On Oct. 30, Florida’s Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas unilaterally removed Professor Philip Wiseley from a statewide committee on sociology instruction. Wiseley teaches sociology at Florida SouthWestern State College and may face further disciplinary action, including termination, at Kamoutsas’ encouragement. Wiseley was accused of teaching “gender ideology” in violation of SB 266, a law that excludes courses with “unproven, speculative, or exploratory content” from the general education curriculum. Wiseley’s case suggests that the state is escalating its attacks on the independence of public colleges and universities and is beginning to impose a state-dictated curriculum in an attempt to restrict free inquiry.

As sociology professors at Florida International University, we have watched with dismay as our discipline has become a recurrent target in the state’s war on higher education. In December 2023, then-Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. tweeted that sociology “has been hijacked by left-wing activists,” prompting the Board of Governors to remove Intro to Sociology from the state-level general education curriculum. Other sociology courses that we teach, including Sociology of Gender, were among hundreds purged from the General Education curriculum in 2024.

This August, the state ordered the review of Intro to Sociology course content for compliance with SB 266. At Pensacola State College, Heritage Foundation Trustee Zach Smith led the Board in requiring college administrators to locate a new textbook for the class after he identified content alleged to violate SB 266. The working group from which Wiseley was expelled had been empaneled to strike any perceived violations of SB 266 from Intro to Sociology course material, a clear act of curriculum censorship.

At an Oct. 29 press conference, Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted that he was acting in the name of free choice: students would no longer be required to take sociology. But students have never been required to take sociology. What he did was constrain the freedom to choose sociology by restricting its offering for general education credit.

DeSantis further claimed that sociology was used “to smuggle in ideology.” But it is his administration that is infusing the curriculum with political ideology. SB 266 stipulates that general education courses should be about “Western civilization” and the “constitutional republic.” DeSantis announced that our universities will prepare students “to be citizen[s] of our republic especially on the eve of America 250,” a reference to the Department of Education civics coalition promoting “God-centered virtuous education” and “love of country.” This amounts to the full-scale transformation of higher education into a state project of creating compliant, rather than informed and free-thinking, citizens.

As this war against independent inquiry rages on, DeSantis has indicated that further efforts to “streamline” the curriculum are on the horizon. One model of the future of general education is offered in a recently published book by three Heritage Foundation authors, including Adam Kissel, a DeSantis-installed trustee at University of West Florida. The authors argue that social science and humanities offerings in general education should be reduced to learning about Western civilization and the ideas and traditions shaping our country.

As for Intro to Sociology, we expect that Florida will either order its full removal from university level general education or further restrict its scope. Both options amount to the state dictating what is — and is not — allowed to be taught, creating the dangerous precedent of partisan actors imposing course readings, despite having no subject matter expertise.

The fight over Intro to Sociology is not just about this course. It is a struggle to preserve the independence of our public education system and more broadly, the freedom of thought. Many state colleges and universities are already led by politicians hand-selected by DeSantis for allegiance, despite having no background in teaching or research. Historically, authoritarian regimes have always restricted free inquiry in higher education. We urge readers to join and support efforts to maintain Florida’s independent college and university system before they are reduced to tools of an authoritarian state.

Dr. Katie Rainwater and Dr. Zachary Levenson are both sociology professors at Florida International University. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of their employer.