“We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” JD Vance (Reference Vance2021) declared in an infamous keynote speech that evoked enthusiastic applause from participants at the National Conservatism Conference. The conference took place in November 2021 in Orlando at a time when the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis had positioned himself as one of the frontrunners of this campaign attacking higher education. A few months earlier, the Florida legislature had passed House Bill (HB) 233, mandating “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” within Florida’s public higher education system and authorizing students to record classes without consent or notice, to facilitate complaints against individual professors. A few days before Vance’s speech, the New York Times had broken the story that, in departure from standard policy, three political science professors at the University of Florida (UF) were barred by their institution from serving as expert witnesses in a voting rights lawsuit, based on the argument that presenting a case against the state would be “adverse to U.F.’s interests” (Wines Reference Wines2021). Whether this decision was made under direct influence from Florida’s executive branch or in anticipation of potential retaliation remains unclear to this day.
In the next two years, under Governor DeSantis’s leadership, the Florida legislature passed a slew of bills considerably affecting governance, tenure, unionization, curriculum, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the state’s public higher education system. In January 2023, the governor orchestrated the takeover of a small public liberal arts college in Sarasota, the New College of Florida, with the declared intent of turning it into a “Hillsdale of the South,” referring to a conservative Christian school in southern Michigan (Lynch and Rodgers Reference Lynch and Rodgers2023). He appointed six new members to the college’s Board of Trustees (BOT), among them Christopher Rufo, a prominent conservative activist who in recent years has been at the forefront of nationwide attacks on critical race theory (CRT), DEI programs, and individual university presidents.
These developments led observers to describe Florida in 2023 as the new “epicenter of global political attacks against universities” (Barder, Kamola, and Hozic Reference Barder, Kamola and Hozic2023) and to conclude that its higher education institutions “currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in U.S. history” (AAUP 2023a). Even FIRE, a free-speech organization that is well regarded in conservative circles, considered the problem of free expression and academic freedom to be “particularly acute in Florida” and initiated several lawsuits against the state (Stevens Reference Stevens2023).
Florida was one of the first states to take legislative and executive actions against US universities in recent years (Brint Reference Brint2023); since 2025, such actions have been supported at the federal level under the second administration of Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance. These actions follow a long historic trail of politically motivated government interventions and curricular bans in US public education (e.g., Brake Reference Brake2024; Meikle Reference Meikle2011). The most recent wave of interventions is unusual both because it extends beyond K–12 to include higher education and its high level of national coordination by conservative networks and think tanks in the drafting and circulation of model legislation, as has been documented in detail (Brint Reference Brint2023; Schwartz Reference Schwartz2021; Zerofsky Reference Zerofsky2022).
Even though countless lawsuits currently challenge these actions, they likely will have pervasive and potentially durable effects on academic freedom in the United States. From the context of authoritarian regimes, we know that direct intervention is often not necessary if a vague threat of sanction is sufficient to coerce dissenters into self-censoring at a large scale. This article focuses on the situation in Florida to investigate this dynamic under the conditions of democratic erosion, where checks on executive power are formally in place but may prove ineffective in curbing chilling effects as a more informal means of control.
Specifically, I examine whether and how legislative actions and political discourse have created a chilling effect that exceeds the narrow legal effects of the new policies on the content of academic teaching and scholarship in Florida. It also considers to what extent differing institutional responses may play a role in exacerbating or limiting such broader chilling effects. The analysis relies on 60 semi-structured interviews with scholars and other members of six higher education institutions across the State of Florida conducted in early 2024, as well as numerous media articles and investigative reports. I first present a theoretical framework, followed by a brief overview of the relevant context in Florida, the methodology of the study, evidence and discussion of chilling effects in Floridian academia and their institutional dimensions, and a conclusion.
Theoretical Framework: Chilling Effects as Means of Control in Democratic Environments
Over the past decade, researchers have documented a growing number of attacks on academic freedom in democratic societies, linking them to populist and anti-pluralist parties gaining executive power (Kinzelbach et al. Reference Kinzelbach, Lindberg, Lott and Panaro2025; Kovács and Spannagel Reference Kovács and Spannagel2025). The connection appears to be twofold. To mobilize voters, populist movements often use anti‑academic rhetoric in denigrating experts and pitting “the people” and their “common sense” against the scientific elite (Mede and Schäfer Reference Mede and Schäfer2020; Spannagel Reference Spannagel2024). In addition, independent knowledge institutions pose an obstacle to authoritarian governance and thus become key targets when anti-pluralist leaders hold office (Douglass Reference Douglass2021; Jackson Reference Jackson2025; Roberts Lyer, Saliba, and Spannagel Reference Roberts Lyer, Saliba and Spannagel2022). A central question in the debate on the decline of academic freedom concerns the specific mechanisms of interference. As Darian-Smith (Reference Darian-Smith2025, 46) observes, although “policies and funding practices” offer one visible path to control, a “second, and much less discussed, mode of control is the self-censorship of scholars who live in fear of attack.”
Research on state repression in autocracies has demonstrated that only a limited degree of overt coercion is necessary to suppress free speech or academic freedom at a wide scale. Stern and Hassid (Reference Stern and Hassid2012), for instance, show how occasional state crackdowns in China, coupled with strategic uncertainty about what speech is permissible, give rise to ambiguous “control parables” that prompt widespread self-censorship among journalists and lawyers. Similarly, Quinn (Reference Quinn2021) notes that in Arab states, even isolated attacks on scholars or universities have a “chilling” effect that makes them an “efficient” mechanism of control. In formally democratic states, by contrast, violent repression is exceedingly rare; even illiberal leaders typically avoid such overtly authoritarian practices so as not to invite potential political backlash or legal scrutiny (Müller Reference Müller2016, 50). This raises a critical question: What prompts patterns of self-censorship in democratic environments where overt repression is absent?
The notion of “chilling effects” originated in mid-twentieth-century US legal theory to describe the (undesired) deterrent effect that vague or overbroad regulations can have on lawful speech (Schauer Reference Schauer1978). Over time, the term has evolved across disciplines, including political psychology, communications studies, and sociology, to capture broader forms of self-censorship. A substantial body of research has examined the effects of social conformity and the “spiral of silence” (Noelle-Neumann Reference Noelle-Neumann1974) on human behavior, which have led to the self-censoring of minority viewpoints in social settings (Carlson and Settle Reference Carlson and Settle2022). However, this strand of research often centers on informal pressures within public discourse and pays little attention to state actors as drivers of self-censorship. A more recent body of work links chilling effects to state or corporate surveillance. Scholars like Solove (Reference Solove2007), Stoycheff (Reference Stoycheff2016), and Büchi, Festic, and Latzer (Reference Büchi, Festic and Latzer2022) argue that the awareness of surveillance, even without direct penalties,11 can have a significant impact on online activities.
In a recent theoretical synthesis, Penney (Reference Penney2022) highlights a key insight that bridges these literatures: chilling effects typically emerge in contexts of uncertainty and ambiguity. This finding resonates well with the research about strategic uncertainty under authoritarianism cited earlier. Importantly, Penney challenges conventional legal theories assuming that chilling occurs when formal sanctions are probable or predictable (1487). Instead of understanding self-censorship as a rational response to known legal risks, he focuses on the role of “situational uncertainty” as a key driver of behavioral adaptation (1504). This theory is very useful because it emphasizes how uncertainty and ambiguous signals about the boundaries of permissible behavior—and the potential consequences of transgressions—shape perceptions of risk. These insights thus help explain why chilling effects may occur even in the absence of clear prohibitions or known consequences.
