Thread by @CasMudde

Terrifying! Also, watch the slide show. First, the creepy UF president who refrains from any critique of the bill and then lies that faculty can still teach freely. Second, some of the slides, which clearly make no sense. 🧵

https://twitter.com/GainesvilleSun/status/1522259644374294530

HB7 criminalizes old-school overt racism as cover to outlaw critique or even discussion of new racism, ie covert, implicit, unintended, institutional.

Many academic studies have shown existence of "privileges" and "oppressions" linked to race, color, national origin & sex in US!

Again, many academic studies have shown that several of these "neutral" and "objective" policies and principles were explicitly created to discriminate against non-whites and women. EXPLICITLY!

Ok, so this means that, if you show that the motivations and/or outcomes of these policies are racist and sexist, sometimes having created havoc in specific communities, you have to end with: "but you have to make up your mind whether you like that"?

This literally means that anything, from the craziest antisemitism to the vilest misogyny, goes in the classroom. HOWEVER, whatever is said, white, male, Christian students can not walk out of that classroom feeling uncomfortable!

Again, leaving aside that everyone has bias, and one can at best suppress the biases they are aware of, all of this is within the limits that white, male, Christian students have to come out feeling "comfortable".

Leaving aside all these points, of course the worst part of the new law for teachers is that they are incredibly vague and that the governor and legislature has made it perfectly clear that they see teachers as potential perpetrators and (certain) students as potential victims.

"Why don't you teach "objective" then? "Why do you bring YOUR bias/morals into it?"

Many academic concepts are objective but have a moral weight attached to them. I can objectively state X is anti-democratic, racist, violent, and students will see that as "bad".

Personal example: I teach about "far right", a term that is perceived by most people as negative. But it is also an academic term. I can "objectively" show that Trump is "far right" and Trump-supporting students could then sue me/UGA for making them feel uncomfortable!

That is what is happening in Florida and only a criminally naive person would think that it is not coming to other GOP-dominated states. In fact, we almost had it in #Georgia but universities were excluded (for now). #TheEnd