New Florida legislation seeks to protect the rights of free speech.
Indeed, defending our right to free speech is ingrained in the U.S. Constitution. We have fought wars against foreign enemies and at times against ourselves to define our public spaces. The idea of free speech and the reality of everyday speech, however, are quite different.
For example, Florida legislators passed HB 233 on July 1, which prohibits the State Board of Education from shielding students, staff, and faculty from certain speech and requires the board to conduct an annual assessment on intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity.
It is a law designed to promote free speech. The danger is not the spirit of the law — who could be against free speech — but the manner in how the law is applied to everyday life.
Who will decide how this law will be applied? This is a literal question. For instance, when there are conflicts of interest will we listen to the owner or the customer, to the teacher or the student, to the administrator or the community they administrate? Would you like someone who feels emotional about you, your partner, or your family to have the power of this law?
In 1951, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) published “On the Origins of Totalitarianism.” Having escaped Nazi persecution in the 1930s, this Jewish political theorist explained how political systems become absolutist. Arendt was imprisoned for research on Nazi antisemitism.
Once unchecked, the power to regulate free speech comes to embody the sets of possibilities that we navigate in our everyday life. Florida is not totalitarian. HB 233, however, surveys educators to ensure “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity.” Who ensures this law is applied as intended; who polices the police (both left and right) in its application?
Again, when there are conflicts of interest will we listen to the owner or the customer, to the teacher or the student, to the administrator or the community they administrate?
Enforcing the law could instill fear instead of encouraging free speech and independent thinking. The spirit of the law would be subverted by its implementation. Unfortunately, we cannot escape this paradox, which is essential to free speech. By regulating diverse pedagogies or opinions, for instance critical race or neoliberalism (both right and left) would be unhelpful to our university students. And this is how, Arendt warned, democracies die.
Florida is at a crossroads where Arendt’s ideas still resonate. Democratic systems can be corrupted when elected politicians become overly focused on their political machines.
Arendt suggested that intellectuals have a duty to educate and call out politicians for undermining democracy. Less than a century ago, she experienced the Nazis’ anti-Semitism first hand, beginning with their ideological policing of education.
Were she still alive, Arendt would see disturbing parallels between the potential ways of implementing HB 233 and the Nazi laws used to persecute intellectuals in the 1930s.
If the courts do not judge the law to be unconstitutional (and hence undemocratic), Florida’s legislation to defend free speech would hamper students’ ability to navigate a free marketplace of ideas. Our society is a richly complex and diverse society; we need the ability to think in many boxes to compete in a global marketplace.
Yovanna Pineda is an associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida.
