Ron DeSantis’s latest blatant violation of the First Amendment
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If you’re looking for a textbook example of the concept of “viewpoint discrimination,” here you go:
The leading Republican alternative to Donald Trump is still, at least for the moment, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Whatever benefits DeSantis brings compared to Trump, he is absolutely not promising to safeguard democracy. To the contrary, he is running as a more effective authoritarian.
The latest evidence is an order the DeSantis administration has issued, fed to an approving Fox News, for universities in his state to shut down chapters of National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
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The reasoning DeSantis employs to close down SJP could be used to shut down almost any student group — or any political group at all. If they support abortion rights, you could say they advocate murder. If they support Trump, you could say they endorse violent authoritarianism.
DeSantis’s brand of authoritarianism is nonviolent, but this comes as little comfort. The hallmark of his governing style has been to use the powers of government to crush political enemies without any concern for democratic rights. He held up his crude retaliation against Disney for having the temerity to make a statement opposing one of his policies as a model for his plans as president to intimidate the opposition. His “Stop WOKE” law has already been struck down as a First Amendment violation. And his education agenda has revolved around naked partisan control of both primary and higher education, seeking to turn schools into propaganda factories.
And indeed this is part of a much broader authoritarian attack on higher education in Florida:
The conservative attacks on public education in Florida have become ever more extreme under Governor Ron DeSantis. Now they’re also becoming so absurd and so totalizing that they forbid taking a stand on them in any direction. It would be a fantastic act of satire were it not also so dangerous.
Back in May, DeSantis signed into law Senate Bill 266, banning the state’s public colleges and universities from using public funds to “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism.” But the law, which took effect in July, never defined those terms, instead leaving that up to the Board of Governors that oversees those state schools. Now the board has done just that. In draft regulation obtained by The Chronicle of Higher Education, the board proposes that the ban apply to all campus programs and activities in which the college or university “endorses or promotes a position” on “topics that polarize or divide society among political, ideological, moral, or religious beliefs, positions, or norms.”
On its face, the policy proposed by DeSantis and his lickspittles would effectively ban any program or activity on campus. In practice, it will be used to shut down anyone who disagrees with Chris Rufo about anything. One could argue that this is almost as bad as a New College sophomore saying that the Salisbury steak and ketchup being served at the Hilton Garden Inn near the Sarasota airport shouldn’t be called “Beef Wellington.”