Tag: education

Beginning this summer, professors at Florida’s 28 public colleges must use a state curriculum framework to teach their introduction to sociology courses. Aligned with the state-sanctioned sociology textbook, the framework requires that the courses do not “include a curriculum that teaches identity politics” or one that “is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”

Jose Arevalo, executive vice chancellor for the Florida State College System, shared information about the framework with representatives from 26 Florida colleges during a call on Jan. 20, according to an email summary of the call provided to Inside Higher Ed. The Florida Department of Education distributed teaching materials, including an instructor’s manual and textbook, and requested that institutions submit their current introduction to sociology syllabi, “including detailed assignment schedules, topic calendars, or modules to show course coverage.”

“The framework serves as a baseline—institutions can add to it but should avoid subtracting key elements or adding content that risks violating state statutes,” Arevalo wrote in the email. “Much of the framework language can be copied directly into syllabi, with supporting exercises and textbook chapters provided.”

All state colleges received the written guidance this week, according to Robert Cassanello, an associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida and president of the United Faculty of Florida union.

“People in the union are really upset,” he said. “They see this as a threat to academic freedom. They see the revised textbook through the Board of Governors’ approval as a censored text.”

Sociology professors at the state’s public universities have received similar instructions through a game of telephone, with instructions passed verbally from the Board of Governors to provosts, deans, chairs and then to faculty, several Florida faculty members reported.

“They’re doing their best to avoid creating standing for a lawsuit,” Cassanello said. “This is why everything is verbal with the Board of Governors.”

The seven-page written framework applies only to general education sociology courses taught at state colleges—not electives. The document bans nine discussion points from course content, including discussions that “state an intent of institutions today to oppress persons of color,” “that argue most variations between men and women are learned traits and behaviors,” and “that describe when, how, or why individuals determine their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.”

The end of the document includes a “recommended course design,” written like a syllabus, that lays out seven units, suggested reading assignments and lecture topics. The guide to teaching “sociological phenomena” includes several contested theories about race and gender. For example, the framework states that while biological sex chromosomes determine different sex characteristics in men and women, they also determine “how females and males behave. This behavior is also influenced by the social relevance of these traits,” the framework says.

“So, in teaching this, one might point out that women and men with the same credentials enter different jobs such that certain jobs are occupied primarily by women (i.e., female-dominant) some are occupied primarily by men (i.e., male-dominant) and some have roughly the same number of workers who are female and male (i.e., non-gendersegregated),” the framework says.

The document also discusses limitations to personal freedoms as a historical phenomenon, not a present one. “Students will study scientific facts, including the demographic characteristics of individuals who lived during previous generations when specific freedoms were restricted” and “how things changed as those restrictions were removed over time,” the framework says.

The state education department will likely roll out similar curriculum guidance for other areas of study in the future. In his email, Arevalo said the department is working with history professors on a general education curriculum for American history courses that “satisfy civic literacy requirements.” Results of this work could be disclosed as soon as April, he said.

Unclear Enforcement

The curriculum thinly veils the social politics of state education officials, said Katie Rainwater, a visiting scholar of global and sociocultural studies at Florida International University who has taught introductory sociology courses. Many top education decision-makers in Florida come from right-wing think tanks and colleges, including Hillsdale College, where Arevalo earned his Ph.D.; the Claremont Institute; and the Heritage Foundation.

“They’re very intentionally staffing the Department of Education office with these ultraconservative ideologues,” Rainwater said. “What we’re seeing is … people affiliated with this national conservative movement taking away the ideas that they don’t want students to be exposed to.”

The framework was developed by a “work group of sociologists,” Arevalo said in his email. It’s unclear whether it was the same sociology professors that created the state-approved textbook late last year. That group convened with four Board of Governors members and four faculty members, but Phillip Wisely, a sociology professor at Florida SouthWestern State College, was kicked out of the group by state education commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas for allegedly “advocating for gender ideology” in his sociology class. Wisely remains suspended from his teaching position, Cassanello said.

Florida Department of Education spokespeople did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday.