At the same time, Penney’s approach undertheorizes a crucial scenario that is generally overlooked in the literature on chilling effects in democracies: the strategic deployment of uncertainty by illiberal actors within democratic institutions. Penney (Reference Penney2022, 1526) suggests that chilling may be “more desirable” when produced by “democratically enacted” laws than by authoritarian or unaccountable private actors; however, this formulation obscures cases where elected officials in democratic systems use ambiguity and informal coercion to suppress dissent. In such cases, chilling is not merely a byproduct of governance but also becomes a tool of control that avoids the political costs and legal accountability resulting from explicit censorship. The literature also tends to focus on conformity with broadly shared social norms, rather than with political viewpoints imposed by actors in positions of power. To fill this gap, I explore chilling effects as an instrument of soft repression: a form of illiberal governance that uses ambiguity and vague intimidation to constrain academic freedom within formally democratic systems.
Three studies provide some initial evidence on this soft repression. Regarding the radical-right Finns Party in Finland, Väliverronen and Saikkonen (Reference Väliverronen and Saikkonen2021, 3) note, even where “open control mechanisms and censorship” are absent, there are “more subtle actions that may lead to self-censorship in researchers.” Their analysis is confined to science communication and reflects a case of limited political control: although the Finn Party was in government, it had little influence as a junior coalition partner. Its attacks on academia therefore mainly consisted of “populist gibes and depreciative comments” that legitimized further harassment, threats, and trolling campaigns waged by the wider public (12). Kempner (Reference Kempner2008) documents a stronger show of force in a 2003 attempt by US lawmakers to cancel National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants for studies on sexual behavior. Although the measure narrowly failed and no grants were revoked, Kempner finds that targeted researchers subsequently engaged in self-censorship. The episode indicates that the political climate—not formal censorship—shaped academic behavior, demonstrating how chilling effects operate through symbolic coercion and indirect pressure (1577). More recently, Fowler and Schneider (Reference Fowler and Schneider2024) document how an ambiguous ban on critical race theory in Idaho’s public universities left much room for interpretation by individual educators, leading to low morale and in some cases to self-censorship. Importantly, the authors highlight that scholars “are responding not just to the law but to a toxic political environment” (71).
The state of Florida provides a compelling site to explore this proposition further. Although formally democratic, Florida has undergone an illiberal shift under Governor DeSantis that builds on a longer history of antidemocratic policies in the state (Gardner Reference Gardner2021; Kauth Reference Kauth and Laruelle2023) and includes, as part of a culture war agenda, sweeping higher education reforms likened to those of Viktor Orbán in Hungary (Greenfield Reference Greenfield2023; Ignatieff Reference Ignatieff2023; McNeill Reference McNeill2023). Various observers have reported self-censorship among scholars and students that go beyond specific legal restrictions and that persist even as implementation of those measures has been stalled by courts (AAUP 2023a, 2; Darian-Smith Reference Darian-Smith2025, 47; Emba Reference Emba2023; Schoorman and Gatens Reference Schoorman and Gatens2023, 1). The present case study examines this phenomenon more closely using extensive empirical data.
In sum, I extend chilling-effects theory by analyzing how illiberal political actors can use strategic ambiguity to suppress scholars’ freedom to research and teach. Although the literature has explored chilling as a byproduct of vague laws, surveillance, or social conformity—all relevant to the Florida context—it has not sufficiently theorized its deployment as a governance tool in formally democratic settings. The Florida case calls attention to how chilling effects should be seen not only as unintended consequences but also as potential instruments of political control that may operate beneath legal thresholds, deflect accountability, and deliver authoritarian outcomes through formally democratic procedures.
Recent Developments in Floridian Higher Education
Politics and the Higher Education Context in Florida
The public university system in Florida consists of 12 institutions and is governed by a 17-member Board of Governors (BOG), 14 of whom are appointed by the governor for a term of seven years. In addition, each individual institution is overseen by a 13-member Board of Trustees (BOT).Footnote 1 Florida maintains the lowest college tuition fees for in-state students in the United States, which, contrary to national trends, have not increased since 2012. Although the university system is currently considered to be one of the best-performing across the United States (Waagmeester Reference Waagmeester2024), several interviewees (all of whom have held administrative or union positions) expressed concerns that the funding situation makes public universities in Florida particularly subservient to the state legislature (Danaya Wright; Daniel Smith; Meera Sitharam; #05-01).
The political context in Florida in recent years has been marked by the notable and rapid rise of Ron DeSantis, a Yale-educated, right-wing conservative, who narrowly won the 2018 gubernatorial election thanks to an endorsement from Donald Trump, before achieving a sweeping 19 percentage-point victory in the 2022 race. Buoyed by his strong mandate, DeSantis continued to aggressively push a culture war agenda under the slogan, “Florida is where woke goes to die.” He also announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election in March 2023. After failing to garner significant voter support outside Florida, he withdrew from the race in January 2024. During the three years that are the focus of this article (early 2021 to early 2024), he asserted increasingly firm control over the Republican-controlled state legislature; this control only started to wane with the end of his presidential bid.
Government Interventions in Higher Education, 2021–2023
From 2021 through 2023, the state legislature adopted numerous bills that had direct effects on a range of aspects of higher education and its institutional framework. These bills introduced regular statewide post-tenure reviews for tenured faculty members; changed the rules for university accreditation; expanded the amount of course information, including textbooks, that had to be posted publicly (SB 7044, 2022)Footnote 2; exempted presidential searches from the open record law (SB 520, 2022); regulated how race and gender issues could be taught (HB 7, 2022); restricted partnerships and funding for entities in seven “countries of concern,” which affected the hiring of foreign scholars and students (SB 846, 2023); and increased certification requirements for public-sector unions and banned payroll deductions for union dues (SB 256, 2023). Moreover, post-tenure reviews were made mandatory, the independent arbitration of personnel decisions was banned, the use of state and federal funding for DEI programs was prohibited,Footnote 3 and restrictions were placed on the inclusion of certain race and gender topics in general-education core courses (SB 266, 2023).Footnote 4
As of June 2026, HB 7 (also dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act”) and SB 846 have been partly enjoined by district and federal courts, while all other bills remain in force as various lawsuits are ongoing. A temporary injunction sought against SB 266 failed in front of the same judge who had enjoined HB 7; even though he recognized the law’s potentially censorious effects, the judge ruled in November 2023 that the plaintiffs lacked standing (Soule Reference Soule2023).
In a telling but ultimately unsuccessful about-face in 2025, Florida House Republicans voted overwhelmingly for a repeal of SB 520 and to place strict limitations on the governor’s involvement in university president searches, with the Republican House speaker comparing the searches conducted under the law to a “spoils system” (WUFT and the News Service of Florida 2025). However, DeSantis threatened to veto the 2025 House bill before it eventually died in the Senate (Waagmeester Reference Waagmeester2025).
Effective Legal Changes in Permissible Academic Content
Overall, the content-based aspects of the laws have been clear in their intent to target disciplines and curricula that critically examine US society and US history through consideration of racial and gender inequalities. Of all the laws affecting Florida higher education in recent years, now that HB 7 is enjoined, only SB 266 directly restricts the permissible content of academic teaching and only in one specific context: general-education (gen-ed) core courses. Yet, because students at public universities in Florida are required to take a certain number of gen-ed courses to graduate, content limitations in those courses have more far-reaching effects than may appear at first glance.
Most importantly, SB 266 significantly restricts the kind of teaching and ideas to which students across disciplines are exposed. For instance, according to University of Florida’s (UF) interpretation, all courses with the humanities gen-ed designation have to address the “Western canon”; this means that courses on non-Western religions, cultures, or history can no longer be offered as part of general education. In addition, any course that includes “material that an educated but non-expert observer might see as ‘distorting significant historical events,’” any that is “teaching identity politics,” and any class that argues “that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States” was flagged for review. An investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education shows how the review process was flawed and opaque; by the end of that process, three-quarters of UF’s gen-ed courses lost their designation (Pettit and Zahneis Reference Pettit and Zahneis2025). In addition to the institution-led course review, a sweeping decision by the Florida Board of Governors in 2024 removed Introduction to Sociology from the list of approved courses required for graduation (Meckler Reference Meckler2026; Patel Reference Patel2024).
