The leaders at Florida’s 12 public universities have been directed to do a statewide review of all college course materials containing keywords pertaining to religious and political issues in the Middle East with the goal of tagging content that may contain “antisemitic material” or “anti-Israeli bias.”
The directive comes a month after state officials were made aware that an online course at Florida International University had offered students a test with a multiple choice question that was deemed antisemitic, Ray Rodrigues, the chancellor of the state university system, said in an interview with the Miami Herald on Tuesday evening.
“What prompted this was a question that said Jews invented terrorism,” Rodrigues said.
In response, Rodrigues said each university is being asked to organize a faculty committee to sift through curriculum materials, such as textbooks and tests, in college courses for either antisemitic content or perceived anti-Israel bias. Rodrigues said faculty committees should “air on the side of caution” when reviewing the content for potential bias.
“If they find anything on either front they need to notify the Board of Governors so we can determine what the appropriate action is depending on what they find,” Rodrigues said.
Some Florida professors are already raising concerns about the new directive, saying it could potentially “suppress” open discussion of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict in public higher education institutions.
“This represents yet another effort to water down education in Florida and keep important information from our students,” said Martha Schoolman, an English professor at Florida International University who is also Jewish.
These concerns come as Gov. Ron DeSantis has increasingly pushed to disrupt the state’s education establishment to challenge what he perceives to be a left-leaning ideology in higher education.
During his administration, state officials have taken steps to eliminate spending on initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, remove sociology from the state’s general education requirements and transform the New College of Florida into a bastion of conservatism, among other things.
DeSantis, who has vowed to be the most “pro-Israel governor in America,” also ordered state universities to disband campus groups with ties to the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization amid nationwide student protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
The new directive explained
In an email he sent out Friday, Rodrigues directed state university leaders to flag and collect data on any course that contains the following keywords: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish or Jews.
“This process will ensure that all universities are reviewing the same courses, and nothing falls through the cracks,” Rodrigues explained in the email.
Each university will be required to initiate a faculty review of the course materials, to be completed by the conclusion of the fall semester, according to the email. Committees tasked with reviewing the materials are being told focus on courses on terrorism, Middle Eastern studies, religion and government. The materials will still be made available to students and faculty during the fall semester while the review is ongoing, Rodrigues told the Herald.
Once the review is concluded, faculty committees will be required to report “all instances of either antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias” to the Board of Governors, a 17-member body that oversees and manages the 12 public universities in the state. The vast majority of the members are appointed by the governor. Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. is also a member of the board.
“We need to see exactly what is in the textbook, does it violate the statute? And if it doesn’t, does it contain bias?” Rodrigues said.
Florida defines antisemitism in state law as “a perception of Jewish individuals which may be expressed as hatred toward such individuals,” and any manifestations of antisemitism toward Jewish people, their property, community and religious institutions. State law also includes long-understood examples of antisemitism like calling for death or harm on Jewish people or denying “the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of Nazi Germany.”
The state definition of antisemitism, which was developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), also includes more contemporary examples, like criticisms of Israel, which have been controversial in some academic circles. For example, the law says it would be antisemitic to “claim that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” or to “require of the Jewish state of Israel a standard of behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
What would constitute “anti-Israeli bias” may be more subjective. Rodrigues said that will be up to subject matter experts to determine.
“If there is a question of whether something is biased against Israel, we will bring in those who have that expertise to do that review,” Rodrigues said.
The FIU test question, which came from an online course textbook called “Terrorism and Homeland Security,” was first flagged and labeled antisemitic by an X account called “Documenting Israel.” The test questions asked students to identify organizations that had “invented terrorism,” Rodrigues said.
After the test question became public, Rep. Randy Fine — the only Jewish Republican lawmaker in the state Legislature — called on the university to fire the professor who taught the course and described him as a “#Muslimterror supporting employer.”
FIU did not immediately respond to the Herald’s inquiries about the test question. Rodrigues said the state is already working with Cengage, the publisher of the textbook, to resolve the issue.
“Our assumption was that every question that was put before a student was reviewed by a faculty member before it was put before a student,” he said. “What we learned is that is not how it operates.”
That’s why, Rodrigues said, the incident with the test question will also lead to another action. He said state leaders are crafting a new regulation that will require faculty members to attest that they have read their course materials — all the resources in their course materials whether that’s textbooks or supplementary — before they have assigned them.
“The only reason they are being discussed at the same time is because there was this antisemitic material that revealed we don’t have faculty that actually go through each textbook,” Rodrigues said. “We assumed that was being done.”
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