What could be Florida Gov. DeSantis’ undoing on the national stage? HBCUs.

Within higher education, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education reforms designed to combat what he considers “woke indoctrination” have rightfully generated a great deal of concern about the future of academic freedom in the state. This concern is shared nationally because of how entrenched the anti-critical race theory moral panic has become within social conservatism across the country.

But while the debate over “woke indoctrination” has been covered extensively, attention on the topic ignores a critical question: What happens if DeSantis — a 2024 Republican presidential favorite — accuses a historically Black college or university of woke indoctrination because he doesn’t like how it teaches Black history or ways of looking at society and the law? 

If that happened, the damage would be significant. Indeed, the elephant in the lecture hall looming over DeSantis’ higher education initiatives can be summed up in four letters: HBCU.

Nationally, there are 101 HBCUs; 52 are public institutions, and 49 are private, nonprofit institutions. There are four HBCUs in Florida, including Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (widely known as FAMU), in the state capital, Tallahassee. HBCUs have historically been and remain repositories of knowledge that was denied by the predominantly white colleges and universities that dominate academia. Their graduates include such crucial figures as Martin Luther King Jr., Pauli Murray, Thurgood Marshall and Vice President Kamala Harris.