Academic Freedom and the First Amendment: Who Decides What Is Taught?

About this episode

In 2022, Florida enacted the Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, prohibiting indoctrination of race and gender ideology in a variety of educational and employment contexts. The law’s K-12 provisions remain in effect, but addressing a challenge to its higher education provisions, an Eleventh Circuit panel recently held “if the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.”What is “academic freedom?” Whose right is it? What role do taxpayers and the lawmakers working on their behalf have in funding and setting curricular decisions for state universities? How might other decisions…