Last spring, Anna Peterson’s syllabi went under the microscope.
Administrators and state officials spent the last year painstakingly examining the UF religion professor’s courses — along with hundreds of others in the university’s general education catalog. The review, driven by the state university system’s Board of Governors, was meant to ensure the courses fell in line with a GOP-backed law targeting perceived left-wing bias in higher education.
The Board of Governors, a majority of which are appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis, finalized the review in January, voting to whittle down UF’s general education offerings from more than 1,200 courses to just under 300.
More than three-fourths of courses cut came from humanities and social sciences. Starting the next academic year, UF students won’t have general education options for any foreign language. As a department, languages lost over 40 courses in subjects ranging from Japanese to Spanish.
Women’s studies — one of the Republican-dominated legislature’s most frequently criticized programs — is losing all eight of its general education courses. Likewise, all of UF’s environmental engineering and African-American studies courses will become electives.
The religion department had the second-most courses removed after languages, although several still remain available.
A rule barring upper-division courses from the general education pool ousted scores of classes. Others had already been requested for removal by UF’s academic departments or hadn’t been taught in years.
But the logic behind some cuts — and who made those calls — remains hazy.
The 2023 state law that triggered the revisions says state universities’ general education catalogs — made up of courses in communications, math, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences — “may not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.”
It also outlaws “unproven, speculative, or exploratory content” from the general education curriculum and requires humanities courses to include selections from the Western Canon. The university defined the canon as foundational works that shaped Western development.
Peterson said her department doesn’t know why some general education offerings, like an introductory course on the New Testament, didn’t fall within the state’s criteria. She speculated her course “Religion and Social Movements” — which investigates religion’s social role in the U.S., Britain, Asia, Latin America and Africa — was “too woke.”
“We’re all just pretty baffled,” Peterson said.
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Florida Republicans and conservative academics have praised the purge as a remedy for what they see as progressive orthodoxy in curriculum. Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the state university system, said in an emailed statement that wiping out “indoctrinating concepts” from general education offerings makes Florida “the only state in the nation to address the number one reason why the American people have lost confidence in higher education.”
The state-mandated overhaul, however, left administrators and professors at UF scrambling to improvise a system to review, and sometimes revise, over 1,200 general education syllabi. They expressed confusion and frustrations in emails and meetings, citing poor transparency and short deadlines.
Regardless of political opinions on the revision process, “administratively, it’s been a nightmare,” Peterson said.
The first sweep
The review began last spring when the General Education Committee — made up of professors, administrators and student government representatives — delivered a questionnaire to academic units across the university.
The form included four questions about whether general education courses’ complied with the state’s new curricular restrictions. If they didn’t, respondents had to explain how the concepts were taught from a neutral perspective. It also allowed for suggestions on how the courses could be adapted to preserve their general education status.
Responses varied in effort and enthusiasm.
One professor submitted a 530-word outline for how she would modify her course “Religions in India” to fall within the new Western Canon requirement. Future sections, the professor wrote, will include India’s connection with Greece, the U.S. and the Bible, using works from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Others were more curt.
One administrator gave a one-word explanation for exactly where a course titled “Is There Culture in Architecture?” veered into teaching systemic oppression: “homelessness.” An entry for a philosophy course detailed how its instructor ensured neutrality on identity politics: “I do my best,” it read.
Administrators and the General Education Committee parsed through more than 1,000 course evaluations throughout the Spring 2024 semester. They landed on nixing general education designations from over half of them, updated another one-fourth to comply with the new guidelines and left the remainder alone. The UF Board of Trustees approved that list in June.
The unexplained second — and third — round of cuts
When the General Education Committee returned for its first meeting of the academic year in August, however, one member said it learned more courses had been flagged for removal with no clear explanation as to why or who had done so.
The Board of Trustees planned to approve the revised list later that month, but then-Provost Scott Angle tabled the vote because it needed “further review to ensure we are 100-percent compliant with our state laws and Board of Governors regulations before submission,” according to meeting minutes.
The list reappeared on the board’s agenda in October with over 150 additional courses moved onto the chopping block. At that point, some administrators became confused about the review process.
“While we knew about the process, we did not know, until now, about the content of that list,” Gillian Lord, an associate dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, told department chairs in an email obtained by The Alligator. Lord, reached through a university spokesperson, didn’t respond for comment.
According to Lord, 60% of the 1,181 reviewed general education courses were slated for removal. The university was converting some courses to electives because they didn’t meet the state’s new requirements, Lord said. Others fell short because they were “too narrow in scope” to be considered general education or were no longer being taught.
“I’m sure there will be no lack of emotions upon reading the list,” she wrote, assuring faculty that administration was prepared to address shifts in enrollment and staffing needs brought about by the cuts.
The new audit included more than 500 approved courses, a little over half of which had updated syllabi. But the final list approved by the Board of Governors in January included only about 300 courses — meaning hundreds didn’t make the final cut even though they hadn’t previously been marked for removal.
‘Flying a little blind’: Confusion over appeals
In mid-October, one professor emailed Lord saying she’d heard faculty had been given until Nov. 11 to appeal courses. Lord, who oversaw the curricular review process for the liberal arts college, indicated she hadn’t been looped in on the opportunity.
“Well that’s interesting,” Lord responded. “I know NOTHING about that!”
Lord began working with liberal arts departments on the appeals, emailing English faculty about two courses whose general education statuses had a chance at being salvaged. Per Lord, the department had one week to produce a “short explanation to allay any (the Board of Governors’) concerns regarding content” and an updated syllabus addressing them.
