Ctrl-F fail: Florida public universities get chilling directive to keyword-search faculty syllabi to purge ‘anti-Israel bias’

Overseers urgently comb college textbooks and syllabi for disfavored terms and ideas to purge.

It might sound like the chilling opening of a dystopian novel, but it’s just another Monday for public college faculty in Florida.

Last Monday, to be exact, when State University System of Florida Chancellor Ray Rodrigues reportedly directed the system’s 12 public university leaders to conduct an urgent and sweeping review of faculty syllabi, textbooks, and test banks for evidence of “antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias.” According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Rodrigues subsequently heard from some presidents about ‘the feasibility’ of getting such a review done by the start of the fall semester.”

So in follow-up communications Friday, Rodrigues and Emily Sikes, the system’s interim vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, clarified that universities should first conduct keyword searches of all course descriptions and syllabi for the words: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, and Jews. Then, any fall courses using one or more of those terms are to be reported to the System Board of Governors, alongside a list of “related instructional materials,” by August 16.

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The Orwellian directive, and the censorship that will follow, leaves students and faculty unsure about whether their discussions or course materials addressing current events — from terrorism, to the war in Gaza, to international relations more broadly — will land them in trouble with elected officials or campus administrators. 

It’s exactly the kind of speech-chilling, top-down threat to academic freedom and free speech FIRE has been concerned about even before Florida adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism—a definition never intended for punitive purposes. FIRE has warned for years about the chilling effect of an array of legislative and regulatory efforts nationwide to impose overbroad, vague definitions of anti-Semitism, including the IHRA’s. These subjective standards won’t help Florida address genuine discrimination. Instead, campuses must consistently enforce existing laws that prohibit discriminatory harassment and true threats, while respecting First Amendment laws and norms. Censoring teaching material to enforce political conformity is unconstitutional on a public campus in the United States of America.

Even before Rodrigues’s latest directive, Florida had already abandoned its academic freedom obligations at least once this summer under political pressure to eradicate language some deemed “anti Israel.” FIRE voiced objections to Florida International University in June after it announced a review of a professor’s textbook test bank questions for a Terrorism and Homeland Security course, under pressure to do so from a state legislator.

As public entities bound by the First Amendment, Florida’s public colleges and universities must respect constitutional guarantees of academic freedom, including a faculty member’s right to select pedagogically relevant material and how to present it. While universities have affirmative duties to address discriminatory conduct, that does not mean sterilizing campuses of anything some people might find offensive. 

“The most important thing is that we get this right,” Chancellor Rodrigues wrote of the new directive on Friday. 

Well, Chancellor, there’s no right way to violate the First Amendment.