Second, even though lawmakers pointed out that it is well within the prerogative of the state to determine what can be taught in the core curriculum, clearly, the interference sent more far-ranging signals. They are “basically saying that nothing counts as a legitimate foundational course in the humanities unless it deals with the Western European tradition,” a religious studies scholar noted (#03-05). This overall devaluation of certain subject areas and lines of inquiry has become part of the political discourse.
Third, the loss of the gen-ed designation has significant material effects on some courses and opens avenues for further intervention. Several interviewees emphasized that small departments will struggle to sustain themselves if those courses are eliminated. Considering the close attention paid to the number of students in higher education management, “we could be punished for having low enrollments” (#03-05; Sarah Hernandez). Moreover, declining student numbers likely means that many of these courses will no longer be taught at all.
An Aggressive Political Discourse Coupled with Situational Uncertainty
Importantly, the multilayered state interventions in higher education were accompanied by political rhetoric that often exaggerated not only the alleged concerns about higher education but also the scope of government authority and action. Throughout the years under review, DeSantis and his allies embraced a populist rhetoric that claimed to follow a “common-sense” approach (DeSantis Reference DeSantis2022) and that promoted an anti-pluralist “claim to exclusive representation” of the people (Müller Reference Müller2016, 20), from which they derived the authority to reshape higher education according to their vision. Christopher Rufo (Reference Rufo2023a; Reference Rufo2023b), a conservative activist, has regularly argued that voters “deserve to have their values reflected and transmitted in their public institutions”; he also equates public universities with “the government” and derides critics for “arguing, in essence, that the governor should not interfere with the government.” These arguments were echoed by Republican lawmakers, such as Senator Perry when defending SB 266 (Florida Channel 2023a at 2:33:45). Moreover, when acting as the defendant in the lawsuit against HB7, the government of Florida remarkably argued that “in-class instruction in public universities is government speech” so that any divergence from the state’s official viewpoints would not be protected by academic freedom (Pernell et al. Reference Pernell2022, 10–19)—a notion that the judge ruling over the matter called “positively dystopian” (Walker Reference Walker2022).
Specific government interventions were couched in combative and inflammatory terms, possibly to humor the conservative base and distress political opponents. On the day of the takeover of New College, which DeSantis’s (Reference DeSantis2024) official X account described as a former “hive of woke ideology” and “indoctrination camp,” Rufo (Reference Rufo2023c) tweeted aggressively: “We are now over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within.… [We] will demonstrate that the public universities, which have been corrupted by woke nihilism, can be recaptured, restructured, and reformed.” Reflecting on the experience later, he recommended to “ignite a process of ruthless self-selection. We … watched the most extreme woke employees … leave in ‘protest,’ without realizing they were solving our problem” (Rufo Reference Rufo2025). More generally, Schoorman and Gatens (Reference Schoorman and Gatens2023, 5f.) observe that a “toxic political discourse” has accompanied the legislative process, using “a range of emotionally charged rhetorical shorthand, such as ‘indoctrination,’ ‘woke,’ or ‘critical race theory,’ to tarnish broad swaths of knowledge, villainize professors, and victimize and target historically marginalized groups.”
The political and legal developments created a continuing state of uncertainty for individual scholars and their institutions. Even after the bills were passed, their specific effects were hard to predict because the legal reality kept evolving and became increasingly difficult to parse. For instance, as the BOG was preparing regulations to implement the statewide post-tenure review foreseen by SB 7044, reports circulated in November 2022 that “any violation” of HB 7 (or the Stop WOKE Act, which ambiguously prohibited certain teachings of race and gender) would be made one of seven criteria under consideration in the review process, in which faculty members could face termination if their performance were deemed unsatisfactory (Ortiz Reference Ortiz2022; WFSU and the News Service of Florida 2022). The issue was ultimately rendered moot with the injunction ordered on the higher education portion of HB 7 by District Judge Mark Walker two weeks later. Then, while declining to enjoin SB 266 due to lack of standing a year later, Judge Walker noted that “there is now a law that could or could not be used to punish” professors who teach certain ideas (Soule Reference Soule2023)—clearly highlighting the ambiguity of the legal situation at the time.
Another crucial development affecting the political discourse was that SB 266 was preceded by a much more far-reaching draft version in the House (HB 999). That version sought to implement a radical agenda announced by Ron DeSantis in January 2023 to push “back against the tactics of liberal elites who suppress free thought in the name of identity politics and indoctrination.” Among other things, he pledged to “prohibit DEI, CRT and other discriminatory programs” and to have university presidents and BOTs “take ownership of hiring and retention decisions, without interference from unions and faculty committees” (DeSantis Reference DeSantis2023). Elements of HB 999 that were ultimately defeated in the legislative process included a ban on courses “based on unproven, theoretical, or exploratory content” and on specific majors and minors, including those associated with critical race theory (CRT), gender studies, and intersectionality; a prohibition forbidding gen-ed courses to teach “American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence”; and the possibility that faculty members could be subjected to post-tenure review at any time for cause (Diep Reference Diep2023; Suvorell Reference Surovell2023).
Nevertheless, when signing SB 266 into law, Governor DeSantis alluded to the bill’s more radical origins, claiming that “some of these niche subjects like critical race theory, other types of DEI-infused courses and majors, Florida’s getting out of that game” (NBC Miami 2023). Such “disjunctions between law and political rhetoric” (Schoorman and Gatens Reference Schoorman and Gatens2023, 5) are all the more significant because the sheer volume of new laws and regulations meant that the vast majority of scholars have not been able to follow every development nor read all the laws, instead taking cues about their content largely from media reports in the absence of clear guidance from their institutions.
Thus, the developments in Florida between 2021 and early 2024 indicate an extensive exertion of state power to remove levers of dissent across the system of higher education by weakening unions, faculty bodies, and accrediting agencies; hollowing out the security of tenure; exposing pedagogical choices to scrutiny by the lay public; and skewing hiring processes for leadership positions. Several attempts were made to directly censor course content and entire study programs, although they were halted in the courts and the legislative process. The laws that remain are partially written in ambiguous language, creating uncertainty over their meaning or future implementation. Moreover, the overall discourse has left no doubt about the intentions of those in power to overhaul higher education in the State of Florida according to their political vision, thus defining the general perception of the evolving legal reality and shaping how individuals and institutions navigate compliance, as I show later.
Data and Methodology
The investigation in this article relies heavily on field research conducted at six higher education institutions—five public and one private university—across the State of Florida; I visited five of them in early 2024.Footnote 5 They are a diverse selection of 5 of the 12 public institutions that represent the State University System of Florida, plus the private University of Miami. I conducted 60 interviews with current or former staff of those institutions largely between February and March 2024; three took place between April and June 2024. The study received an ethics review approval from Freie Universität Berlin and Stanford University; all participants gave informed consent before participating. Although most are identified by their interview number, some wished to be identified by name (see table 1). To ensure effective informed consent, I reconfirmed the name disclosure with interviewees before publication in cases where this consent might have been affected by developments in US academia since early 2024. Slightly more than half of all interviews were conducted in person and the rest remotely via video call. Of the 60 interviewees, 52 were scholars, some of whom had administrative or union roles as well; 6 were students; 1 was a trustee; and 1 a library representative. I also met with two journalists covering the state legislature and had various informal exchanges around campus.