It’s unclear how faculty members who don’t follow the written or verbal guidelines will be disciplined, but faculty say they’re certain there would be some kind of blowback for ignoring the rules.

Zachary Levenson, a sociology professor at Florida International University, said his department requested clarification from the provost on the rules and received no information.

“We wrote to the provost … and said, ‘Please tell us what we cannot teach, what we must teach, and what the sanction would be for violating this,’” he said. “She wouldn’t specify. She said … ‘There is no individual sanction that I can name’” and referred them to the guidelines in Florida state statute 1007.25, which outlines rules for general education and degree requirements.

He speculates that the punishment could be sanctions against the institution via the accreditor, or individual discipline. Levenson moved to Florida to teach only two and a half years ago, but he said he wants to stay in the state so that he can fight back.

“This is happening everywhere, but it’s first happening here,” Levenson said. “It was happening when I was teaching in Texas, in North Carolina, but not like this. So if we don’t nip it in the bud … it’s going to keep spreading around the country.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced this month that the Department of Defense will no longer send active-duty military for graduate-level professional military education at Harvard University. In a video announcing the decision on social media, he claimed that officers returned from Harvard with “heads full of globalist and radical ideologies.” He added, “We train warriors. Not wokesters.”

Before I begin, I will lay my cards on the table. I am a medically retired Air Force major from a traditional, conservative, Southern Baptist background in east Tennessee. At Harvard Kennedy School, I was elected executive vice president of the student government, which represents more than 1,000 graduate students. I say this not to posture, but because I believe this decision warrants a response from someone who was in those classrooms, not as an observer, but as a leader in the student body.

Politics aside, severing ties between the military and Harvard is a mistake. While at HKS, I had the opportunity to participate in most student organizations, meet with both student and administrator leadership, and drive many of the social and policy discussions (formal and informal) across the school. In each of these settings, military members were active participants: injecting keen insight, stimulating robust dialogue or voicing perspectives that no one else in the classroom had considered.

What troubles me most about Hegseth’s announcement is that he offered neither data, evidence nor metrics to support the claim that Harvard-educated officers graduate less capable. While invoking General Washington’s assumption of command of the Continental Army in Harvard Square or the number of Harvard-trained Medal of Honor recipients, Hegseth played to emotional appeal rather than demonstrable metrics or data that support his action. But gambling with our nation’s top officers’ professional education from a well-established world-class institution is a high-risk, low-reward proposition.

In July 2025, the Kennedy School launched the American Service Fellowship, the largest single-year scholarship in the school’s history, for at least 50 fully funded scholarships worth $100,000 to American public servants, with about half of awardees expected to come from military service. Dean Jeremy Weinstein said in the press release announcing the fellowship, “There’s nothing more patriotic than public service.”

Over the past decade, HKS has trained numerous active-duty, veteran and reserve members. The list of prominent leaders with military ties includes Hegseth himself, former defense secretary Mark Esper, Senator Jack Reed and U.S. representatives Dan Crenshaw and Seth Moulton. If Harvard truly “loathes” the military, then why is the institution investing millions to bring more service members to campus?

In justifying the decision, Hegseth also asserts that Harvard has partnered with the Chinese Communist Party in its research programs. A June 2025 investigation in The Wall Street Journal reported that a 2014 Shanghai Observer article referred to HKS as the CCP’s top “overseas party school,” as decades of Chinese officials have pursued executive training and postgraduate study at HKS. But rather than supporting Hegseth’s case, this fact undermines it. If China’s future leaders and officials are vying for access to Harvard’s faculty and resources, why would we voluntarily surrender our domestic infrastructure for future officer development? The proper response to a competitor’s investment in an institution is not to abandon it, but to double down instead.

Consider what we are depriving our nation’s top military leaders of benefiting from. Harvard ranks among the top universities in national and global rankings, and Harvard’s Office of Technology Development reports approximately 391 new innovations, 159 U.S. patents issued and $53.7 million in commercialization revenue in fiscal year 2025 alone. As a prior procurement-contracting officer, these are big-deal numbers. They represent cutting-edge research and development that can rapidly accelerate our defense capabilities and technologies. I remain skeptical about an unfounded decision to deprive our top future military leaders of access to that caliber of institutional infrastructure and the opportunity to build interpersonal relationships with HKS’s scholars, policymakers and faculty.

