Update: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed HB 931 into law on Monday, May 15.
Public universities in Florida would be required to have offices that oversee campus speaker events and ensure that “multiple, divergent, and opposing perspectives” are represented, under a bill that passed the Florida Legislature this month.
The potential mandate comes amid another semester of campus-speech controversies across the country, in which students called on colleges to cancel appearances by invited speakers, arguing that their presence was harmful to particular identity groups, such as transgender students.
The Florida legislation, HB 931, specifies that public colleges must host at least four events each academic year, with two each semester, and that events must include speakers who represent a “diversity of perspectives.”
The bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The idea that legislatures should direct colleges to create an office of speaker oversight was- proposed by George R. La Noue, an emeritus professor of public policy at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, in his book Silenced Stages: The Loss of Academic Freedom and Campus Policy Debates (Carolina Academic Press, 2019). It also emerged in a model bill written by Stanley Kurtz, a prominent conservative and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which advocates “civic and cultural renewal in the U.S.,” via “the Judeo-Christian tradition,” according to its website.
In a 2019 essay about his “Campus Intellectual Diversity Act,” Kurtz wrote that the speaker office would “arrange for debates, panel discussions, and individual lectures from a wide diversity of viewpoints on current public-policy disputes” and give special attention to speakers who hold “viewpoints otherwise poorly represented on campus.” Per Kurtz’s vision, the office would also have to compile a public calendar of events showing exactly who colleges were inviting to speak.
Colleges would be permitted to assign those responsibilities to an existing office instead of creating a new unit, under Florida’s new bill. But the legislation would require colleges to hire or designate a “director of public-policy events” who would be responsible for compliance. Similar measures have been proposed over the last couple of years in Arizona, Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri, but none have become law.
They want an absurd level of control over the ideas that are expressed.
Several experts on campus free speech believe that requiring colleges to have such an office is redundant. Institutions often have academic centers that host a range of forums and lectures, and student groups independently bring a range of speakers, too.
Ensuring that students are exposed to a variety of perspectives — often through events — is not a controversial issue for colleges in Florida or elsewhere, said Sigal Ben-Porath, a professor of literacy, culture, and international education at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Cancel Wars: How Universities Can Foster Free Speech, Promote Inclusion, and Renew Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2023).
“The issue is that you have here the governor or the government trying to impose perspectives on higher-education institutions and undermining their autonomy,” Ben-Porath said. “That should be a concern to anyone who cares about quality education anywhere.”
Universities must report back annually to the Florida Board of Governors on the number of debates and group forums, attendance, and details such as expenditures and sponsoring groups.
The State University System of Florida declined to comment on pending legislation.
In addition, the bill requires Florida’s state and community colleges to conduct annual assessments of “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” that consider “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” and how members of the university community feel expressing their beliefs.
The legislation is “less intrusive” than Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida’s “Stop WOKE” Act, which was passed by the state’s legislature last year, said Michael Bérubé, a professor of literature at Pennsylvania State University who studies free speech and academic freedom. But requiring colleges to compile reports of these events could become an “incredible headache” and “bureaucratic nightmare,” he added, as some higher-ed institutions hold upward of thousands of events each year.
“This is like saying we don’t trust our universities,” Bérubé said. “They want an absurd level of control over the ideas that are expressed.”
Reforming higher education — specifically, rooting out diversity, equity, and inclusion programs — has been a key priority for DeSantis this legislative session. SB 266, a comprehensive bill that accomplishes many of the governor’s goals, also passed both houses of the legislature last week.
Robert Boatright, a professor of political science at Clark University and director of research at the University of Arizona’s National Institute for Civil Discourse, said he doesn’t find requiring universities to put on events concerning. But he is worried that the reports required by the bill could be “abused” and misinterpreted because many in higher ed tend to lean left politically.
“Most people don’t come to campus because of their political views, but if you require schools to maintain a list, then it’s very easy to look at that list and say ‘Well, you disproportionately invited a bunch of people who are liberals,” Boatright said.
Folded into the bill is another provision that would bar colleges from requiring political-loyalty tests as a condition of employment or admission, and prohibit institutions from giving preferential consideration to applicants for employment, admission, or promotion for an “opinion or actions” that support “a partisan, a political, or an ideological set of beliefs.”
Florida isn’t the only state where higher ed has found itself under scrutiny this year. At least 34 bills have been introduced in 20 states that would curb colleges’ diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, according to The Chronicle’s DEI Legislation Tracker.