List of Interviewees Who Consented to Being Named
Table 1 Long description
The table contains six columns: Index number, Name, Affiliation at time of interview, Position at time of interview, Interview date, and Interview mode.
* Row 1: #02-02, Martha Schoolman, Florida International University, Associate Professor (English), Feb 6, 2024, In person.
* Row 2: #02-03, Scotney Evans, University of Miami, Associate professor (Education), Feb 7, 2024, In person.
* Row 3: #02-11, Timothy Watson, University of Miami, Professor (English), Feb 9, 2024, In person.
* Row 4: #02-14, Daniel Saunders, Florida International University, Associate professor (Education) and United Faculty of Florida, F I U chapter, Feb 12, 2024, Remote.
* Row 5: #02-15, Sarah Hernandez, New College of Florida, Associate professor (Sociology and Caribbean and Latin American Studies), Feb 12, 2024, In person.
* Row 6: #02-16, Maria Vesperi, New College of Florida, Professor (Anthropology), Feb 13, 2024, In person.
* Row 7: #02-18, Katherine Walstrom, New College of Florida, Professor (Biochemistry) and president of United Faculty of Florida, N C chapter, Feb 14, 2024, In person.
* Row 8: #02-22, Stanley Fish, New College of Florida, Presidential Scholar in Residence (Law/Literature), Feb 15, 2024, In person.
* Row 9: #02-29, Danaya Wright, University of Florida, Professor (Law) and previously Faculty Senate, Feb 20, 2024, In person.
* Row 10: #02-31, Jeffrey Adler, University of Florida, Professor (History), Feb 21, 2024, Remote.
* Row 11: #02-37, Daniel Smith, University of Florida, Professor (Political Science), Feb 23, 2024, In person.
* Row 12: #02-39, Meera Sitharam, University of Florida, Professor (Computer Science) and president of United Faculty of Florida, U F chapter, Feb 27, 2024, Remote.
* Row 13: #02-40, Frank Alcock, New College of Florida, Professor (Political Science and Environmental Studies), Feb 27, 2024, Remote.
* Row 14: #02-42, Mark Bauerlein, New College of Florida, Board of Trustees, Feb 28, 2024, Remote.
* Row 15: #03-10, Kenneth Nunn, University of Florida, Professor emeritus (Law), Mar 15, 2024, Remote.
The semi-structured interviews were designed to be exploratory; they did not focus solely on self-censorship but began with more general questions. I first asked respondents how they perceived recent developments in higher education in Florida and what the changes meant for their own work. The topic of self-censorship emerged as a key concern identified by the interviewees. The interview data were analyzed based on audio transcripts or handwritten notes; I coded them according to both predetermined and inductively emerging themes and then identified patterns and discrepancies.
In this kind of research, the selection of interviewees cannot be representative, even though I made efforts to include people with a variety of viewpoints, disciplinary backgrounds, career positions, and identities. The majority of interviewees were in the social sciences or humanities, but at least eight scholars had a background in STEM fields; of the 60, 28 were female and 12 were non-white. Among the roughly 80 additional people I had repeatedly contacted for an interview, only 5 responded, declining the request. The others never replied, making it difficult to infer the reason for their nonresponse; the higher share of faculty of color among them may suggest more widespread reluctance to engage among this group. Moreover, of more than a dozen actors I contacted who directly supported the recent developments in Florida higher education—among them lawmakers, trustees, administrators, and scholars—only one agreed to an interview. The lack of representativeness and the self-selection in the sample have some ramifications for the interpretation of the findings but are otherwise not a major methodological concern; that is because the objective of the research was exploratory to identify potential patterns and disparities of situational assessments and personal responses by scholars across different institutions.
The Politics of Self-Censorship in Florida
General Observations
Among the people I spoke to, the sentiment most frequently expressed was fear: not necessarily a fear of something tangible but often of what the future might hold. Before I began my field research in Florida, I spent several weeks in California, conducting similar interviews on academic freedom issues. I was immediately struck by the number of respondents in Florida who switched to their personal email address or other means of communication to avoid official channels, which can be subject to public record requests (Emba Reference Emba2023). Given that among those who did meet with me, several articulated their earlier hesitations, it is very likely (although impossible to quantify) that many did not respond to my request out of fear of adverse consequences. One person noted that she tried to get other faculty members to talk with reporters about the situation, even off the record, but “it’s been very difficult. There is a great deal of fear, even just among people with tenure” (#03-05).
At the same time, not everyone was fearful. A small number seemed nonchalant about recent developments, saying they should best be ignored as insubstantial, given that no one is really being told what they can or cannot teach or research (#02-20; Stanley Fish; #02-23). They dismissed the events as “political theater”—a notion that many others indeed agreed with, even though most felt that the repercussions were still real (e.g., Danaya Wright; #02-35; #02-36; #02-38; #03-05). A few displayed open defiance and mentioned readings, classes, or events they had committed to maintaining or even arranged for specifically in response to the political pressures (Sarah Hernandez; #02-27; Jeffrey Adler; #02-33; #03-05; #03-12). These responses reflect the heterogeneity in behavior also identified by Fowler and Schneider (Reference Fowler and Schneider2024) in Idaho.
Hardly anyone among my interlocutors agreed with the administration’s attack on higher education, as noted earlier. The one exception was Mark Bauerlein, a trustee appointed to New College’s BOT in January 2023, who, like most of the board members, did not live in Florida. When asked about the legislation targeting race scholarship and teaching, he dismissed the criticism as “laughable” and said he would listen if these “cowardly” professors had “spoken up about past episodes where conservatives have been shouted down.” When pressed about the stance taken by FIRE, he acknowledged their work in defending conservatives but said he thought “they overreacted on Florida,” citing the example of an open letter sent to New College. Regarding FIRE’s lawsuit in response to the Florida legislation, he shrugged the issue off as “very legalistic” and “beyond my expertise to weigh in on the constitutionality of that.”
When I asked others about instances of conservatives being “shouted down” or similar episodes of “cancel culture,” no one could give me a specific example from Florida. In my conversations, several participants emphasized, unprompted, that attacks on academic freedom come from both the political right and the left, but they also noted that Florida has not been experiencing the dynamics that the conservative right is purportedly targeting (e.g., #02-20; #03-08; #03-14; #06-01). For instance, when the Florida legislature was debating SB 266, the example that was repeatedly brought up was an incident at Stanford Law School in March 2023 when a conservative judge was met with hostility by students and a bungled response by the school’s associate dean. Rather than providing examples from Florida, Senator Grall remarked, “This isn’t just happening at Stanford, this is happening at our universities and colleges across the country” (Florida Channel 2023b at 3:02:00).
Evidence of Self-censorship
As I noted, only some of the new legal provisions currently in force touch on the content of academic teaching or research. And because the new regulations on gen-ed courses were only beginning to be translated into university policies at the time of my research in early 2024, no content-related changes—whether in the core curriculum or outside it—should have occurred when I interviewed faculty members. In this section, I delineate to what extent changes in higher education content can nevertheless be observed because scholars were engaging in self-censorship. The following two sections analyze this behavior and institutional differences in faculty response.
Self-censorship is a topic that is notoriously hard to study for several reasons (cf. Vered et al. Reference Vered, Ambar, Fuxman, Hanna, Bar-Tal, Bar-Tal, Nets-Zehngut and Sharvit2017, 175). First, as noted, many faculty members declined to speak with me. It seems likely that many of them would be precisely those who would engage in the most extensive self-censorship, leading them to consider such an interview as a risk not worth taking. Second, self-censorship may be perceived as an act of cowardice in a situation where people have decided to protect themselves, despite their sense that it is wrong to do so (cf. Kendrick Reference Kendrick2013, 1679). I did at times feel an unease around the topic that could suggest that some were downplaying the adjustments they had indeed made. Third, self-censorship does not always play out in concrete ways but rather in subtle shifts of behavior that are harder to pin down (cf. Barendt et al Reference Barendt, Lustgarten, Norrie and Stephenson1997, 192f.). With these limitations in mind, I distinguish content-specific omission, in which the topics taught are altered, syllabi are adjusted, research topics are modified, or public forums are avoided, from complete withdrawal by abandoning their academic positions either through early retirement, finding a job outside academia, or taking a position outside Florida.
