![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/UNF-Censorship-Illustrations-1.png\")
Photo illustration. From left: Interim UWF president Manny Diaz; UNF professor John White; UNF president Moez Limayem.<\/p>\nPhoto illustration. From left: Interim UWF president Manny Diaz; UNF professor John White; UNF president Moez Limayem.<\/p>\n
Returning from summer break, University of North Florida professor John White was caught off-guard by the urgent news, relayed by administrators, that the state ordered certain taboo words to be removed from all class syllabi or course descriptions in the university\u2019s teacher-education department, where he\u2019d worked for 17 years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The offending words included \u201cdiversity,\u201d \u201cequity,\u201d \u201cinclusion,\u201d and \u201cculture\u201d \u2014 a list that came down from state officials, according to UNF emails, and represents the latest effort by the DeSantis administration to eradicate what it views as left-wing concepts, like systemic racism, from Florida\u2019s universities. State officials cast a wide net, ensnaring courses like White\u2019s where words like \u201cculture\u201d and \u201cdiversity\u201d appear in innocuous contexts far removed from culture-war politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found this shocking,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n
UNF email records show that Florida\u2019s politically-appointed Board of Governors, which oversees the public university system, demanded the controversial word changes, statewide.<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s Department of Education joined in making this request. Neither state agency responded to requests for comment from The Tributary.<\/p>\n
The emails show that UNF administrators worked under pressure to adopt the changes and were divided over how to implement them, with an associate dean pushing for a review by an internal academic committee, as is typical with course updates or revisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But in their rush to satisfy the political pressure coming from Tallahassee, UNF\u2019s leadership sidestepped that normal committee process, and quickly made the changes in time for fall semester.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
To justify that workaround, UNF leaders ultimately decided that the removal of certain words amounted to \u201cminor or technical changes\u201d that could be done quickly, and without extensive review.<\/p>\n
White, the professor, disputed that what occurred was \u201cminor.\u201d He said the syllabi and course revisions are a form of government-mandated censorship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The award-winning professor, who often leads faculty into the arena during UNF graduation ceremonies, filed a formal grievance with the university \u2014 alleging the changes to his courses were improper.\u00a0<\/p>\n
UNF told The Tributary it \u201cdisputes the allegations and has no additional comment on the pending grievance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Censorship and \u2018silly\u2019 choices<\/strong><\/p>\n As a tenured faculty member, White teaches the next generation of K-12 schoolteachers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The words that were erased in his courses, and in other teacher-education courses across the state, are often referenced in standard teaching textbooks. For example, when discussing special education students, the term \u201cinclusion\u201d is an important, and widely accepted, concept related to effective teaching, and it also applies to providing disabled students with the opportunity to socially interact with their peers.\u00a0<\/p>\n White said the deletion of words amounts to censorship, but he also said it\u2019s just \u201csilly\u201d because the removed words are being cut regardless of the context in which they\u2019re being used.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn my language arts methods course, one of the topics is selecting a \u2018diversity\u2019 of texts to engage student leaders,\u201d White said. \u201cThat has nothing to do with DEI. That\u2019s the word \u2018diverse\u2019 as in a myriad, or plethora.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re interested in doing quick word searches to police us.\u201d<\/p>\n Not just UNF<\/strong><\/p>\n Top-down attention on these word choices isn\u2019t limited to UNF.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Florida State University made headlines after the Tallahassee Democrat reported<\/a> the removal of keywords such as \u201cwomen,\u201d \u201cdiverse,\u201d \u201csystemic\u201d and \u201ccultural relevance\u201d from the FSU website, though the university disputed the scope of the changes.<\/p>\n \u201cFlorida State University, like all universities, routinely reviews its messaging to ensure information is up to date and compliant,\u201d the school said in response.<\/p>\n A sociology professor at FSU, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation, told The Tributary that the university\u2019s sociology website was updated in strange ways over the summer, including the replacement of the term \u201cinequalities\u201d with \u201csocial analysis.\u201d The phrase \u201cpersonal initiative\u201d was also added to this new \u201csocial analysis\u201d section.