Professors from across the country have long been lured to Florida’s public colleges and universities, with the educators attracted to the research opportunities, student bodies, and the warm weather.
But for a swath of liberal-leaning professors, many of them holding highly coveted tenured positions, they’ve felt increasingly out of place in the Sunshine State. And some of them are pointing to the conservative administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as the reason for their departures, according to The New York Times.
DeSantis, who was elected to the governorship in 2018 and was easily reelected last fall, has over the course of his tenure worked to put a conservative imprint on a state where moderation was once a driving force in state politics. In recent years, DeSantis has railed against the current process by which tenure is awarded, and with a largely compliant GOP-controlled legislature, he’s imposed conservative education reforms across the state.
So any way you slice it, this is not a loss for Republicans, they’re getting precisely what they want here. Unintended consequences? Probably, but they’re too blinded by their belief in their own superiority to be able to imagine any.
It just means that science communicators on the internet are becoming vitally important, so the young can still access quality information.
It might be a double edged sword, but unless Republicans can stem the flow of information on the internet (and they have and are trying different ways to do that), this is a battle that they have no chance of winning.
That’ll only work until the Internet is drowned out by fake AI bot science videos and blogs, stressing certain narratives.
YouTube is already today fighting those videos, AI generated trash science stuff.
It’s happening now, today. That’s why I always rage against shills and bots, because it really will mean the death of communication for Humanity if it goes to its logical conclusion. And when Humanity doesn’t communicate, War is not far behind.
If you pollute the virtual ‘Town Square’ badly enough, those who want communication to not happen will win.