Originally posted at The College Fix, December 11, 2025. Reprinted by permission.

Lawmaker wants to ‘provide increased educational opportunities to American students’

A new Florida bill would limit the number of international students who attend state universities in keeping with broader Republican efforts to prioritize Americans first in taxpayer-funded higher education.

Filed Wednesday, [December 10], House Bill 721 would require Florida’s public universities to limit the “number of enrolled students who are citizens of a foreign country and who are not permanent residents of United States” to no more than 10 percent of their student population, the Tallahassee Democrat reports.

The lead sponsor, Rep. Berny Jacques, R-Seminole, filed the bill, called “Foreign Students Enrolled in Public Postsecondary Educational Institutions” on December 10.

In a news release, Jacques said his legislation will “provide increased educational opportunities to American students.”

“Our colleges and universities should be educating Floridians and Americans first,” he stated. “Florida’s public institutions were designed to serve our public, not citizens of nations abroad.”

Jacques is a Haitian immigrant, according to the newspaper:

While the state currently has a 10 percent cap for non-Florida residents among all of the state’s higher ed institutions, Jacques’ bill would limit individual institutions and would be specific to foreign students.

House bill 721 currently does not have any carve outs for students with forms of documentation such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), asylum status, or trafficking victims (what’s known as “T nonimmigrant status”). It also does not include exceptions for athletics programs.

The new legislation follows a directive from Gov. Ron DeSantis to prioritize the hiring of American workers at the state’s higher education institutions.

In late October, DeSantis directed the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the 12 state universities, to “crack down” on the hiring of foreign workers with H-1B visas, The College Fix reported at the time.

“Universities across the country are importing foreign workers on H-1B visas instead of hiring Americans who are qualified and available to do the job. We will not tolerate H-1B abuse in Florida institutions,” he wrote on X in October.

H-1B visas are given to non-immigrant foreign workers with skills in specialty fields, such as professors and researchers.

Currently, the number employed at public universities in Florida is just under 400, and more than 150 of them are at the University of Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reported in October, based on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.

Micaiah Bilger is an assistant editor at The College Fix. She has more than a decade of experience in print and online journalism, including as a staff writer for LifeNews.com and a newspaper reporter and editor. She holds a B.A. from Susquehanna University, and lives in Pennsylvania with her family.

Originally posted at The College Fix, December 14, 2025. Reprinted by permission.

‘Queer content’ should be incorporated ‘into coursework, discussions and assessments’

A pair of University of Southern California professors recently presented “a bold framework” for incorporating “drag pedagogy” into K-12 teacher trainings.

The abstract for Theodore Burnes’ and John Pascarella’s paper “Centering celebratory drag pedagogies in queer- and genderqueer-evasive K-12 educator preparation programs” asserts that anti-drag sentiment “has negatively impacted school environments.”

But the profs offer a “framework” for how the “centraliz[ation]” and “celebration” of drag pedagogy “in the preparation of aspiring teachers, counselors, and school leaders” can “transform school environments’ relationship to sexuality and gender expression.”

For a mere $56 you can read the entire study from the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education:

According to a USC Rossier School of Education press release, the authors contend drag pedagogy “can promote creativity, belonging and critical self-reflection.”

Burnes, who according to his faculty page “is passionate about creating learning environments for therapists-in-training that infuse a commitment to social justice,” said drag pedagogy “offers educators a joyful and liberating framework for helping students express who they are and understand others with empathy and respect.”

Pascarella, “an expert in teacher education reform, racial equity, and digital media literacy” and chief academic officer for the campus Race and Equity Center, said “future educators are being asked to lead in environments shaped by fear and misinformation,” but drag pedagogy “invites them to lead instead through courage, compassion and joy.”

The study makes use of queer theory-based “autoethnographic methods” (“an autobiographical genre of academic writing that draws on and analyzes or interprets the lived experience of the author and connects researcher insights to self-identity, cultural rules and resources, communication practices, traditions, premises, symbols, rules, shared meanings, emotions, values, and larger social, cultural, and political issues” — see here), resulting in a “five-component” plan for the celebration of drag.

These include “embrac[ing] fluidity and ‘messiness’ in the process of social transformation,” “recogniz[ing] gender and sexuality as inherently political topics that demand reflection and advocacy,” and ditching the notion that gender is binary and replacing it with a “gender continuum.”

In addition, “queer content” should be incorporated “into coursework, discussions and assessments.”

The professors argue that the “embrace” of drag pedagogy can help teachers and other school officials to “create safer and more affirming spaces for all students.”

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