Omission: Content-based Self-censorship
One union representative who is in touch with a broad range of professors observed that “some faculty have just removed certain titles from their syllabi” to avoid certain “buzzwords” without changing the content they are teaching (#02-06). I heard similar comments from many faculty members. At New College, faculty reportedly gathered to “brainstorm” strategies for staying under the radar of the new college administration and came up with “words to keep out of [the] syllabi” (Katherine Walstrom). A faculty member researching diversity issues reported that colleagues “did kind of walk things back or rename some subheadings or weekly topics, even if they kept their readings the same” (#03-09). One scholar told me somewhat ambiguously that she decided to change some session titles on her syllabus “but not much of the content” (#02-35). A professor at the historically black Florida A&M University (FAMU) said that even though there is no real law that forbids it, there have been “effects on how we teach history, especially systemic racism.” He thought that his colleagues were no longer promoting such classes and majors the way they used to in the past and therefore were attracting fewer students (#02-43).
Others apparently went further in the changes they made. One history professor reported that he had thought about including The 1619 Project as a textbook in one of his classes but decided not to, fearing a potential backlash (#02-13). Others noted that, although colleagues initially stated they had not made any modifications, on further reflection they admitted to having changed some assigned readings for similar reasons (Sarah Hernandez). One scholar of religious studies said, “I heard this from students, that their instructors are self-censoring. There’s a lot of very explicit ‘I can’t teach about this,’ or ‘I’m going to teach this but you need to know I’m not advocating for this,’ etc. … [The students] feel like it’s sort of dumbing stuff down” (#03-05; see also Peterson Reference Peterson2025).
The union representative quoted earlier also noted, “Other faculty remove the topics entirely; it used to be the case that they did a week on feminism or critical race theory, and they just remove the topic entirely, because they’re, like, ‘I don’t want to have that fight’” (#02-06). In fact, one political science professor who used to teach a course on international LGBTQ politics up until the pandemic said, “A part of me is worried: Would there be consequences? So, I’m waiting to see how politicized post-tenure review will be” before offering it again (#02-05).
A professor in the social sciences reported a vague sense “that there are people at [my university] who have changed their curriculum quite a bit in response to these laws, although I don’t think they were actually required to do that” (#03-12).
Various educators reported feeling more uneasy in the classroom, which appeared to have ramifications not only for class content but also for pedagogy (cf. Russell-Brown Reference Russell-Brown2024, 824). One professor whose work intersects with race politics said that although he updated his class without diverging from the usual content, he noticed that “in class, I second-guessed myself more” and that having a student who took positions in the media “as a conservative … interfered in how I delivered the class” (#02-21).
Some also mentioned fellow academics’ unwillingness to speak out about the developments either internally or externally. “Nobody wants to be the person who stands up and confronts these things either in institutional meetings or, you know, as matters of protest or in terms of their lectures. I mean, nobody wants to be the lightning rod for any reaction” (Kenneth Nunn). That sentiment seemed to affect how colleagues interact with one another. A faculty member who used to work in her university’s DEI program noted that some people started wondering whether it was “dangerous” to talk to her as they were navigating the changes and trying to “stay out of trouble” (#02-01).
Overall, the most noticeable impact was on how and what academics taught, as well as their DEI work, but the vast majority insisted that their research has not been affected in any way. However, Katheryn Russell-Brown (Reference Russell-Brown2024, 814), an African American criminologist at UF, takes a different position in her article about the “multitudinous racial harms” that resulted from recent Florida laws: the “legislation devalues some areas of scholarship” and “discourage[s] and dissuade[s] Florida scholars from engaging in race research.” Even experienced scholars who are no longer recognized by their institutions but are instead met with hostility “may reevaluate the viability of their scholarship and academic discipline” (815).
Similarly, another Black faculty member at a different institution noted that many doctoral students who had started off with research related to diversity, equity, or social justice are “afraid they’ll spend enormous amount of time working on a research project and then somehow [be told] that they’re not able to do it… so they’re rethinking really valuable research projects, because of fear primarily. I keep trying to reassure them … but it’s difficult to assuage those fears when … there’s always this intensifying salacious rhetoric in the political sphere” (#02-24).
This professor also reported that she had heard from a colleague who had won a prestigious grant, which her university then put under review “to make sure it doesn’t, for lack of a better word, blame white people, otherwise we won’t allow you to accept it.” It was eventually green-lit, but my interlocutor shared that when she later submitted her own grant application, “There was a real worry that [my university] wouldn’t be able to approve it because of state law” (#02-24). When I inquired which law she was referring to, she noted that the bills had gone through various rounds of editing and, even though provisions forbidding external funding related to diversity were eventually deleted, “institutions were responding to that [early] iteration of the bill” (#02-24).
Withdrawal: Abandonment of Academic Positions
Perhaps the most far-reaching impact has occurred where faculty resigned, particularly when they were the only ones at their institution to be doing teaching and research in their area. Kenneth Nunn, a law professor from UF who had retired early because of the proposed ban on CRT, argued that there has “clearly” been an impact by the laws even if they were enjoined: “For example, the University of Florida College of Law does not teach critical race theory [now]…. They had a course on critical race theory up until HB7 was passed. The reason why they don’t teach it is because nobody wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole. All right, I retired. And then the people who are still there are, like, ‘No I’m not going to teach that class.’ And who can blame them?” When I asked what this development means for the education of students, Nunn replied, “I think that it is very difficult to say that you have a complete program of legal education if you don’t have any course or discussion of CRT as a specific legal analysis.”
Several other academics shared that they decided to leave Florida academia. One political science professor told me, “I will retire earlier than I would otherwise, even though … I am not personally affected; I find Florida politics repulsive” (#02-36). A history professor said he had recently accepted a job at a university in a blue state, wanting to be “somewhere where I don’t have to worry about losing my job…. This might be my last chance to leave my job on my own terms, as opposed to getting fired or my job becoming unrecognizable” (#02-13). Many others reported that they knew several colleagues who had left and that the political climate and the changes in higher education were a major part of those decisions, even in disciplines that were not directly affected (#02-38; Meera Sitharam; #06-01). At New College specifically, some 40% of faculty are said to have resigned, retired, or taken an unpaid leave of absence or a sabbatical within the first year of the takeover (Maria Vesperi). Others were still thinking about leaving for good; for example, a faculty member working on race issues said he would normally feel confident about his upcoming tenure application but no longer thinks the same way under the new college administration and is therefore looking for jobs elsewhere (#02-21). A majority of those who had recently carried out job searches at Florida institutions also reported that they had noticeably fewer applicants than usual (#02-12; Katherine Walstrom; Jeffrey Adler; #02-38), with some placing the number of candidates for a history or social science position at around 20% of those applying during previous searches (#02-43; #03-12).
The general sense among my interlocutors was that these shifts, if not deliberately pushed for, were at least welcomed by the new higher education leadership. At the University of Florida, several people reported that their then-new president Ben Sasse had made comments to the effect of “let all those leftists, socialists leave, we’ll hire a bunch of libertarians” (Danaya Wright) or “good riddance to bad rubbish” (Meera Sitharam). I could not verify either of those statements, but they speak to the broader perception of the discourse and attitudes among those in positions of power. Another interviewee told me, “Very likely the leadership of the State of Florida is absolutely delighted that these wonderful young, diverse scholars are leaving Florida.” She said that “they achieve what they desire” without having to resort to harder measures: “They make it unbearable and that’s when people choose to leave” (#02-38). As for New College, I quoted earlier Christopher Rufo’s glee about departing faculty. Similarly, Mark Bauerlein, the New College trustee, shared, “Some of the faculty left. Who cares? Good riddance. We’ve got more faculty coming in, many of whom are more amenable to a traditionalist mission of the campus.”
