In the textbook used by many Florida higher education students for the Introduction to Sociology course last semester, the opening lines on the chapter titled 'Race and Ethnicity' hit close to home.
The start of the chapter outlined the contours of the case of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black high school student from Miami Gardens who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. The controversial killing of Martin in Central Florida, followed by a delayed arrest of Zimmerman, criminal trial and ultimate not-guilty verdict, sparked an international social movement called Black Lives Matter and conversations about race and policing that echo to this day.
But for many Florida students taking the Introduction to Sociology class this semester, there is no mention of the case in their new textbooks.
In fact, the entire Race and Ethnicity chapter is missing, along with chapters titled Deviance, Crime and Social Control; Media and Technology; Social Stratification in the United States; Global Inequality; and Gender, Sex and Sexuality.
The new textbook — edited by staff of the Board of Governors alongside a work group of sociologists — was created in large part by deleting sections of the former textbook, an open-source book called Introduction to Sociology 3e. The resulting state-created book is less than half the length of the original text.
“This was the most unpleasant task I’ve ever had to take on in my entire career. What was put on our shoulders was saving our discipline and saving our colleagues' jobs."Dawn Carr, sociologist at Florida State University
The reason the state decided to create the new textbook was after the Board of Governors, which oversees higher education in Florida, determined that all of the books being used for Introduction to Sociology courses violated new academic restrictions imposed by state law.
“This was the most unpleasant task I’ve ever had to take on in my entire career,” Dawn Carr, a sociologist at Florida State University who participated in the state work group, told WLRN.
Carr said she has been attacked by colleagues throughout the state for participating in the creation of the new textbook. As she saw it, either sociologists sat at the table to help create a new textbook, or colleges and universities across the state would be forced to remove Introduction to Sociology as a core course offered to incoming students. Carr said that scenario could lead to the overall implosion of the discipline in Florida and resulting job losses for professors and graduate students.
“What was put on our shoulders was saving our discipline and saving our colleagues' jobs,” Carr said. “We were told if the course was cancelled, it will be very hard to get it back in as a core course. So we needed a stop-gap solution, and this is a stop-gap solution.”
Even as entire chapters were forced to be deleted in order to comply with state laws that restrict the teaching on certain concepts, many key sections from those chapters — like those tackling race and gender issues — were sprinkled into the chapters that remained. “We’re retaining 75% of Introduction to Sociology course rather than retaining 0% if it if we didn’t create these materials," explained Carr.
As WLRN has previously reported, sociology professors at Florida International University in Miami have sounded the alarm about the new textbook and accompanying curriculum, saying they violate principles of academic freedom. The new textbook and curriculum are forcing professors to censor themselves, since they cannot cover ideas that are broadly considered “core concepts” of sociology, they argued.
READ MORE: Florida escalates its battle on sociology with new curriculum, textbook. Professors push back
Carr said she understands why her fellow sociologists are pushing back on the new textbook and curriculum that the state is requiring they adopt. “To my knowledge this has never happened in US history," she noted.
But at the same time, she defends the work that was put into the book and stands by the final product, even if core parts of the discipline were forced to be deleted through the process. She told WLRN that she worked 12-hour-days and longer for six straight weeks to bring it to fruition, so that the course could live to see another day. At one point she suffered vision issues from staring at a screen so many hours in a day.
“There are things that are inconsistent with the discipline, but that’s in the things that are missing, not in what is there,” Carr said about the resulting textbook. “There is nothing there that I do not believe is the best science.”
A request for comment from the Florida State University System was not returned.
Sweeping cuts, pinprick choices
After reviewing a copy of both textbooks side by side, WLRN is now able to see exactly what changes have been made. Some cuts are large and sweeping, others pinprick choices. Many of the changes involve outright deletions, while others add significant context and updated data.
For example, a discussion on the gender pay gap is greatly expanded in the state-created textbook. While the original textbook contained little data or numbers related to why men and women on average receive different pay, the state-created textbook now includes several paragraphs of new information.
“The gender wage gap is wider for women of color. Black women earn around 63 to 65 cents, Latinas about 54 to 58 cents, and Native American and some Asian American women earn even less relative to white, non-Hispanic men,” reads the new textbook. “An important portion of the gender pay gap cannot be attributed to gender differences in occupational selection or human capital factors like work experience and job tenure and could be related to factors such as gender discrimination in hiring and promotion.”
The original textbook contains none of those passages.
Sections that reference COVID-19 in the state-created book have been updated with research about the long-term impacts from as recently as 2025; the original textbook was published in 2021, a mere year after the onset of the pandemic.
Beyond the deletion of entire chapters, some edits are subtle.
A section on mass migration mentions humanitarian issues at the US-Mexico border. While the original textbook mentions that President Trump only reversed a policy of separating children from their families during his first term after many Republicans spoke out against it and after many successful legal challenges, the state-mandated version simply says: “After concerns about this were raised, President Trump reversed this policy.” The original textbook says later investigations found that “hundreds, if not thousands” of families were separated while the policy was in effect, the state-mandated textbook does not mention the human impact.
A section speaking about the impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 spells out what happened in the aftermath of the storm. Former Congressman Richard Baker was quoted as saying, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." A local developer was quoted as stating, "I think we have a clean sheet to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities." The decimation of public housing was part of the flight of Black communities from the city limits, reshaping the demographics of the city.
The state-mandated text makes no mention of this element of the aftermath.
In a chapter about social movements, the former textbook mentions the case of Cooper Union. After the small college in New York City announced that it would begin charging tuition for the first time ever, students occupied a building and the president’s office. Those actions succeeded in pressuring the college president to resign, and ultimately the State of New York working with the school to keep the college tuition-free. The state-mandated textbook contains many of the same materials in this section, but it skips any mention of Cooper Union.
The State of Florida has in recent years been hostile towards campus activism, much less the occupation of campus spaces.
Strikingly, all mentions of “socialism” have been entirely deleted by the state-mandated textbook. Many passages that talk about the political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx have been left intact.
Fear of breaking the law
The original open source textbook was written by OpenStax, a nonprofit educational tech initiative based out of Rice University in Texas. Funding for writing the book came from a verified pot of sources, from the liberal George Soros-funded Open Society Foundation and the conservative Charles Koch Foundation alike. A request for comment from the company about the changes made was not returned.
Last week the full Faculty Senate at FIU — representing all fields of study and research — approved two items declaring that the state-mandated textbook and curriculum violates academic freedoms. The full Faculty Senate declared in a resolution that the state-issued textbook does “not conform to the professional standards of the discipline of sociology” and so professors should not be forced to use it.
One FIU professor of sociology told a Faculty Senate meeting last month that he chose not to teach Introduction to Sociology this semester, in fear that he might break the law by teaching the course as he has always taught it.
Carr told WLRN that she understands why professors are frustrated at the new textbook and new curriculum, but that she fears that if professors refuse to teach the course, the entire discipline will suffer. Her biggest fear is that freshman students will not have the option to take Introduction to Sociology as a core course, cutting off the discipline from a pipeline of interested students.
“Anyone can write their own textbook that complies with the law,” said Carr. “For now these are the only materials that are approved. What’s important to see is the big picture — if we refuse to teach with these materials, then we are canceling ourselves by choice.”