Personally, given my preconditions—moderate conservative, white male with a Southern Baptist upbringing, east Tennessee native and ex-military—I did not face discrimination at Harvard. In fact, I was elected to the second-highest student position at HKS. I did not encounter wokeism outright (it almost seems archaic at this point). I can say I was not brainwashed or forced into indoctrination camps for expressing differing viewpoints whether in class or on paper. I found that I am not alone in this thought, either.

Former Indiana governor Eric Holcomb, a Republican, published an op-ed in The Washington Post titled “I was a red state governor. What I saw at Harvard surprised me.” The governor writes that he was warned by friends about “woke lions” but found open-minded, problem-solving–oriented students from all 50 states. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, also a Republican, served as an Institute of Politics resident fellow at Harvard in fall 2024, when he led small student groups on bridging America’s political divide, which I attended. During my tenure at HKS, the Harvard Republican Club hosted Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Institute of Politics hosted Kellyanne Conway and Kevin McCarthy. In short, I find it difficult to characterize Harvard as an echo chamber.

When I think back to my tenure, I remember the many meetings with the dean of HKS and administrators. I remember a seasoned scholar almost obsessively driven to find common ground through constructive dialogue. I remember the vision committees navigating changes in policy, governance, technology and AI. The top student affairs administrators I met with on a weekly basis were genuine and empathetic individuals who wanted the best for student outcomes regardless of differing political or religious ideologies. I witnessed deep learning occurring with many service members, both senior and junior officers, in my classes and heard their sentiments of appreciation for their educational experience at Harvard.

Harvard makes an easy target, but a focus on easy targets makes for bad policy. This decision does not protect our military; instead, it reduces its capabilities. It deprives our best officers of access to the kind of rigorous, diverse, uncomfortable and intellectual environment that produces top strategic-level thinkers, not worse-off ones. Pulling our officers out of these environments does the very opposite of training resilient warfighters: It perpetuates a homogeneous environment and denies our future leaders exposure to world leaders. If we truly believe that we must cultivate the best minds and capabilities of the warrior class, then we should trust our officers, invest the resources and meet the challenge, not run from it.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter to every college and university president with the goal of continuing its efforts to curb voting among college students. This latest letter threatens colleges and universities if they participate in or use the data from the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement, claiming that if they do so, they “could be at risk of being found in violation of FERPA.”

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is the federal law that protects the privacy of student education records and applies to any institution that accepts Department of Education funds. Like many of this administration’s actions, this letter is designed to have a chilling effect, since no determination has been made by the department that participation in, or use of, NSLVE studies violates any privacy statutes.

In existence since 2013, with more than 1,000 colleges and universities nationwide currently choosing to participate, the NSLVE is a study of student political engagement at higher education institutions. The NSLVE uses data that colleges and universities voluntarily provide to the National Student Clearinghouse, which matches student enrollment records with public voting files to determine whether students registered to vote and whether they voted—not whom they voted for. NSLVE, which is housed at Tufts University, then uses the de-identified data it receives to send a confidential report to participating campuses about their own students’ voting participation.

Under the guise of protecting student privacy, the Department of Education is weaponizing FERPA to try to get to the Trump administration’s goal of weakening voter participation, especially among college students, for political reasons. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon herself stated in the press release announcing the new guidance that “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research— not influencing elections.” And the department admits in its guidance letter that its assessment that NSLVE is in violation of FERPA is based on a “preliminary analysis” and that ED merely has “concerns” about NSLVE’s use of data. The department does not conclude that NSLVE or the use of the NSLVE data violates any laws, including privacy laws.

The NSLVE primarily uses directory information—name, address and date of birth—which institutions may disclose without consent as long as they have given general public notice (including notice of the option to opt out of disclosure) at the beginning of the academic year. In addition, when other information is provided—such as gender, race/ethnicity and degree-seeking status—it is allowable because it falls under FERPA’s “studies exception.”