Explaining Self-censorship
In this section, I consider what may have driven scholars to self-censor by omitting content or withdrawing from academia, even in the absence of direct and legally enforceable censorship. Some factors connect directly with the broader literature on chilling effects resulting from vague regulation and surveillance, but their co-occurrence and interconnectedness highlight a broader pattern of political interference that is not well captured by existing theories.
Instructions and Advice Given by Superiors
Before addressing more subtle sources of uncertainty and fear, it is important to report on cases where people were advised or instructed by superiors to make changes in course content. Although this may indeed amount to censorship by the university administration, rather than self-censorship on the part of the scholar, the boundaries between the two are fluid and depend on the (perceived) assertiveness of the guidance. In any case, these instances highlight relevant shifts in the academic environment more broadly.
A prominent and early case of such direct instructions from university administrators involved Christopher Busey; it was widely reported in the media and at least four people mentioned it in our interviews (Jeffrey Adler; #02-36; #02-38; #03-12). Busey, an associate professor in the UF College of Education, had filed a complaint against UF in December 2021 alleging that he had been asked repeatedly by administrators to remove “critical race” from his curriculum and was threatened with disciplinary measures. HB7 had not even been introduced in the legislature yet, so the administration’s concern was apparently to avoid adverse attention from the legislature (Kumar Reference Kumar2021). A year later, Busey’s leaving academia for a job in professional soccer was generally seen as connected to his complaint and the overall atmosphere at the university.
UF law professor Danaya Wright claimed in our interview that even though HB7 has been enjoined, “a lot of faculty have made changes” because “chairs, maybe deans” requested material to be taken off the website or otherwise adjusted. Another UF scholar reported that “mid-level administrators” had “either told or suggested that we need to censor ourselves, that we should avoid using certain language and topics. An associate dean in my college has told instructors not to use [the term] ‘social justice.’” Some of his colleagues engaged in self-censorship, he said, whereas others were “threatened or harassed” by administrators (Jeffrey Adler). A professor at Florida State University (FSU) who works on diversity issues reported that colleagues in her “parallel unit” at UF “have been encouraged to not work on certain topics if they had two or three areas of interest but a DEI-type topic was one of them. They were encouraged to lean into, let’s say, international education, instead of looking at STEM equity for a while. [At FSU] I have not felt any of that in my department or college or university directly nor seen that with any of my peers who also work on diversity topics” (#03-09).
In fact, all the cases of direct instructions reported to me were at the University of Florida. At the same time, a professor in African American Studies at UF told me, “There has been no interference in what we do in the classroom,” insisting that he had “received no emails, no letters, no water-cooler talk, nothing.… To my knowledge, none of my colleagues have any type of emails, letters, retractions of any kind [such as] ‘Don’t use this book, don’t say that’” (#02-33). This highlights that the degree to which pressure from the state legislature was communicated to faculty differed not only by university (on institutional differences, see the next section) but also by department within the same institution. Overall, my interviews suggest that more consistent sources of content-related changes than direct interventions were the overall political environment and the prevailing confusion and uncertainty, which affected every institution to some degree.
Uncertainty about the Legal Situation and Potential Consequences
Faculty members and students were often unsure about what was legally permissible and what was not; this uncertainty reflected both the changing legal situation and the ambiguity of regulations, a key concern in the legal chilling effects literature. SB 266, for instance, mandates that general education courses “may not distort significant historical events” or teach “identity politics,” without providing criteria or definitions for either of these requirements (Austin et al. Reference Austin2025, 5). Moreover, similarly to what Fowler and Schneider (Reference Fowler and Schneider2024) found in Idaho, an important concern was the lack of guidance from university administrators on how to interpret the laws. A faculty member at FAMU noted that because “the administration is not saying anything, one way or another,” the consequence is that people self-censor: “It’s unclear what would get us in trouble. There is no real law that says what we can’t do, but we know funding could get cut. It’s vaguely written, so everyone is afraid” (#02-43). Legal scholar Kenneth Nunn offered his view on how the vagueness of HB7, for which it was enjoined, is nevertheless effective in guiding people’s actions: “It’s not really clear what the law is supposed to address and what it’s not, but the actors on the ground know.… I think everybody kind of knows what ‘woke’ is, even though they can’t define it. It means all the things that, you know, conservative whites don’t like. And that’s close enough of a definition and that’s what everybody’s using.”
His analysis supports the idea that aggressively advertised political intentions may ultimately matter more in shaping behavior than a close legal reading of the situation. Another law professor similarly told me that, although for a legal scholar it is easy to see when laws are unconstitutional, “everybody else who isn’t sure about that looks at it and goes, oh, I can’t talk about slavery, I can’t talk about race, I can’t talk about gender … because of this law, and students are going to report me if I do” (Danaya Wright). Along the same lines, a political science professor thought that “the tricky part” is for those who teach topics “adjacent to what the bill [SB 266] was addressing, like, am I allowed to talk about slavery in the US? Or is that now going to violate the law? For example, if I’m a historian and I’m talking about the Civil War in the United States, do I have to say that it was driven by states’ rights, or can I focus on slavery as the main driving force behind it?” (#03-08).
This vague risk perception was exacerbated by the newly introduced state-wide tenure-review process, generalizing the anxiety produced by the political climate beyond those in precarious working conditions to affect even well-established scholars. Many pointed out that a regular review procedure was already in place in Florida, with differing rules at each individual institution. However, several voiced concerns that political criteria could become a part of the new process, and they worried whether departmental decisions would be overridden by university presidents or BOTs (#02-01; Martha Schoolman; #02-05; #02-13; Maria Vesperi; Jeffrey Adler; #02-43; #03-08; #03-12; #06-01). A few others felt less apprehensive, either because they thought that they had a stellar record that was easy to defend or that politically motivated dismissals would bring too much negative publicity, or they did not think the process had the potential for political interference (#02-01; #02-23; Danaya Wright; #02-36; #03-12; #05-01). The specific regulations around post-tenure review were being negotiated at each institution well into 2024— all while the first group of professors were already undergoing it, unsure of what exactly was being reviewed and how (e.g., Jeffrey Adler; #06-01).
Several faculty members reported that they regularly had students coming up to them, asking them questions like “Are you scared teaching about this; could you get fired?” when teaching about structural violence (#02-38), or “How are you allowed to teach this course; how is this legal?” in a class about diversity and social justice (#02-24). Union representative #02-06 similarly observed, “Last year’s series of legislation was advertised in no uncertain terms that the governor wants it to be the case that certain topics are unwelcome in our classrooms, and this can create an attitude among our students like if we are talking about these things somehow we’re doing something wrong, right? Even if the laws don’t prohibit it, there’s kind of like a mood that somehow that shouldn’t be talked about” (#02-06).
These types of perceptions also seemed to affect the faculty themselves. One noted, “There’s a real, pardon the expression, but a real Gestapo feeling, like a panopticon. A feeling that at any moment the state is going to bust in and punish us for having conversations around justice and equity” (#02-24).