<\/p>\n \u201cIt hasn\u2019t been clearly explained to us who made those changes,\u201d said the FSU professor, who is also monitoring the White grievance case at UNF.\u00a0<\/p>\n Across the state, faculty are approaching their job with trepidation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s been a chilling environment for First Amendment rights on campus in Florida over the past couple of years, said Graham Piro, a faculty legal defense fund fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.<\/p>\n Piro\u2019s group, which is also known as FIRE, previously joined the court battle against Florida\u2019s \u201cStop WOKE Act,\u201d which succeeded in halting parts of the law, at least temporarily, while the litigation remains pending.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n More recently, FIRE sent a letter last month to the chancellor of Florida\u2019s state university system, Ray Rodrigues, expressing concerns after Rodrigues asked for a review of social media posts celebrating the death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n With UNF, Piro said, \u201cwe will definitely keep an eye on this situation to see how Professor White\u2019s grievance plays out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A wide dragnet<\/strong><\/p>\n As White protested what was happening to his courses, he also asked his dean to provide a written law or state rule to justify the alterations to his department\u2019s syllabi and course descriptions.\u00a0<\/p>\n The dean of education, Stephen Dittmore, responded with an email citing a state law that says teacher preparation program courses \u201cmay not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum or instruction that teaches identity politics \u2026 or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.\u201d<\/p>\n Nothing in that state law mentions a list of disfavored terms or describes a process to remove them from course materials. And there is no indication that state officials or UNF leadership deemed White\u2019s courses or the material he was teaching to be inappropriate \u2013 instead, his syllabus appears to have been caught in a wide dragnet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dittmore\u2019s justifications echoed a memorandum<\/a> previously issued by then-Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr., on May 2, which demanded updates to Florida\u2019s teacher-education courses. The memo, which was distributed to all of the state\u2019s public universities and K-12 school districts, cited the same state law and rules as Dittmore, and required colleges to undergo a multi-step process to ensure they were training future teachers to the state government\u2019s specifications.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Diaz is now the interim president at the University of West Florida \u2014 where he has taken an interest in the university\u2019s teacher-education programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n At first, White, the UNF professor, refused to follow the order to remove certain words. The syllabus he provided to students this fall included statements such as \u201cthe content and activities found in this course are greatly influenced by current research and empirical findings generated by the curriculum, instruction, diversity, multicultural education, sociology, psychology, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics.\u201d<\/p>\n The bottom of the syllabus included a note informing students that White had been told to remove certain words, but he refused, \u201cbecause such information is important, relevant, and necessary to future teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement to students concluded with a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.: \u201cOne has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Eventually, White relented and redacted the targeted words, while filing a formal grievance with the university protesting the policy.<\/p>\n \u201cMy union rep and I agreed that I can\u2019t fight anything if I am fired,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n White said his dean did not want the redacted syllabus distributed to students, so instead a deal was struck: White had to remove the word \u201cculture\u201d from the first page of the syllabus, but the word \u201cdiversity\u201d was allowed to remain.\u00a0<\/p>\n White also wrote<\/a> an op-ed, detailing his experience, which was published in the Tallahassee Democrat. The Spinnaker, UNF\u2019s student newspaper, has also reported<\/a> on White\u2019s grievance against the university.<\/p>\n Orders from the top<\/strong><\/p>\n UNF email records show that Florida\u2019s top education leadership pushed for changes to White\u2019s syllabus \u2014 and in college classrooms across the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n A July 31 email, written by Karen Cousins, UNF\u2019s associate vice president of academic affairs, said\u00a0 \u201cthe necessary modifications to the UNF Teacher Ed courses\u201d were \u201cidentified by the FLDOE and BOG.\u201d<\/p>\n Referring to the leaders of Florida\u2019s state university system (SUS), Cousins wrote: \u201cThe Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor were very clear when speaking to the SUS presidents and provosts, respectively, that the issues flagged in the teacher ed program spreadsheets for all 12 institutions must be in place before the Fall semester starts.