Faculty at the Florida International University are raising alarms that a new state-mandated curriculum for a sociology course “does not accurately represent the field” and that a new textbook edited by state officials amounts to censorship of the discipline.
A letter signed by 19 faculty members of the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies alleges that the new state-mandated lesson plans for the Introduction to Sociology course amount to a sweeping violation of academic freedom and will leave students unprepared for further studies. One faculty member abstained from signing the letter.
At a hearing on Tuesday, the Faculty Senate at FIU considered formally escalating the conflict over alleged breaches in academic freedom that faculty members say are enshrined in the state constitution and in the faculty’s labor union contract with the state. A particular issue was the new textbook.
“ There are no discussions of systemic or structural racism — a core concept in sociology — as well as others like residential segregation,” Matt Marr, an associate professor of sociology said at the FIU Faculty Senate meeting. “Not only are these omissions an incorrect representation of the field, but they also fail to prepare students for majors and graduate education that require or recommend Introduction to Sociology.”
“ Our goal as a department is to teach Introduction to Sociology uncensored,” said Marr.
It is unclear how many other colleges and universities might be dealing with the same mandates. The State University System of Florida — which issued the new curriculum and circulated the new textbook — did not respond to a request for comment.
Years-long battle over sociology
Marr has taught the Introduction to Sociology course for 17 years to “thousands of students,” he said. He told his colleagues that he chose not to teach the Introduction to Sociology course this semester in fear that he might step outside the bounds of what the state has dictated for the course, even though he would be faithful to the field if he did so. The state mandate to adopt an entirely state-created new curriculum and a new state-edited textbook came down in late December, with little notice before the Spring Semester began.
The fate of the course is a dramatic escalation of a years-long battle over sociology in Florida colleges and universities.
In 2023, the state legislature passed a law banning the teaching of what it called “unproven, speculative or exploratory” concepts, listing systemic inequality and various teachings on gender and race. Then, in 2024 the state eliminated sociology as a core course offered to all higher education students. By mid-2025 the state was requesting information on textbooks and syllabi used in the courses, and by August of last year determined that every single textbook previously being used for Introduction to Sociology courses violated new academic restrictions imposed by state law.
The result was that Florida convened a statewide group in October 2025 to create an entirely new textbook that would fit the new restrictions. Four sociologists were selected from across the state, as well as four staff members of the Board of Governors, the body that controls the state university and college systems.
Rather than write a new textbook from scratch, the working group simply adapted an existing open-source textbook called Introduction to Sociology 3e, according to workgroup emails seen by WLRN. The wholesale modification of an entire textbook prompted internal discussions about copyright rules, the records show.
In reality, the workgroup simply deleted entire chapters from the book that discussed topics that have fallen out of favor in Florida, said Marr.
“ The statewide working group that created the course outline in textbook was not valid,” said Marr. “It consisted of staff members of the Florida Department Education and the [Board of Governors] telling experts what content they found favorable and unfavorable.”
Marr said that the participating sociologists operated under a “clear threat of discipline” if they did not allow state officials to get the final word.
One of the sociology professors that participated in the statewide workgroup was publicly fired from the group by Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas in October, shortly after the workgroup began meeting. In a post on X, Kamoutsas alleged the professor was teaching “gender ideology” in violation of state law.
“By including this content in your course, you are in clear violation of Florida statute,” Kamoutsas wrote. “This professional lapse is made all the more egregious by the fact that you are participating in the statewide sociology course workgroup.”
Kamoutsas then asked that Florida SouthWestern State College fire the professor.
The workgroup continued its labor, with three sociology professors and four state officials.
Study of race
The new textbook includes passages about W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent African-American thinker who is broadly considered a founder of sociological studies. But Marr said the book contains no information about what Du Bois studied and the ideas that he helped bring to prominence: The study of race in the U.S. and the “double consciousness” prominent in Black communities.
“ [Students] will be getting a sociology text, a sociology course without a soul. It's been scraped out. It is a sanitized version of the course,” said Marr.
In a broad sense, sociology teaches students to look at the intersection of biography and history, allowing personal and collective histories to be considered in their full societal context. That context often relies on stories of how race and gender roles, for instance, shape communities. While it can sound esoteric, sociology is often used in marketing and branding campaigns and in creating targeted public policy.
“The state has moved from telling us what we cannot teach to telling us exactly what we can teach,” sociologist and visiting scholar Katie Rainwater told WLRN. “ They're making these determinations in really bad ways that are giving our students a really impoverished version of the discipline.”
Since the Introduction to Sociology is offered to students as part of FIU’s “University Core Curriculum,” it is subjected to additional scrutiny and requirements under state law and regulations.
At the FIU Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday, the elected faculty senators considered a motion that would show the Senate opposed the law and procedures being used to dictate the new syllabus and textbook. Noël Barrango, the FIU Faculty Senate chair, said the issue will be taken up for a vote in two weeks time.
In Florida, the Faculty Senate at public universities are a democratic institution where faculty can participate in shared governance of core issues of curriculum and protecting the autonomy of scholarship from outside interference. The concept of shared governance on those issues is written into the bylaws of FIU’s Board of Trustees.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been outright dismissive of the notion of shared governance in higher education.
“ Sometimes these faculty will say: ‘Oh, the university is shared governance,’ and somehow they should be running... No, it's not shared governance,” DeSantis said in comments made last October at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
“The university's run by the president and the people in the administration … We have to set the mission for these schools that are consistent with the best interests of the State of Florida.”