Being Watched
The panopticon is, in fact, a metaphor that came up a few times, pointing to the chilling effects described in the literature on state and corporate surveillance. Because of the mandatory posting of extensive teaching material online, as well as the possibility for students to record classes without notice or consent, teachers were feeling that they were being monitored when preparing and delivering their classes. One faculty member pushed back against the “misperception” that universities “have changed our curriculum” or “doing much more oversight of what we’re saying in class,” but noted, “It’s interesting that the legislature has kind of built this panopticon model where everyone is afraid that the students are watching them.” Although “there is no way that the legislature can actually monitor … thousands of classrooms on a daily basis, they can plant that seed of doubt that maybe someone records what I say and then I get in trouble” (#03-12). Even though at the time of the interviews no one knew firsthand of a case where a student had brought a complaint against a professor after HB233, and only one person had heard about a case in another department, several explicitly noted a “chilling effect” (#02-05; Daniel Smith; #02-43; #03-09; see also Groton, Barsky and Spadola Reference Groton, Barsky and Spadola2023).
More clearly palpable was the fear by several faculty members that they would be personally targeted by politicians, right-wing media, or hostile members of the public. Fear of being subjected to online harassment and doxing has been exacerbated with the mandatory public posting of syllabi in the context of a belligerent political discourse that singles out certain topics. The professor who had told me that he decided against including The 1619 Project as required reading said that he “was afraid that a group like Moms for Liberty would see it and target me” (#02-13). Another faculty member shared, “If the state does a search of classes and uses keywords like diversity or race or something like that, then I am immediately flagged and who knows when the state is going to be interested in making an example of somebody” (#02-24). Union representative #02-06 noted that for many faculty members even union support and legal insurance made no difference in their decisions, because they simply “don’t want to be a national story”; they “just want to protect themselves and protect their families.” Several others described how colleagues are self-censoring, taking certain readings or topics out of their classes “because they don’t want to attract attention” and “don’t want to be the one whose name gets dragged through social media and who gets doxed” (#03-08; Danaya Wright).
Seeing Interference Elsewhere
Assessments of the higher education landscape in Florida were also clouded by a general perception of menace in relation to the situation at New College, particularly from within the institution but also for those on the outside. Within the confines of this article, it is not possible to do justice to the turmoil created by the conservative takeover of the college, which included the BOT’s highly publicized decision to abolish the gender studies program, deny tenure to several professors who applied for it in 2023, and implement a range of other administrative measures alongside an aggressive rhetoric of “anti-woke” purges. A small number of faculty members did think that there were opportunities to be seen in these changes. However, one year after the takeover, there was still a sense of shock and distress among most professors I spoke to, some of whom had taught at New College for decades and were very loyal to the institution and its students.
Seen from the outside, the interlocuters were split about whether a similar overhaul would be possible at other institutions, including their own. Some felt that there is “nothing that is insulating us” and even described a “sense of impending doom” among colleagues (#02-13; #02-05; #02-06; Daniel Saunders; Kenneth Nunn). Others expressed that other institutions are simply too big, too important, too well-performing, not left-leaning enough, or too well-protected by their constituencies and alumni that include Republican legislators to suffer the same fate (#02-08; Danaya Wright; #02-36; Frank Alcock; #03-08). Importantly, several raised the point that the takeover of New College might already have served its purpose of creating a chilling effect, so that no political capital needed to be spent on other institutions (Daniel Saunders; #02-01): “You make a scapegoat out of one institution and everybody else falls in line” (Danaya Wright).
Pushing this idea even further, some placed the New College situation in a trajectory of a broader authoritarian turn. One political science professor equated New College with a “sacrificial lamb” that “a lot of people in leadership in parallel institutions” see “and think to themselves, well, let’s keep our heads down…. They’re not going to come after us. Let’s just sacrifice them.” He cautioned that this logic “usually fails at some point” as one moves toward authoritarianism, “because they’re not satisfied with just the sacrificial lamb” (Daniel Smith). Paraphrasing Martin Niemöller’s quote about Nazi Germany, another professor suggested, “First they came for New College and then for critical race theory, and then eventually they came for my STEM class and there was no one left [to protest]” (#03-05).
Compounding Effects
These findings confirm that, outside general-education courses, it is ultimately not the specific effects of the laws themselves that censor content in Florida higher education but rather individual scholars acting on their fears generated by the political environment. Union representative #02-06 emphasized that at their institution “importantly, no one has instructed [faculty to remove topics]. Right. These are choices that faculty are making. But this is part of the peril we’re facing in Florida. When people are told these things are bad or these things are wrong or these things are going to get you in trouble … even if they don’t follow that up with actual law that would be enforceable, nevertheless, those norms in that messaging can make people self-censor in ways that are really damaging” (#02-06). A faculty member at FSU similarly insisted that their president has told them “point-blank” that they should not stop teaching the way they want to teach. “But I think people who are concerned have said, well, I don’t even want to be accused of [doing something wrong]. And so, they have been self-censoring. So, this is what’s unique about the effects of these laws—they may very well have the impact they intend to have,” even if not through official bureaucratic channels (#03-08).
Self-censorship materializes in different ways and seems to respond to a host of overlapping and interrelated sources of fear and uncertainty. As one interviewee noted, it is “often unclear for what reason exactly” someone is changing a book assignment or syllabus, “but there’s always the element of second-guessing: Is it getting me into trouble?” (Sarah Hernandez). An untenured immigrant faculty member described a range of things she felt threatened by and added, “It all affected me more than expected—I come from a country where we find ways to deal with adversity, but the uncertainty is what gets me” (#02-35). Even many seasoned tenured scholars reported feeling under pressure, not least because the content-related attacks have coincided with a weakening of tenure and unions.
However, the existence of instructions from administrative staff within certain institutions—the University of Florida more than any other—also shows that there is an institutional dimension to how the political pressure to make content-based changes has been handled and enforced. The next and last section of the analysis addresses this in more detail.
Institutional Dimension
There are two main factors affecting how universities have acted in response to political pressure from the Florida legislature and political actors: their public positioning and their internal communication. Before addressing these two elements in turn, it is useful to acknowledge the extent to which public universities in Florida have been under overwhelming “institutional stress” (Drori Reference Drori2025). One facet of such stress is an “acute state of threat, in which the institution’s interpretive grid, or fundamental perspective on its mission and social role, is shaken.” According to Drori, this is particularly true for academia in a context of democratic decline and “populist hyper-scrutiny,” for which the situation in Florida serves as a prime example. One law professor told me in view of SB 266 that because public universities are state agencies, they cannot challenge the constitutionality of the law: “So, the institution is now put in this impossible situation where we either are going to engage in an unconstitutional act by silencing our faculty; or we’re not going to silence our faculty, and the legislature is going to punish us” (Danaya Wright). I can only provide a limited analysis of this institutional perspective, but it is important to address the institutional dimension of the “micro-level experiences” (Drori Reference Drori2025) of scholars.
Public Positioning
Many scholars have lamented the fact that their universities have not taken any visible actions to push back even against the most egregious propositions by the Florida government, particularly the intended abolishment of majors and minors in women’s and gender studies and the actions against New College. While the radical agenda of HB 999 was being pushed, an Inside Higher Ed article noted that the presidents of all 40 public universities and colleges in Florida have remained “conspicuously silent.” When contacted in early 2023, “none of the presidents agreed to discuss attacks on higher education from the DeSantis administration, even when offered anonymity” (Moody Reference Moody2023).Footnote 6
Yet, the interviewees who brought up the silence of their institution understood why their universities did not take action: it was fear of retaliation from the legislature, as well as from DeSantis who “is known to give personally retaliatory responses” (Martha Schoolman; see also Moody Reference Moody2023). “There has been real fear at the … highest levels of the university … that if they push back in any way, then they’re going to risk their funding,” one scholar explained (#03-12). That person went on to say that there had been “counseling by the administration to us to be careful about how we talk to the media, or preferably don’t speak to the media at all … because that could result in problems with funding.” At another institution, a faculty member told me, “Our administration is trying to fly under the radar; it tries not to incur the ire of the state” (#02-24).
