Higher education as the frontline of democracy: The case against Florida House Bill 233, the anti-shielding/intellectual viewpoint diversity/student recording legislative act

Abstract

In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed House Bill 233. The bill has three provisions: 1) it mandates an “intellectual viewpoint diversity” survey that asks students, faculty, and other employees at Florida’s public colleges and universities to report on their levels of comfort to express their ideological and political opinions; 2) it forbids instructors from “shielding” students from “access to, or observation of, ideas and opinions that they may find uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive”; 3) it deputizes students as vigilantes to record instructor lectures without the instructor’s consent “as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.” By narrating my involvement as a plaintiff in litigation against this bill, I discuss how the protections of intellectual inquiry are being struggled over in the context of state overreach and growing authoritarianism and how this threatens the roots of democratic culture.