Florida students to be surveyed for 'intellectual diversity'

UPDATE: A previous version of this story made the claim that Florida's college students would be required to register their political views with the state. This is incorrect, as Politifact notes:

• The law requires an annual assessment of “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” at public colleges and universities.
  
• The bill does not address what questions will be asked, whether participation is mandatory, or if the responses will be anonymous.
  
• The survey hasn’t been created yet but a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education said it will be voluntary and won’t ask about individuals’ political beliefs. Instead, it will ask whether individuals “feel they can express their political viewpoints and opinions in their college classrooms.”

You can read more here.

AlterNet regrets the error.

The state will require taxpayer-funded colleges and universities to issue surveys to determine "the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented" on campus and whether students, faculty and staff "feel free to express [their] beliefs and viewpoints," although it's not clear what will be done with the poll results, reported the Tampa Bay Times.

"It used to be thought that a university campus was a place where you'd be exposed to a lot of different ideas," DeSantis said, justifying the legislation. "Unfortunately, now the norm is, these are more intellectually repressive environments. You have orthodoxies that are promoted, and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed."

DeSantis didn't offer any specific examples of that repression but instead claimed he "knows a lot of parents" who are worried their children will be "indoctrinated" with ideas they don't support, and a pair of state legislators complained that Florida colleges and universities had become "socialism factories."

"We always hear about the liberal parts of the university system, and we don't hear so much of that from the college system," Senate President Wilton Simpson (R-Trilby) said Tuesday at a state university system's Board of Governors meeting.

House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor) complained the state's universities lacked "diversity of thought" at a news conference with DeSantis.

"That's not worth tax dollars and that's not something that we're going to be supporting moving forward," DeSantis said.

Rodrigues insisted that faculty would not be promoted or fired based on their political views recorded in the survey, which is not required to be filed anonymously, and will be selected or created by the state university system's Board of Governors and the State Board of Education.

DeSantis also signed a law prohibiting university and college officials from limiting campus speech that "may be uncomfortable, disagreeable or offensive," and will allow students to record lectures without consent that may be used as evidence in a civil or criminal case against educational institutions.