DISE Member Dr. Sharon Wright Austin Holds Talk on US New Legislation Impacting Academic Freedom
On October 16th 2023 Dr. Sharon Wright Austin shone a light on legislation created to curtail academic freedom in the United States.
Dr Wright Austin’s lecture, entitled The Battle to Preserve Academic Freedom in Florida and the Nation, provided an overview of the Stop Woke Act, and lawmakers’ assertions that its aim is to allow the State to regulate it’s own speech. This law’s broad language has been written to include faculty at public universities as government employees, making in-classroom speech “government speech”.
She goes on to explain how the structure of this act is a grave threat to academic freedom, and will disproportionately affect the free speech rights of students, educators, and trainers who are women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+.
Going forward educators risk disciplinary action and very large fines for violations, but campus communities are already using methods to fight back.
To stay up to date with Dr. Sharon Wright Austin’s work you can add her on Facebook.
Dr. Wright Austin, who is Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, was supported in her travels to New York by fellow DISE Member Dr. Patricia Campos Medina of The Worker Institute, ILR-Cornell University.
