Self-Censorship and Rule Governed Behavior

Abstract This essay analyzes faculty self-censorship behavior amid political interference in Florida public higher education. Political interference increasingly regulates faculty behavior through statutes, administrative policies, and institutional directives that alter teaching, research, and scholarly discourse. We examine faculty self-censorship as rule-governed behavior using an established taxonomy of rules (Pelaez, 2013; Pelaez & Moreno, 1998) as its primary theoretical framework. The taxonomy articulates five interacting dimensions of rules: (a) explicitness, (b) accuracy (correspondence), (c) complexity, (d) source, and (e) temporal relations. These five dimensions are used to explore how legal and organizational rule systems influence individual faculty behavior under conditions of political intimidation. Recent concepts from higher education and political philosophy scholarship, including anticipatory obedience and repressive legalism, are integrated within this behavior-analytic framework. Florida’s public higher education system and the Eleventh Circuit’s decision affirming the injunction against the Stop WOKE Act serve as a contemporary case study illustrating how ambiguous, incongruent, and externally imposed rules may generate self-censorship despite changing legal contingencies.