This exception allows information to be shared for studies that “improve instruction.” The NSLVE’s research is designed to enable colleges to improve civic education on campus—something that is a stated goal of this administration. Furthermore, NSLVE reports do not contain individually identifiable information and are only shared with the institution itself. It is for these reasons that the Department of Education, since the program’s inception more than a decade ago, has found this work to be allowable under FERPA.

It is critical for colleges to understand what this letter is saying—and what it isn’t. Students deserve to have their data protected, and the federal government has a critical role to play in safeguarding their data. It is the Department of Education’s obligation to use its resources to do so. It is paramount that the government ensures any actions taken by institutions put student privacy first. But alleging potential student privacy violations when there are none is a waste of resources and undermines what is really at stake.

As recognized by the Higher Education Act’s requirement that higher education institutions provide voter registration forms to all their students, colleges have an important role to play in promoting civic engagement and participation in democracy among students. As long as they are doing it in a way that is compliant with the data sharing allowed in FERPA, the federal government must not interfere with colleges’ participation in the NSLVE— especially with threats that are not backed up with legal findings. Insights from the NSLVE are critical to strengthening nonpartisan civic engagement for college students. Restricting use of the data in an election year is not about protecting students—but instead is harmful to them and to our democracy.

Tennessee’s House Higher Ed Subcommittee chair has withdrawn his bill to end tenure in public universities after saying he “stumbled into a little bit of the history” and “got a little deeper than I thought I would.”

“It got me to thinking about political lines, pendulums, they’re always moving … I kind of think that way about tenure,” Republican Justin Lafferty told his subcommittee Wednesday in a brief but wide-ranging explanation for dropping the bill.

According to a video of the meeting posted on the state General Assembly’s website, Lafferty said he learned tenure goes back to the 1600s or 1700s, “a time when there weren’t that many highly educated folks,” so “it was very important to keep the best and the brightest.”

Though he didn’t use the words “academic freedom,” he echoed arguments for protecting it that proponents of tenure often use. Mentioning the Vietnam War era, Lafferty said, “In a controversial time, I kind of understand you want those protections in place to not lose the talent that you’ve been able to acquire.”

But he also suggested that he filed his bill in opposition to controversial faculty speech. He didn’t mention Charlie Kirk, but he complained about faculty speech regarding someone’s death and a “half a million” payout. (Darren Michael, a tenured theater professor at Tennessee’s Austin Peay State University, was terminated for reposting a news headline about Kirk but was later reinstated and paid $500,000.)

“With tenure now, the pendulum has swung so far that we can have state employees that we pay with our tax dollars—‘mock’ might not be the right word, but can certainly be very insensitive towards the death of another human being,” Lafferty said. “And as a Tennessean, I’m not comfortable with the fact that that person cannot be removed from a job.”

Lafferty withdrew his bill, but he may not be done targeting tenure. He said during the meeting that “we’ll maybe be back.” News Channel 5 reported that Lafferty said the bill likely didn’t have a path forward this year. He didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Thursday.

The National Institutes of Health director will become acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and President Trump will nominate the CDC’s former acting director to lead the National Science Foundation, a White House official confirmed to Inside Higher Ed. The NIH and NSF are among the largest federal funders of university research.

The official said NIH director Jay Bhattacharya will maintain his current duties while also leading the CDC “until a permanent CDC director is nominated and confirmed.” Jim O’Neill was dismissed last week from leading the CDC, a position he had only held since late August. The NIH is headquartered in Bethesda, Md., while the CDC is based in Atlanta.

“Both are eminently qualified for these positions, and the White House has confidence in them to deliver on the president’s agenda,” the official said.

Bhattacharya’s new duties leading the CDC come as the NIH continues to lack permanent leadership in many top posts. With last week’s ending of Lindsey A. Criswell’s directorship of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, 16 directors of the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the agency are in an acting capacity.

These NIH directors have departed for multiple reasons, including terminations by the Trump administration and resignations.