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.
I’m in one of these shit holes, and what’s frustrating about your attitude is the privilege behind it assuming all of us can leave.
I never said everyone can leave, I never even implied it.
For as many good and decent people there were in Weimar Germany trying to change things, for as many people voted and participated in civic life, for as many people who genuinely loved their country more than a funny little man screeching about how they’d all been wronged (and who tried desperately to warn others of the encroaching danger), for as many people who had grown up there in a long unbroken line of forebears who had done the same, once the Reichstag Fire took place it was a done deal.
I think that in 1945, if you asked any German who had chosen to stay in 1933 if it was worth it, they’d have laughed at you or spat on you. I’m reading a book right now called Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself, about the waves and waves and waves of suicides – thousands – by any means possible in late April and early May, 1945 as the war was drawing to a close: even many of the survivors didn’t want to live in the world they had insisted upon creating just a handful of years earlier.
Similarly, today, when all the votes in your area have been neutralized by extreme gerrymandering, and you’re in a state that seems set in its right-wing lawless trajectory, there’s not a lot you can do. I’m in a similar situation as you, and I’m personally viewing the upcoming elections and whatever happens leading up to them as the period of time when we either take real steps toward fixing our shit OR our very own Reichstag Fire takes place. Like you, I can’t get out today, not even in 2023. But we’re making plans and going to do our very best. We can’t stay for this. And honestly, I don’t want to be around people who think any part of this is good, or even live well for a while in their idea of a good time, much less reap the eventual whirlwind they’re sowing right now.
It’s not just the right wing; it’s that EVERYTHING here is going to shit, it’s becoming a police state, and while it used to be a beautiful place to live, I don’t want to be here when they start the ovens or do whatever heinous shit they do to the outgroups to solidify their power. We’re getting out. I don’t have the ability to change anyone but myself, but that much I will do: not my conscience, not my convictions, but absolutely my location. Given my online life and vocal opinions regarding the oncoming fascist wave, I will certainly be on their list: I am the absolute definition of low-hanging fruit in that regard, lol. So to take the metaphor a step further, I literally have to move the tree or I will die trying.
Authoritarian governments only ever go in one direction. And they very rarely end whole. Get out while you can.