This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 9th,

2003. I'm Caleb Brown.

Florida, Governor Ron Desantis has made big moves in both public K-12 and higher ed institutions banning some curriculum,

firing the head of a university, and otherwise attempting a crackdown on so-called woke education.

He's drawn comparisons to authoritarian leaders in Europe seizing

board direct control of universities. Cato's Neil McCluskey argues this is the nature of

having institutions owned by the public.

At some point, those institutions will be directed by the political purposes of the government

itself.

Before we started recording you, you sort of characterize this as in Florida, Ron

Desantis attempting to in a sense reign in the folks who've had the run of the

place with regard to public educational institutions in the state of Florida.

But to the extent that these institutions aren't going anywhere, and I think there's good reason to believe

that they're not going anywhere. How do you evaluate what he has done? That is to

say, banning certain curriculum from K-12 classrooms and wholesale just replacing the president of at least

one university.

So ideally, well, let me give the real ideal. The real ideal is that government doesn't run schools.

So you have a shared root problem in K-12 education and higher education in that government

establishes and runs K-12 schools and government establishes and can run public colleges and universities.

Historically we've had a bit of a difference.

There typically hasn't been a major argument saying that the public working through their elected officials

should not have influence and really control over what happens in K through 12

...