The University of Central Florida has removed anti-racist statements from departmental websites, a move that one professor has decried as an “infringement on academic freedom” in the wake of the passage of a Republican-backed law that restricts how race can be taught.
Ann Gleig, a religious studies professor, said in an email Wednesday that the anti-racist statement on the philosophy department’s website and those of other departments have been taken down. The philosophy department’s statement was crafted in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, she said.
“This is a complete infringement of academic freedom,” Gleig said. “The statement was crafted over a period of time with dialogue and input across a twenty person plus faculty trained in philosophy, religion and cultural studies and the humanities.”
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis last spring signed into law what he has called the “Stop WOKE Act.” Restricting how race is discussed in schools, colleges and workplace training programs, the law prohibits any teaching that could make students or workers feel they bear personal responsibility for historic wrongs because of their race, color, sex or national origin.
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