State officials in charge of Florida’s state university system are seeking to crack down on “antisemitic material and/or anti-Israel bias” in certain university courses, according to an email from the State University System chancellor obtained by Orlando Weekly.
In an email sent to state university presidents last Friday, Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, a former Republican state legislator, laid out two directives for the state’s 12 university presidents.
The first directive, eligible for “immediate action,” is to create a faculty committee to review certain course materials — including textbooks, online materials, and test banks — ahead of the fall semester for “either antisemitic material and/or anti-Israel bias.” The second calls on university leaders to come up with a process for faculty on the committee to attest that they have indeed reviewed courses for such content.
Courses that the directive aims to target include “courses on terrorism, Middle Eastern studies, religion, and government,” according to the email, which was sent by Rodrigues to university heads with the subject line “Follow up from Monday's Call.”
Such courses, Rodrigues explained, will be identified by conducting a keyword search on course descriptions and syllabi, per the suggestion of the state university system’s faculty representative, whom Rodrigues consulted.
“Any course that contains the following keywords: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, or Jews will be flagged for review,” wrote Rodrigues, who serves as the primary liaison between the Florida Board of Governors, the state Legislature, the executive branch and other state departments and agencies.
“This process will ensure that all universities are reviewing the same courses, and nothing falls through the cracks,” Rodrigues explained.
It’s unclear what the scope of this course review will look like system-wide, what the endgame of such a review process is, or how faculty are supposed to determine what is considered “antisemitic” or “anti-Israel.” Orlando Weekly reached out to the chancellor for clarification on the plan, but did not hear back ahead of publication.
Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas War in the Middle East and student protests on U.S. college and university campuses, the concept of antisemitism became something of a controversial issue earlier this year, as state lawmakers considered and then unanimously approved a bill (HB 187) revising the state’s definition of the term under state statutes.
The bill, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in June, defines “antisemitism” based on the working definition developed and adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Under that definition, antisemitism is defined as:
a certain perception of Jewish individuals which may be expressed as hatred toward such individuals. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and their property and toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
The bill, which also offers contemporary examples of antisemitism from the IHRA, explicitly excludes criticism of Israel from the state's newly adopted antisemitism definition. The law, amended during the legislative session to add that exclusion, was unanimously approved by state lawmakers in both the Florida House and Senate.
Unlike the term antisemitism, there is no explicit definition of “anti-Israel” under state statutes.
State leaders’ voiced support for Israel after the start of the Hamas-initiated war — and their denouncement of pro-Palestine sentiment among many young people — has also created rifts on several of Florida's university campuses. Student protesters have faced criminal charges, been tear-gassed by police, and in some cases have been kicked off campus for their participation in protests organized over brutal Israeli violence against Palestinians, with a call for universities to divest from Israel.
Two groups of students at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the state’s largest university by enrollment, launched peaceful and short-lived student encampments in May, joining others organized by students on more than 100 university and college campuses across the country. While university police kept eyes on the UCF students, no major incidents of police intervention or violence were reported, as students generally left the encampments late at night, returning the next day.
Rodrigues, a former state legislator appointed to his role by the Board of Governors in 2022, noted in his Friday email to university presidents that, due to logistics involved in the regulatory process, it’s possible that universities may not be able to complete a review of targeted courses ahead of the Fall 2024 semester.
He noted that the process of identifying courses for the review will require the Board of Governors to submit a data request to universities. “Therefore, even on campuses that identified that it may be feasible for a faculty committee to conduct a review, we won’t have the data available in time to move forward with a review before the Fall Semester begins,” he wrote. “The most important thing is that we get this right.”
The plan is to have Rodrigues’ staff work with universities individually to identify courses that will require review, based on the targeted keywords, with a goal of completing a review before the end of the fall semester.
He added that course materials flagged for “instances of antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias” should subsequently be reported to his office. “Thanks for your cooperation in this matter,” he shared, before signing off.
This isn't the first time the state university system has been directed to censor professors or course materials for content relating to divisive issues. Like in other Republican-controlled states, conservative state leaders have sought to crack down on the instruction of critical race theory, gender identity and sexual orientation, and what elected officials like Gov. DeSantis call “woke indoctrination” in schools — a manufactured problem that has caused confusion and created an atmosphere of fear among public school teachers and faculty subjected to new rules imposed by the state.
Dr. Talat Rahman, the incoming president of UCF's faculty union, the United Faculty of Florida, was not immediately available for comment on the new state directives.
If you're a university student or faculty member who would like to share their thoughts on this, contact reporter McKenna Schueler: [email protected]
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