A high-level administrator at UF defended his university’s stance by saying that faculty who want their institution to be more outspoken “don’t realize that the administration is between them and the lion’s mouth.” He agreed that “there were times where the administration has failed to be a public supporter. But we need to consider the cost/benefit ratio of doing something,” adding that “the goal is to ensure the longevity of the institution.” His key argument was that the university administration was very active in trying to protect faculty but that they were doing it behind closed doors where it would be most effective. About post-tenure review, he shared, “My understanding is that the Governor was getting rid of tenure and our people literally saved it” (#05-01).
However, some faculty felt that, even if the quiet lobbying worked in some instances, “the lack of public pushback legitimizes what was being done” (#03-05). In addition, many scholars expressed that the lack of a public stance from their institution left them feeling very unsupported and vulnerable. “I would like to see pushback, even if in the end they can’t change the law. I think it would mean a lot to faculty and students to feel like we got some support from the administration,” a UF professor said (#03-05). “It feels leaderless,” another scholar noted about Florida International University (FIU) (#02-01).
Ultimately, the institutions in Florida are dealing with a classic collective action problem where they might be better off if they cooperated in issuing joint public statements, but adverse interests and coordination issues prevent them from doing so. They are not used to working together because the higher education space has positioned them as competitors over state funding and students. According to the 2023 Inside Higher Ed article, a review of presidents’ contracts also suggests that there is a “possibility of being fired for cause … for speaking up on political matters.” In addition, “some presidents owe their presidency to the governor” (Moody Reference Moody2023). In fact, the system’s collective action problem seems to be driven in no small part by the flagship University of Florida, whose then-president Sasse was widely considered to have been helped to get the position by DeSantis and whose BOT is led by real estate developer and major DeSantis donor Mori Hosseini.
The state of anxiety was palpable even at the one private institution I visited. In early 2023, some faculty members tried to get the University of Miami’s faculty senate to adopt a resolution to denounce the attacks on academic freedom in the public system. A year later, several of them still remembered the specific phrase of “not wanting to poke the bear” that the then-provost used in arguing against adopting the statement (Scotney Evans; Timothy Watson). The resolution was eventually passed in a “watered-down” version with a general commitment to academic freedom (Scotney Evans).
Internal Communication
Although many faculty members wanted more pushback by their administrations, others acknowledged that the scope for public action was very limited. Within the political constraints on public confrontation, one faculty member at FAMU argued, “Being protective is how loosely you are applying the directives” (#02-43).
Yet, as Fowler and Schneider (Reference Fowler and Schneider2024, 72) and Pedota et al. (Reference Pedota, Garces, Epstein, Ngaosi and Khalayleh2025) emphasize, university leaders have a responsibility to counteract faculty’s sense of uncertainty about legal requirements by providing practical guidance and support. It became clear from my interviews that institutions varied greatly in how they handled their internal messaging. An obvious divide emerged between UF and most of the other institutions. I already noted that the UF administration was the only one with a fairly consistent pattern of administrators urging faculty members to change public-facing teaching materials and focus on certain topics rather than others. Even though the new administration at New College was perceived as particularly hostile to existing faculty, no such requests were reported there.
Moreover, all my interlocutors at FSU seemed to clearly understand the general messaging they received from their leadership. “What our president has said is ‘No one is telling you to not teach your classes the way that they’re taught. And if an issue arises, we will deal with it.… You’re the experts in how to teach your classes’” (#03-08). At FIU, even though some expressed their wish for more transparency on what was happening (#02-05; #02-08), several faculty members highlighted how good the relationship was between the administration and the faculty union. They described “good-faith negotiations” and felt that there has historically been a partnership between the administration and faculty members that benefited them in this situation (Daniel Saunders; #02-06; Meera Sitharam). That said, as I noted earlier, this did not mean that administrations at FIU and other institutions were necessarily forthcoming in providing concrete guidance for faculty on how to navigate the situation.
In contrast, scholars at UF identified their administration’s penchant for “anticipatory obedience,” noting that “even when a law is in the courts being challenged and it’s not actually in effect, they’re complying with it and they’re sometimes complying in the most complete way rather than in a minimalist way” (#03-05). The notion of anticipatory obedience also seemed to apply to the expert witness case that occurred in late 2021 (see also Hegeman Reference Hegeman2024; Pettit and Stripling Reference Pettit and Stripling2022) and that still loomed large in the perception of the administration’s attitude toward its faculty. In addition to the proximity of top leadership at UF to DeSantis, various people thought that its obedient attitude was also a result of being more under scrutiny than other institutions. “When something happens, legislators pull up our syllabi, not others,” a high-level administrator argued (#05-01). Similarly, a former faculty member said that “being the flagship institution, I think that many eyes are on the University of Florida, and they want to get rid of the argument or the belief that UF is a liberal bastion in a sea of red” (Kenneth Nunn).
Conclusion
After hours of public comments and debate among legislators over the draft of SB 266, Senator Grall, who had presented the bill, appeared exasperated when insisting that “the words on the page do not equate to the conversation that is happening around this bill.… The bill doesn’t prohibit speech” (Florida Channel 2023b at 3:01:00). Many others have defended the actions taken by the Florida government and legislature or downplayed their impact by asserting that no one in higher education is being told what they can or cannot teach or research. Although this may be true from a legal viewpoint, this article has shown that it is not the full story.
In addition to significant changes made to the general-education program at Florida’s public universities, which have serious repercussions on teaching critical content, political discourse and targeted actions have created an oppressive atmosphere in which uncertainty about the reality of current and future interference encourages some degree of self-censorship, particularly in the classroom, even in the absence (or after judicial override) of direct intervention. Although the recent laws may retain the appearance of democratic legitimacy, their interpretation and enforcement are mediated through a political discourse stressing the intent to suppress certain voices and marking critical inquiry as suspect and objectionable. It is therefore not sufficient to analyze the wording of a bill to discern its effects on academic freedom: we need to account for how these and other words are understood and internalized. At the same time, the analysis has also shown that this chilling effect is not affecting everyone in the same way. The extent to which scholars respond to the pressures with self-censorship varies greatly and does not only depend on the subject matters they teach or research but in a significant way is also influenced by their personal situation, character, and their institutional environment. University leaders and legal counsel, in particular, have a responsibility to counteract situational uncertainty among their faculty, but the case of Florida shows that they are often not fulfilling this role adequately.
The findings further suggest the need for a broader recognition of chilling effects as an instrument of soft repression used by illiberal actors within formally democratic settings. The politics of self-censorship amounts to a mode of informal governance that circumvents judicial scrutiny and operates below the threshold of overt repression. It may not always be possible to establish a clear intent by political actors to provoke self-censorship through the specific actions they take. However, in the case of Florida, the direct attempts at censorship, the impassive comments about scholars who have resigned, and the unwillingness to engage with evidence of institutional stress and chilling effects strongly suggest that they are part of a deliberate political strategy for some and perhaps acceptable collateral damage for others. The consequences of these politics of self-censorship are pervasive and likely long-lasting. Although further pushback from the courts could alleviate the situation to some degree, it is unlikely to assuage everyone’s fears and undo the damage that has already been done to free inquiry and teaching.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the numerous scholars and other members of higher education institutions in Florida who have agreed to talk with me and shared their insights that form the basis of this article. I further thank Joline Heller for her excellent research assistance, as well as the participants at the IPSA World Congress panel on “Challenges to the Academic Freedom of Political Scientists”, the Una Europa conference “A Three-dimensional Initiative on Academic Freedom,” and the SCRIPTS Research Unit Science Retreat, and the four reviewers of this article, for their encouraging and useful comments. My work on this article was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy [grant EXC 2055].
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