Authoritarian U : Florida as the Testing Ground for the Future of U.S. Higher Education

This book is a collection of incisive essays and detailed case studies from faculty struggling against right-wing ideological impositions on research and teaching in Florida, offering valuable lessons for thinking-through, and acting against, the attack on universities in the US and internationally.

Florida leads the way as a testing ground for a broad program of right-wing interventions into higher education, interventions that threaten to push universities across the US towards authoritarianism. The contributions collected here offer historicization, theorization and practical strategies of immediate relevance to the movement to defend colleges and universities from the Trump administration.

With a preface from renowned theorist of education and public intellectual, Henry Giroux, Authoritarian U examines the current juncture from a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives and shows how faculty are opposing restrictive legislation in their capacity as teachers, researchers and union organizers. Areas of focus include the following issues: university takeovers by ideologically-motivated and politically appointed trustees, privatization, post-tenure review, DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] funding, “intellectual diversity,” shielding, class recordings without consent, bans on intellectual partnerships with people from “countries of concern,” student protests and student organizational suspensions, secrecy in presidential searches, unions and collective bargaining, race, LGBTQIA+, “gender ideology,” climate science suppression, guns on campus, censorship of curriculum through course reviews and cuts in general education, self-censorship, department closings, keyword searches, identity politics, “cultural Marxism,” critical theory, critical race theory, and the distortion of historical truths.

If you want to understand the threat of authoritarianism to contemporary US higher education, this is an essential book to read.