The Harvard of the Unwoke

Would calls for the genocide of Jews be a violation of the University of Florida’s bullying and harassment policy?

“Yes,” says Ben Sasse, UF’s president.

Yet when I follow up by raising the issue of free speech, he acknowledges the answer isn’t so simple. Regarding the First Amendment, he says, “I’m a pretty libertarian zealot.” He emphasizes that the Constitution “draws a deep, deep line at speech and action,” that “threats are the front edge of action,” and that “orchestrated plans, or getting to a definable way of targeting specific people, is when speech ceases to be deliberation.”

Which isn’t that different from Ms. Gay’s testimony last month: “We are deeply committed to free expression. But when speech crosses over into conduct that violates our policies—policies against bullying, harassment, intimidation—we do take action.”

Does that mean we have a meeting of the minds between Florida’s president and his erstwhile Harvard counterpart? Not quite. Mr. Sasse calls Ms. Gay’s appeal to free speech “laughable” in light of “the culture of trigger warnings and safe spaces and everything else that they’ve built on top of their victimization grid that defines the worldview of Harvard bureaucrats of late.” Mr. Sasse’s view is that toleration of antisemitic expression is a price worth paying for free speech. Ms. Gay expects us to pay it and get nothing in return.

“The culture of ideological conformity and monoculture at those schools is unhealthy not just for them, but for the nation at large,” Mr. Sasse says. “Some people from the right . . . say, ‘Let’s just let it all burn,’ That is not a healthy instinct.”

Fair enough, but what’s the alternative? The University of Florida may be ideally positioned to become the Harvard of the Unwoke. It is the flagship public institution in a state whose governor and Legislature have declared war on identity politics. There are no racial preferences in admissions, thanks to a 1999 executive order by the underappreciated then-Gov. Jeb Bush. Mr. Sasse himself is a conservative Republican with a scholarly background. He holds a doctorate in history from Yale, and before entering the Senate he taught at the University of Texas and served as president of Midland University in Fremont, Neb.

Of the push for “diversity, equity and inclusion,” he says that “the aspirational best parts of diversity and inclusion, I’m for.” “If you don’t have viewpoint diversity, I don’t know how you ever get to education—you just get indoctrination.” And he believes in “the dignity of every soul,” so “you want people to be included.”

What’s wrong with DEI “is the E,” he says, meaning the embrace of “equity” at the expense of equality. “The fundamental problem is saying that Martin Luther King can’t fit in the new communities of know-it-all ideological-indoctrination bureaucrats that run most universities in the country. . . . MLK doesn’t fit because of his aspirations for a colorblind society.

“Can people have a different view than MLK? Of course.” But “the ideological conformity of mandating that equality of opportunity is wrong and bigoted, it has to be excluded from our discourse—those people are crazy.”

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