JVP Academic Council Condemns Blatant Censorship at the University of North Florida

University of North Florida 
President Moez Limayem, [email protected]
Executive Vice President and Provost Karen B. Patterson, [email protected]
Associate Vice President Karen S. Cousins, [email protected]
President Christine Malek Richard, Academic and Student Affairs, [email protected]
Dean Stephen Dittmore, College of Education and Human Services, [email protected]
Jennifer Kane, Associate Dean Education and Human Services, [email protected]
Brian Verkamp, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, [email protected]
John Kantner, Ph.D., Senior Associate Provost for Faculty Success, [email protected]
Chair Christian Winterbottom, Chair Department of Teaching and Learning, [email protected]

Board of Governors, Florida public university system
Ashley Bell Barnett
Tim Cerio, [email protected]
Aubrey Edge, [email protected]
Patricia Frost,
Carson Good, [email protected]
Edward Haddock, [email protected]
Ken Jones, [email protected]
Brian Lamb, chair, [email protected], [email protected]
Alan M. Levine, vice-chair, [email protected]
Craig Matter, [email protected], [email protected]
Jose Oliva, [email protected]
Paul Renner, [email protected]
Eric Silagy, [email protected]
Anastasios Kamoutsas, [email protected]
Kimberley Dunn, [email protected]
Carson Dale, [email protected]

CC: AAUP Committee A on Academic Freedom, [email protected] 

Dear President Limayem and Florida Board of Governors:

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) condemns the Board of Governors of the Florida public university system and Florida’s Department of Education for the censorship of Professor John White’s and other professors’ syllabi and classroom lessons.  This censorship of “taboo words,” such as “culture,” “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” in course syllabi is an unabashed attack on academic freedom, based on a partisan agenda to control university education. 

We therefore support Professor John White’s grievance against the University of North Florida challenging this censorship. We also observe the university’s failure to follow the appropriate academic procedures by vetting these proposed changes with the university’s internal Academic Programs Committee. When Professor White asked to see the law or rule mandating these changes, he “discovered that there was no law or legal imperative to change my course syllabus.” University administrators conveyed the directive verbally, thereby circumventing the Sunshine Laws.This is nothing less than a full-blown attack on academic freedom, self-governance, and freedom of speech. 

Professor John White, an award-winning teacher, has taught in the University of North Florida’s Teacher Education Department for 17 years. He has been awarded the University of North Florida’s Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award and the Outstanding Undergraduate Award (twice) in addition to the National Education Association’s Democracy in Education Award. He has consistently emphasized that his teaching includes essential materials to prepare his students to become future K-12 teachers. This means the inclusion of crucial critical theories that can be mind-opening and even liberating for some students. Instead, he is now faced with an authoritarian agenda meant to strip all universities of their academic autonomy and academic freedom. The Academic Council of JVP has repeatedly warned that censorship of Palestinian and Palestine-focused scholarship sets a dangerous precedent for a broad authoritarian assault on academic and democratic freedoms. Regretfully, we appear to be seeing this expanded repression in action again.

Professor White is bravely challenging nothing less than an undermining of faculty governance and abandonment of your responsibility to preserve and protect academic freedom. This dismissal falls right in line with the Trump Administration’s efforts to destroy academic freedom and install right-wing agendas as obligatory speech. Setting this sort of horrific precedent will give the University of North Florida – and the entire Florida public university system – the dubious distinction of taking aim at faculty for simply carrying out their teaching responsibilities.  

Students at the University of North Florida deserve a world-class education designed and taught by leading experts like Prof. White. Rather than allow Prof. White to do his job, the politicians and cronies who occupy the Florida Board of Governors have determined that they know better than those who have devoted their lives to studying and training the next generation of teachers. Their regime of censorship constitutes a direct assault on the quality of education in Florida and the United States.

We demand that you accept Professor White’s grievance, allow faculty to resume their teaching responsibilities, and end this practice of censorship that is in no way required by law and contradicts both academic and constitutional freedoms.   

Sincerely, 

Dr. Jonah Rubin, Sr. Manager of Campus Organizing on behalf of the JVP Academic Council. 

The Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as scholars, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis of contemporary censorship on Palestine. We oppose the deployment of the charge of antisemitism to censor or criminalize speech critical of the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  We defend employment rights, academic freedom, and rights of association within higher education and confirm the core values of Jewish Voice for Peace.