These conservative states that are bringing their public universities into line

In Florida, Ohio, and Utah, among others, laws now require civics courses centered around Western civilization and prohibit teachings about race and gender in the curriculum of their public universities.

View of the West Virginia University campus in Morgentown in August 2023. Photo by Kristian Thacker/The New York Times

Republican lawmakers in conservative states are exercising “increasing control over what is taught in public universities,” The Washington Post points out . A control which, according to the faculty, “threatens the foundations of higher education and academic freedom” .

This is particularly the case in Florida, Ohio and Utah, three Republican states that recently passed laws stipulating what students must learn in their first years of study and which have “made the teaching of civics courses focused on Western civilization mandatory and banned courses on race and gender,” continues the daily newspaper of the federal capital.

In these states, conservative lawmakers believe it is time “to refocus college courses on essential texts, not content steeped in identity politics,” the newspaper notes. Faculty members believe that “these laws promote a dangerously narrow view of what students should learn and undermine the control that universities should exercise over curricula.”