\u201d<\/p>\n As UNF assembled its response to the state\u2019s request, Dittmore, the university\u2019s dean of education, had conversations with two high-ranking Florida Department of Education staffers on how to proceed, and the university\u2019s final revisions were \u201cstructured based on their answers to my questions,\u201d Dittmore wrote in a June 4, 2025 email to other UNF administrators.<\/p>\n But university emails also show the chair of the education department, along with an associate dean, were concerned that the course changes weren\u2019t being vetted properly.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the faculty union contract with UNF, the university\u2019s Academic Programs Committee is supposed to review the creation, deletion, or modification of academic programs and courses.<\/p>\n \u201cI am assisting with this process and have a question,\u201d wrote Jennifer Kane, an associate dean of academic and student affairs, in a July 31 email. \u201cWe are in process of making these changes and will have this done ASAP \u2014 the issue is that these changes must go through APC (changes to course descriptions and\/or learning outcomes) so how will these go into effect by Fall, 2025?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n UNF leaders, who were facing the state\u2019s tight deadline, had an answer: The changes were \u201cminor or technical,\u201d Cousins, the associate vice president, wrote, and thus could side-step a committee process.<\/p>\n White said that, during the course of a discussion about his pending grievance with UNF\u2019s legal staff, the attorney representing the university told him that UNF\u2019s president, Moez Limayem, agreed that the syllabi and course description changes, under normal circumstances, would have been vetted by the Academic Programs Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n White texted his department chair about that conversation.<\/strong><\/p>\n Then, in an apparent response, White received an email from Justin Sorrell, senior associate general counsel at UNF.<\/p>\n Sorrell wrote that he had obtained a copy of White\u2019s text to the department chair, but it \u201cmischaracterized our discussion\u201d about the university president\u2019s position.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t say that, and the President certainly did not either,\u201d Sorrell wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n White said he is alarmed that his text messages are being used against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n In response to questions from The Tributary, UNF said it \u201cdoes not monitor communications of employees. Dr. White sent a message threatening potential litigation against UNF to an academic administrator, which was forwarded to a University attorney. The attorney responded to assertions made in the text message and reiterated UNF\u2019s position on the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n White acknowledged he reached out to attorneys within the faculty union, and at the ACLU \u2014 with the goal of protecting his job, and fighting censorship.\u00a0<\/p>\n But White argued the university has four attorneys of its own, along with outside attorneys it also hires.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe minute I even mention talking to an attorney, they become extremely defensive and hostile,\u201d White said. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Self-censoring faculty <\/strong><\/p>\n In recent weeks, UNF administrators told faculty that, going forward, wording changes to courses could be vetted by the Academic Programs Committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the APC has not scrutinized the taboo words that were removed prior to the start of fall semester. Instead, some faculty in the teacher-education department started voluntarily suggesting new word removals.<\/p>\n For example, a class titled \u201cESOL Foundations: Culture and Language\u201d would become \u201cESOL Principles and Practices 1.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week, in a departmental-wide faculty meeting, some faculty voiced concerns about self-censorship, and so for now, the department\u2019s professors voted to pause these additional changes, instead of sending them to the academic committee.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been censoring basically, our syllabi, out of caution I would say,\u201d said one professor, from the university\u2019s department of teaching, learning, and curriculum, who attended the meeting, and requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation.<\/p>\n Referring to the fall semester changes, the professor said: \u201cWhat I think should have happened, was that faculty should have been informed before all those changes were made.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Vasquez is an investigative reporter at The Tributary. He can be reached at michael.vasquez@jaxtrib.org.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo illustration. From left: Interim UWF president Manny Diaz; UNF professor John White; UNF president Moez Limayem. 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