Life at Rufo U
By 
As a companion piece to the president of UMich (attempting to) take the drop from Ron DeSantis, a professor has a report about what it’s like in Gainesville right now [gift link]:
In the three years since Ron DeSantis set out to rid Florida’s universities of woke ideology, my campus changed significantly. Professors suddenly worried about what they could say and teach. Some started avoiding terms like “racism.” One student recently told me that when someone used “intersectional” in class, the instructor told her not to use that word.
Soon this could be the case in schools across the country. We’ve all heard stories of elite institutions cowering before President Trump’s assault on higher education. Take it from someone who knows: It could get worse — far worse.
Mr. Trump has been watching what’s transpired in Florida. The architect of Project 2025’s education policies has said that Florida is “leading the way” on university overhauls. Already, Mr. Trump has threatened to pull funding from colleges that don’t purge language he considers woke. He’s demanded new oversight of certain regional studies departments. Next he could try to ban, as Florida has, “political or social activism.” He could weaken the protections provided by tenure and faculty unions. I saw this happen on my campus, and I know the toll it took. If the Trump administration has its way, my experience could offer a preview of what’s coming for other universities.
Before Mr. DeSantis began targeting higher education, Florida faculty members could be confident that the administrators supported our professional judgments about how to teach our students. We had open, complex discussions without fearing for our careers. In a conversation in one of my classes, female students expressed the fear that catcalling provoked, and their male peers responded thoughtfully, reflecting on their own behavior — a learning experience for everyone. Today that conversation would, I fear, violate a Florida law that prohibits teaching male students that they must feel guilt for the actions of other men.
Since Mr. DeSantis’s crackdown, I’ve seen my colleagues harassed and investigated for addressing topical issues, even outside the classroom. The climate of fear gives the government precisely the result it wants. Administrators and faculty members alike practice anticipatory obedience to avoid even the appearance of wokeness, stifling the sort of open and civil discussions that lead students to develop their own views.
The panic over WOKE on campus is one of the most ridiculous cons in the history of reactionary cons. People like Rufo have never even really made any pretense of caring about free speech or academic freedom — what they’re doing in power is exactly what they’d said they’d do — but radical centrists will always see the sophomore suggesting that a pulled pork sandwich shouldn’t be called a “banh mi” as the real threat to free speech anyway. And in a pinch you can acknowledge that “anti-woke” Republicans immediately destroy free speech and academic freedom wherever they obtain power but find a way to blame it on the targets anyway (“[t]he administration is not anti-woke; it is woke with right-wing characteristics” LOL come on.)
Sometimes people not in This Thing of Ours will ask why anyone stays in DeSanitized institutions. The simple answer is that in most fields there’s just very little job market for academics more than a couple of years out of grad school (even in those fields in which there’s any kind of job market at all), and what lateral job openings exist in states where tenure still exists are insanely competitive. When someone like Ono chooses come to a place like this voluntarily, though, it tells you everything you need to know about their priorities. And obviously if he gets blocked by DeSantis and his goons for being insufficiently opposed to academic freedom it would be just deserts.