So said Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the Florida State University System’s Board of Governors, on March 26, as he announced that the State of Florida has removed sociology from the core curriculum at the state’s 12 public universities. (Rodrigues came to the position by gubernatorial appointment. A longtime politician, his background is with corporate America and non-academic program responsibilities at Florida Gulf Coast University.)

The policy adoption “marks an escalation in Florida leaders’ efforts to reshape college instruction, particularly on topics such as race, gender and inequality, which conservative officials have increasingly targeted as ‘woke.’ For years, Republican lawmakers and education leaders have argued that sociology — especially high-enrollment introductory courses — has been overtaken by progressive ideology and strayed from empirical scholarship. Thursday’s vote is among the most far-reaching actions yet in that campaign. The decision bars introductory sociology from the state’s general-education catalog — the set of foundational courses all students must complete, regardless of major, across subjects such as math, science, humanities and social sciences.” Read more here from the Miami Herald