Aniela Cabrera | Staff Writer
The State of Florida has been an epicenter of academic issues and obstructions, and now, these issues are making a new home at Florida International University.
The FIU Board of Trustees and administration, directed by the Florida Board of Governors, has asked faculty to volunteer on antisemitism review committees for a targeted list of courses and their corresponding textbooks. The courses selected are directly related to Judaism and Middle Eastern studies.
Certain faculty are now responding with a petition and pending legal action.
Florida legislator Randy Fine has publicly taken credit for proposing a committee following the result of an incident at FIU earlier this summer, involving quiz questions for a Terrorism and Homeland Security Course.
Fine is a Jewish republican representative who became enthralled by the matter on “X” and publicly lashed out at FIU administration. What he and the BOG failed to see was that the context of the questions used didn’t go against the examples of antisemitism listed in section 1000.05 of the Florida Statutes.
According to the statue, “criticism of Israel that is similar to criticism toward any other country may not be regarded as anti-Semitic.”
FIU has already faced the gutting of the D.E.I department, censorship of sociology courses, and post-tenure review.
Now, faculty encounter another political tactic being used to undermine academic freedoms in the sunshine state.
Earlier this semester, the Board of Governors issued a request for course descriptions and syllabi with the following keywords: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, or Jews.
Faculty then received an email on November 1st from Provost Elizabeth M. Béjar and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Noël Barengo of the FIU Faculty Senate.
It contained a finalized list of courses selected for antisemitic review at FIU from the BOG.
The courses are as follows: Politics of the Middle East, Terrorism and Homeland Security, International Relations of the Middle East, Judaism after the Holocaust, Politics of Western Europe, and Religion and Society of Israel/Palestine.
Bejar didn’t respond for comment and Barengo redirected his comment to another faculty member involved with the petition.
Ronlad Cox, a professor in the Politics and International Relations Department, said that this “policing” of faculty is an infringement of academic freedom highlighted in the FIU Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Written in the contract, faculty have the right to choose the course material used in class to the best of their judgment. Professors at higher-ed institutions have scholarly expertise as well as the judgment of other scholars within their department to help guide them.
“If this committee review follows through, it will severely undermine professors and their integrity. It would open a door to more censorship at the state level, which in the State of Florida, has appeared to be very biased,” said Cox.
Martha Schoolman, a Jewish English professor, helped work on the petition and wrote an op-ed in regard to the anti-Semitism scare over the summer that Fine got involved with.
Schoolman said, “The first level of resistance is to say [faculty] are not helping with the reviews.”
The committee email stated it will need “groups of 5-7 members” and asked that at minimum the committees be “composed of a core set (2-3) of faculty directly familiar with the course/discipline.” It also agrees that “faculty administrators may also volunteer.”
Faculty will continue their protestations against the new wave of higher academic investigations.
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