Apparently, the 2024 GOP battle lines have been drawn between Wokeness and Fascism. Governor Ron DeSantis, a frontrunner in the 2024 presidential field, has been working diligently to codify as illegal anything that goes against his personal ideology. These ideas (and people) are lumped into tidy buckets of “Wokeness” and “Indoctrination.” Best of luck trying to pin down what makes an idea “woke” or someone’s actions as “indoctrination” but that doesn’t seem to matter as evidenced by the latest attempts to prohibit thought on the university campus.
For example, in yesterday’s announcement that Governor DeSantis Elevates Civil Discourse and Intellectual Freedom in Higher Education | Legislative Proposal Takes a Stand Against Academic Discrimination and Indoctrination, the proposed legislation focuses on “Prohibiting higher education institutions from using any funding, regardless of source, to support DEI, CRT, and other discriminatory initiatives.” Beyond the immediate 1st Amendment issue of prohibiting the expression of ideas on a university campus, the vague “other discriminatory initiatives” hangs ugly in the air as a catch-all to make illegal whatever Ron DeSantis opposes. Vague language used in all recent legislation is designed to allow arbitrary determinations of the legality of expressed ideas (i.e., I know it when I see it), which will have the designed chilling effects on “woke” educators who don’t want to be fired – or worse.