After Florida International University (FIU) adopted a state-mandated textbook for its Introduction to Sociology courses, I interviewed Zachary Levenson. Part one of the interview covered how we got here, the absurdity that not a single introductory textbook could make it past state censors, and the general chilling effect this law has had. In part two, we discuss how faculty are organizing and surviving in this climate, what this means for other disciplines beyond sociology, and the perils of anticipatory compliance.
Victor: During the moral panic over critical race theory, I was writing my book, and I was speaking about the panic; a lot of faculty thought they were safe. “I don't do race, so this doesn't really concern me.” But you said that there are also other forms of sociological thinking that are under threat, and I wanted to hear a little bit about that. Now that censorship has spread, what other aspects of sociological thinking are under threat here?
Zachary: If you look at the letter of the law in SB266, there's a broad prohibition on political advocacy in the classroom. I teach urban sociology, for example. I could imagine that, if I'm teaching about eviction or dispossession, or even if I'm teaching a quantitative analysis of the political economy of gentrification, it could be seen as advocacy. And so, one worry here is that they're going to start broadening the net for who knows what's next.
Their approach is what I like to call “Control-F politics.” They're searching for critical race theory, as you might imagine. The word “trans.” It's as stupid as if you were to put a space between “TR” and “ANS” in the word on your syllabus; they probably wouldn’t catch you. I mean, that's the intellectual level of this stuff. They don't know what they're after.
The classes that they've gone after are bizarre. So, Introduction to Sociology, Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity (that one I get)… but Social Problems? I mean, can you imagine a sociology course that comes more out of the Cold War and the War on Poverty than Social Problems? But this is what they're coming for. And they've come for an anthropology class that's one of our most popular, called “Myth, Ritual, and the Supernatural.” And while they won't state why, it’s presumably something about it being anti-Christian – you know, myth and ritual and supernatural.
But they've told us what they're up to. The last State Education Commissioner has said that sociology is a left-wing project that needs to be stamped out.
These people are coming for the social sciences more broadly. And once they come for sociology, they're going to come for anthropology. They've already started to come for history. Over the summer, they prohibited the use of history books to teach African and Latin American history and instead required that it be taught solely from primary sources.
But if you think about what history is, it's writing about primary sources. So that second-order reflection was prohibited!
Victor: So, some folks are scared and saying the faculty should give them this, and they will stop. Other folks are organizing. Just what does the organizing look like?
Zachary: Organizing here is tough. As I mentioned, we are unionized, but I think there had been very little communication between departments or across departments in the state before this. That's getting better now, but these are all informal committees where we're just meeting on Zoom and trying to exchange information. So, broadly, I think it's about, at this point, exchanging information and seeing what's happening in other departments,
I can tell you, organizing is very uneven across the state.
Since Dr. Phillip Wiseley was removed from the textbook committee, people statewide are scared. So, what's happening is that adjuncts, for example, are exclusively teaching intro in my department right now. Many of them are obviously complying because they're at-will employees and could be fired on the spot. And if they're ABD grad students or adjuncts who need the work, they're not doing it for fun.
Representatives of the campus administration – not the Board of Governors – are all coming forward with the same line: there is no state-imposed textbook; you are incorrect; we did not tell you to use a textbook. Now, one, that's not true. It was communicated to individual faculty that you need to use this textbook.
Two, let's imagine it were not communicated. The line of argument is the following. We're not telling you to teach it; we're trying to protect you. So, what does “protection” mean in this case?
It means that if you teach any other textbook, you can be fired on the spot if you're an at-will employee or an adjunct. And in the case that you are a tenure-track faculty, and therefore, a union member, it is unclear what would happen, because our collective bargaining agreement protects our speech in the classroom, including control over course material. The point is that our academic speech is protected by our collective bargaining agreement. And so, that's yet another reason they can't put this in writing. It would violate not only the law but also our collective bargaining agreement.