According to Lord, the best way to do so was by “illustrating the difference between identity and identity politics, and showing how one can talk about historical facts without indoctrinating.”
She apologized for the one-week deadline: “I know we’ve repeatedly asked for input and updates with very short deadlines, and I’m truly sorry to do this again,” Lord wrote. In a follow-up email, she warned one professor that “there is no guarantee that any of this will work.”
“Please remember we are all flying a little blind,” she wrote. “Since we don’t know what the original object to the course was, we’re not sure what the remedy would be.”
Around that time, the Board of Governors introduced a rule barring upper-division courses from the general education pool. If departments wished to preserve the courses, they had until Nov. 11 to dock them to 1000- or 2000-levels.
The religion department became increasingly disgruntled over the expedited timeline of the review. One department-level administrator emailed religion faculty in late October with a “TL;DR” on the latest round of cuts: “no good news.”
The department tried to retain 13 courses scheduled for removal, according to the administrator. Most were upper-division courses, which, it seemed to him, couldn’t get reapproved because “they are deemed more advanced and hence not ‘general education’ enough.”
Three days after the appeal deadline, the administrator delivered another “TIME SENSITIVE” update. Professors had been given a second chance to petition courses for general education reinstatement but had less than a day to respond.
“Why? Because none of us have better things to do,” he wrote. “I’m really sorry for this annoyance, but this is what we have to deal with nowadays…”
He wasn’t the only one irritated. At a Faculty Senate meeting in November, one classics professor complained that the Board of Governors flagged some courses without faculty input. In her case, she’d only been given two days to file appeals. Joseph Glover, the interim provost overseeing the review, said he shared her frustrations.
“I have staff who literally spent 12 hours on Saturday night working on this because we have been given extremely short deadlines from the Board of Governors to deal with,” Glover said. “We have not had much other option than to do this.”
The professor asked why the process was so rushed.
“The Board of Governors operates under its own timeline and we do our best to comply,” Glover responded, adding he wasn’t blaming the board. “The process is what the process is.”
Glover, reached through a university spokesperson, didn’t respond for comment.
According to the final list of general education courses approved by the Board of Governors last month, three-quarters of UF’s general education courses will switch to electives in the next academic year. Colleges — not administrators or state officials — requested removals for about two-thirds of those courses, according to Glover. It’s unclear who removed the rest.
Lord, the associate dean for the liberal arts college, emailed one department chair a summary of the finalized course list in December: only 150 of the colleges’ 880 reviewed courses remained in the general education catalog. Across the university, only 294 general education courses made it through the review.
“I have no details regarding the logic or lack thereof behind these decisions,” Lord wrote. “I wish I did.”
‘Just don’t give up’: Students, administrators discuss impact and next steps
The cuts hit some humanities and social sciences departments particularly hard.
About 20 academic units in the fields had at least five general education classes available before the review. Five of those lost their entire catalog after the state’s revisions: women’s studies, environmental sciences, Latin American studies, zoology and African American studies.
The Gender, Sexualities and Women’s Studies department’s entire eight-course catalog of general education courses are being converted to electives.
Mia Fairchild, a 20-year-old UF psychology sophomore, is currently taking “Women and Gender Analysis through American Film.” Fairchild is part of the last cohort to get a general education humanities credit from the class for the foreseeable future.
Fairchild doesn’t view the course as inherently political and said removing its general education status is a “slap in the face.” Students from all majors, not just humanities, should take classes that discuss issues facing women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people, she said.
“If you don’t know about a problem, you can’t solve a problem,” Fairchild said. “If we don’t teach about feminism and racism or sexism, then it’s not going to be learned, and it’s just going to be deeper rooted in society and people are just going to accept it.”
The review also scrubbed courses dealing with race from UF’s most recent general education rolls, which included five with the term “race” in the title, like “Race and Racism” and “Dance, Race, Gender.” The only one that survived the cuts is called “Stars and the Nuclear Arms Race.”
UF African American studies director David Canton said his program plans to resubmit several courses to regain general education credit by the end of the semester. Programs across the liberal arts college are doing the same, he said.
Although the courses removed from general education remain available to UF students, offering them as general education credits increases enrollment, getting students “into the door” as a gateway to the African American Studies major. Canton’s program plans to restructure a few existing classes, like “Intro to African-American Studies.” As an introductory course, that option fits the new lower-level requirement for general education.
The cuts almost entirely eliminated upper-level courses from general education university-wide. The finalized list still retains some upper-level courses. But the majority of general education offerings — over 93% — are now lower-level, compared to just 40% before the review.
Moving forward, Canton is developing new courses specifically designed to fit that state’s standards.
“Just don’t get frustrated, right?” he said. “Don’t give up. …when people say you should fight back, they don’t understand it’s a law. There’s no fighting back. You do what? You adjust.”
Contact Zoey Thomas and Garrett Shanley at zthomas@alligator.org and gshanley@alligator.org. Follow them on X @zoeythomas39 and @garrettshanley.
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Zoey Thomas is a media production junior and the Fall 2024 Enterprise Health Reporter for The Alligator. She previously worked on the University and Metro desks. Her most prized assets include her espresso machine, Regal Unlimited movie pass and HOKA running shoes.
Garrett Shanley is a fourth-year journalism major and the Summer 2024 university editor for The Alligator. Outside of the newsroom, you can find him watching Wong Kar-Wai movies and talking to his house plants.
