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Curricular Challenge

Florida’s Public Universities Are Told to Review Courses for ‘Antisemitism or Anti-Israeli Bias’

By Emma Pettit August 6, 2024
Vector-based illustration of a magnifying glass hovering over words relating to the Middle East, Israel and Palestinians
Illustration by The Chronicle

Last week the State University System of Florida instructed the leaders of its 12 public universities to screen certain courses for “antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias,” The Chronicle has learned.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel of October 7, politicians, donors, parents, and students — particularly but not exclusively on the right — have accused colleges of excusing antisemitic speech, including in the classroom. They’ve urged campuses to rein in professors whose courses they think cross a line. Now, it seems, Florida’s university system, which instructs more than 430,000 students, is poised to do just that. The move raises questions, such as how much latitude professors will have in teaching about the Middle East and how the system will define terms like “anti-Israeli bias.”

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Last week the State University System of Florida instructed the leaders of its 12 public universities to screen certain courses for “antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias,” The Chronicle has learned.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel of October 7, politicians, donors, parents, and students — particularly but not exclusively on the right — have accused colleges of excusing antisemitic speech, including in the classroom. They’ve urged campuses to rein in professors whose courses they think cross a line. Now, it seems, Florida’s university system, which instructs more than 430,000 students, is poised to do just that. The move raises questions, such as how much latitude professors will have in teaching about the Middle East and how the system will define terms like “anti-Israeli bias.”

On Friday, data administrators at those dozen universities received a brief memorandum written by Emily Sikes, the system’s interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, telling them to conduct a keyword search of all undergraduate- and graduate-course descriptions and syllabi for the following words: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, and Jews. Sikes told the staff members to provide a list of fall courses that use one or more of those terms, and a list of “their related instructional materials,” to the office of the system’s Board of Governors by August 16. University presidents and provosts were copied on the message. (Sikes did not respond to a voice mail left on Tuesday at her office phone number.)

Also on Friday, Ray Rodrigues, the system’s chancellor, clarified to the university presidents how the screening process would work, in an email obtained by The Chronicle and first reported by The Orlando Sentinel. Since a call on the previous Monday between the chancellor and the university leaders, “some confusion” had arisen, Rodrigues wrote.

On the call, the presidents were asked to figure out if a faculty committee at their institution — perhaps the curriculum committee — could “review relevant course resources such as textbooks and test banks for either antisemitic material and/or anti-Israeli bias before the beginning of fall semester,” according to Rodrigues’s email. “The concept we discussed on Monday was to look at courses on terrorism, Middle Eastern studies, religion, and government,” the chancellor wrote. However, Rodrigues subsequently heard from some presidents about “the feasibility” of getting such a review done by the start of the fall semester.

Rodrigues wrote that he had consulted with Amanda J. Phalin, the faculty representative on the governing board, and that she had suggested a better way to identify what courses should be reviewed. He then described the keyword-search process, which he wrote would “ensure that all universities are reviewing the same courses, and nothing falls through the cracks.”

Reached by phone, Phalin, an associate instructional professor of management at the University of Florida, emphasized that she doesn’t make policy decisions. When she provides input, she said, she focuses on two things: that the faculty voice is “heard and included” and that administrative processes affecting faculty members are as “simple as possible.” Asked about potential criticism of the review that Florida professors might make, Phalin reiterated those points.

“The most important thing is that we get this right,” Rodrigues wrote. His staff will work with each university’s staff to find the relevant courses. After they’ve been identified, each university should then start “a faculty review,” which will need to be completed by the end of the fall semester. The review should “flag all instances of either antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias identified, and report that information to my office,” the chancellor wrote.

Rodrigues’s email did not say how the faculty review should be carried out, how “antisemitism” or “anti-Israeli bias” would be defined or assessed, or what will happen to courses that are deemed to include such content.

His directive drew a rebuke from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “Making public colleges comb teaching materials for ‘anti-Israel bias’ marks yet another dystopian day in the state of Florida, where lawmakers seem to think the First Amendment doesn’t apply. This policy won’t stop discrimination, but it will stop faculty from talking about a huge range of important topics in class,” Alex Morey, vice president for campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in an email. “Chancellor Rodrigues says he wants to ‘get this right,’ but there’s no right way to violate the First Amendment.”

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It’s also unclear who or what began this process. The chancellor’s message did not refer to a governing-board regulation or an act of legislation. He did not reply to an interview request on Tuesday morning.

Flag all instances of either antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias identified, and report that information to my office.

In June an X account called Documenting Israel circulated screenshots of what it said were questions from a test offered at Florida International University, including one that asked, “When Israelis practice terrorism, they often refer to it as ______.” The possible answers were “proactive attacks,” “self-defense,” “military actions,” and “terrorist defensive strategy.” Randy Fine, a Republican state representative, took note. On X, he wrote, “I will be speaking to @FIU as soon as possible. There is no room for #MuslimTerror at Florida’s state universities.”

In another post, Fine said he’d spoken with both the university and the Board of Governors.

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(In reply to Documenting Israel’s post, the university’s X account wrote, “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We have already started a review of the circumstances.”)

Debates About Antisemitism

There’s debate over what constitutes antisemitism, particularly in academic settings in which the goal is to engage with difficult and controversial ideas. The American Association of University Professors has warned against an overly expansive definition of the term that encompasses acceptable political criticism of Israel’s actions toward Palestinians. Since October, colleges have faced pressure to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which excludes critique of Israel “similar to that leveled against any other country” and includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” The originator of that definition has warned against its enactment on college campuses, arguing that it could be used to suppress speech, The Chronicle previously reported.

In June, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, signed into law a bill adopting the alliance’s definition, after the measure received unanimous support in the state’s Legislature.

Earlier this year, the governor directed the state’s universities and colleges to waive certain requirements for any Jewish students who have “a well-founded fear of antisemitic persecution at their current postsecondary institution” and want to transfer. Rodrigues issued an emergency order to remove those barriers. In May, after encampments protesting the Israel-Hamas war had sprung up on campuses across the country, DeSantis and Rodrigues celebrated Florida colleges’ ability to maintain “law and order,” as the chancellor put it in a news release.

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Over the past several years, Florida has emerged as a battleground over what can be taught in a public-college classroom and who has the power to make curricular decisions, as the governor has made his calling card cracking down on what he has called “woke indoctrination.”

In 2022, DeSantis signed into law the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop WOKE Act, which bars instruction that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” students to believe certain concepts. The law was subsequently placed under an injunction as it applies to state universities. In 2023 the Legislature passed a measure that says general-education courses cannot “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics,” among other things.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Correction (Aug. 6, 2024, 8:29 p.m.): This article originally misstated Amanda J. Phalin's department. She is an associate instructional professor of management, not of mathematics. The article has been corrected.

Update (Aug. 7, 2024, 5:04 p.m.): This article has been updated to include a reaction from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to the Florida system's directive.
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About the Author
Emma Pettit
Emma Pettit is a senior reporter at The Chronicle who covers the ways people within higher ed work and live — whether strange, funny, harmful, or hopeful. She’s also interested in political interference on campus, as well as overlooked crevices of academe, such as a scrappy puppetry program at an R1 university and a charmed football team at a Kansas community college. Follow her on Twitter at @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.
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