So, all this is to say there's this denial that this is what's happening. And this has been an uphill battle. When one of my colleagues made a brilliant presentation in the Faculty Senate advocating this framing – that this is a violation of academic freedom – others would say things like, “You said that they violated our academic freedom. I want to change that language. It is too intense and confrontational. I would like to change that language to limited our academic speech.”
Now, I don't understand what the difference between “limited” and “violated” is here, but there's this real fear among faculty, and they don't want to poke the bear. A lot of departments seem terrified and think that if they cave on this, they'll be left alone. Unfortunately, the bear is already fully awake.
In my department, we've reached common ground, and as we see it, there are a couple of options when we discuss resistance.
First, one option would be to say, all right, let's remove sociology from the general education curriculum and continue teaching it the way we want to teach it. We're not going to cave. But then the problem becomes one of essentially ratifying the course’s removal from the general education curriculum without a written directive to do so. It’s textbook anticipatory compliance. And in this case, it's actually a textbook, right?
Victor: Right.
Zachary: I think the concept of anticipatory compliance is so useful here. When we think about what's happening, the idea of complying before we have a written directive to do so has no legal basis. We have no written directive. Somebody called and said, “Do it.”
Well, okay, so can you please put it in writing?
They will not put it in writing. They will not specify sanctions. My department drafted a letter to the provost and asked for the following: please tell us what we cannot teach, what we must teach, and the sanction for noncompliance. And she wrote back and referred us to the Board of Governors regulations, which, ultimately, when you follow the trail, point back to SB266. What is the sanction? We were told there are no known sanctions other than that the university itself may be sanctioned. And they're of course trying to protect the institution over individual faculty.
I should say, this isn't my strategy. It's really what folks have been organizing around statewide: to be very clear that we do not need to comply with oral directives. We demand written directives. Once we have these written directives, they are obviously in contradiction of Judge Walker's rulings on the Stop Woke Act. Then we can proceed legally. But for now, people need to demand this in writing. Because in keeping it informal, it's doing a few things. One, it keeps everything off the books, and faculty are being contacted individually rather than collectively. This is not being brought up at faculty meetings. There's a kind of silence around this, and chairs are worried about being removed.
But we're organizing around it by demanding written directives. Until that point, we don't need to comply with anything. And if they want to fire someone, they can try it.
Victor: So, this is two questions, but what should folks outside of Florida know? And how do you think folks outside of Florida know, and how should they prepare for similar political movements?
Zachary: I think one of the most important things folks can do to prepare is to focus on framing. Because what's going to happen, not that I know the future, but this stuff will be legislated piecemeal. Whether this is Indiana with its ideological balance law, Iowa, or Texas, all these states have different articulations of this. But when we think about it piecemeal, I think we focus on how we teach without using the phrase “identity politics.” Or how do we teach without arguing that racism is structural and inherent in the United States?
I would put all that stuff to the side for a second, and instead focus on the big picture, which is this: states are beginning to move from telling you what you can't teach, to telling you what you must teach, all while denying that they're doing that. But that's exactly what a state-mandated textbook is. And this is the framing I think is important to get out there. This is, by definition, a government mandating the use of a textbook – even if they don't put that mandate in writing, threatening to fire anyone who does not use that textbook and teaches a class otherwise.
This is what an authoritarian state does.
This is what was done in Pinochet’s Chile. We have countless examples of them coming for sociology. But I don't think it's particularly helpful here to say, this is like Pinochet, or that this is Nazism or Fascism. I think when we say that it's authoritarian, all we're saying here is that the government is mandating that disciplines in which legislators have no expertise be taught in a certain way because it is politically inconvenient for the truth to be told.
The idea that a government would restrict academics' free teaching of an academic subject is bizarre.
Second, I think it's important to show that the so-called ideological conformity does not actually exist. Having a disciplinary consensus around a topic is not the same as ideological conformity, and anyone who wants to teach it in any which way is welcome to do so.