launched a nationwide assessment to find out if certain university courses are biased.
Florida state institutions have been asked to check for “antisemitism or anti-Israeli partiality” in their programs.
Friday, the state school system’s president and vice president sent the instructions to the president of the 12 public colleges.
In response to an investigation, the board of governors responded to the investigation by sending an email to The College Fix on Wednesday. In the internet, Rodrigues outlined the specifics of the review approach.
Rodrigues stated that” we are going to do a phrase search on program descriptions and course syllabi.” ” Any program that contains the following keywords: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, or Jews may be flagged for overview… This evaluation should symbol all instances of either hatred or anti-Israeli discrimination identified and report that details to my office”.
The success of this is what is most crucial. So, my staff will collaborate with your university staff to determine the programs that need to be reviewed, according to Rodrigues.
The Chronicle of Higher Education initially received a directive from Vice Chancellor Emily Sikes to school officials to request that university committees review course material and report any potential bias to the board of governors before the fall semester.
Additionally, universities must establish a system to verify that each faculty member checks their courses for bias. According to Sun Sentinel, universities are then required to notify the state university system of any findings.
Questions viewed as biased against Israel have been reported in Florida universities. According to Coral Springs Talk, a professor at Florida International University found that Jewish students in the class had anti-Israel content in an online quiz created in June.
One of the questions read,” When Israelis practice terrorism, they often refer to it as]blank ]”, with multiple-choice answers including “proactive attacks” and “terrorist defensive strategy”.
In response to the controversy, dean of FIU’s Steven J. Shlomi Dinar, a professor at the Green School of International and Public Affairs, collaborated with academic leaders to create new course material.
” As an immediate remedy, the problematic material has been removed from the current class”, Dinar said, according to Coral Springs Talk. ” Moving forward, I am taking steps to ensure that across all departments in the college, instructors carefully review all course materials and assignments, including test bank questions, to ensure the highest academic standards are maintained in our classes”.
Not just FIU, which has recently been accused of antisemitism, is. Northwestern, Harvard, Columbia, the Philadelphia School District, and others also have faced complaints of bias, as previously reported by The College Fix.
MORE: 10 of the most extreme acts of campus antisemitism
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