of slavery to the early Republic.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/20/2023
Historian Don Yacovone: Florida's Restrictions Echo the Demands to Teach Pro-Slavery Argument
Jamelle Bouie's newsletter puts the current Florida controversy in light of a previous era's political demands about the teaching of history to justify one group's domination of another.
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SOURCE: The Hill
5/22/2023
CA's Newsom Demands Info on Florida Textbook Revisions
“You don’t get to rewrite history in a back room. You don’t get to erase basic facts around segregation, the holocaust, or Rosa Parks’ story. The extremists in Florida and textbook companies that are colluding with them are about to be exposed.”
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SOURCE: Tampa Bay Times
5/22/2023
New College Faculty Vote to Censure College's New Trustees
The censure motion, which was supported by 80% of the faculty, called the new majority of the Board of Trustees negligent in its fiduciary duty to the college because of noncompliance with transparency laws, failure to disclose financial conflicts of interest, and disregard for procedure in reviewing tenure applications.
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SOURCE: CNN
5/15/2023
I'm Headed to Florida to Teach-In Against DeSantis's Education Policies
by Kellie Carter Jackson
This May 17 saw a 24-hour teach-in by historians in St. Petersburg, Florida, to protest the restrictions on curriculum, books and ideas pushed by Governor Ron DeSantis and his allies. As a historian of abolition, the author stresses that denying people the pen may influence them to pick up the sword.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/17/2023
Florida's Book Banners Face New Opposition—and Their Lawyers
While there is a groundswell of opposition to book removal policies and other restrictions on educational content, it remains to be seen whether Democratic politicians will commit to defending the importance of public education in a multicultural democracy.
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SOURCE: Daily Beast
5/17/2023
Florida Just Banned Everything I Teach
by William Horne
Black historians during the Jim Crow era observed that the history taught in schools justified slavery, segregation, and lynching. A professor thinks that's where Ron DeSantis's vision of history is headed. Some politicians may think curriculum is a winning issue, but students and society will lose.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
5/10/2023
DeSantis Signs Bill Giving Legislature Oversight of Invited Campus Speakers
The concept of an oversight office to guarantee "intellectual diversity" has a long lineage on the right. Florida is the first state to require campuses to create those offices and require compliance and oversight.
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SOURCE: Mississippi Free Press
5/10/2023
What a White Man Learned Selling a Black History Encyclopedia Door to Door in 1971
by Jonathan Odell
"What DeSantis and his ilk now fear, is that we the people, Black and white, hold the missing pieces to each other’s stories, and once our stories are told, they can change us profoundly."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
5/10/2023
Florida Rejects Social Studies Topics on Communism, "Taking a Knee"
by Valerie Strauss
After rejecting more than 80 percent of proposed materials for K-12 social studies courses, Florida accepted many revised materials but still rejected 35 percent. Topics refused? Social justice in the Hebrew Bible, national anthem protests, and prosperous countries with socialist economies.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
5/11/2023
Florida Senate Rejects DeSantis Pick for New College Trustee Board
Eddie Speir, whose prior experience in education was running a private K-12 religious school, was rejected by the Florida Senate after having participated in board meetings at the New College of Florida as an interim Trustee. What distinguishes Speir from Governor Ron DeSantis's other appointees?
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
5/8/2023
As Politicians Attack Campus Diversity Initiatives, HBCU Campuses Wonder How They'll be Affected
Many HBCU students fear that bans on teaching "divisive concepts" could be applied to undermine the historic mission of campuses serving African American students and promoting Black intellectual communities.
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5/7/2023
Let Us Now Praise R. DeSantis
by Marc Stein
"I can’t believe it’s taken this long to have a political leader take a stand against gender and sexuality!"
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/29/2023
Inside the New New College
by Michelle Goldberg
Hopes that the incoming regime at the New College of Florida would tread lightly on the school's unique culture were dashed by administrative moves to recruit student athletes, establish fraternities and sororities, and deny tenure to the faculty members who sought it this year.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
4/26/2023
My Paper Sued Florida for the Same First Amendment Violations DeSantis is Making. We Won.
by Edward Wasserman
A flamboyant Florida sheriff took action against a small newspaper in 1988 by moving its mandatory legal notices to another paper. Given that the current governor has in his own book declared his intention to punish the Disney company for its "woke," precedent suggests he's in trouble.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
4/24/2023
Florida's College Presidents Should Speak Up or Quit
by Robert Birnbaum
A former top executive at a public university says that few circumstances justify college presidents breaking silence on public policy. One is when politicians interfere with the work of professionals when it comes to the content of research and teaching. If Florida's public college presidents can't speak out, they should resign.
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SOURCE: The Baffler
4/27/2023
DeSantis's Real Campus Attack is on Labor
by Dan Royles
"I’m exhausted because I teach U.S. history, including African American and LGBTQ+ history, at a public university in Florida." This places the author at the intersection of DeSantis's public attacks on verboten ideas and his quieter steps to gut tenure protections for the state's faculty and union representation for all educators in Florida.
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