What is going on in Florida? Culture Wars, Schools and Higher Education

Date: 24 May 2023, 15:15–17:00
Type: Seminar
Lecturer: Professor Susan Hegeman and Professor Phillip Wegner, University of Florida.
Web page
Organiser: Democracy and Higher Education in Collaboration with Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS)
Contact person: Dag Blanck

This seminar contextualizes events in Florida within the longer history of changes in U.S. education and wider contemporary threats to academic freedom and democracy itself.

In recent years, Florida has become a major battleground in the politics of education. Frustration over school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic led to demands for “parental rights” over children’s education, which soon extended to efforts to censor reading materials and to limit how schools addressed, among other issues, racial oppression, sexuality, and gender diversity.

Recognizing the potential to mobilize voters, politicians like Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis have stoked this culture war fervor to advance sweeping changes in all levels of education that have long been sought by conservatives.

Speakers
Susan Hegeman, Professor of English at the University of Florida
Phillip Wegner, Professor Department of English, University of Florida.

Please register here no later than May 23

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Picture: "Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis", Space Coast Daily // July 1, 2022