Education leaders in Florida have removed sociology as a graduation component at state universities in Ron DeSantis’s latest attack on what the Republican governor sees as the “woke” indoctrination of students.

The move on Thursday by a majority of DeSantis’s hand-picked university board of governors effectively relegates the stand-alone Introduction to Sociology course to a makeweight elective instead of a core component subject that has been a popular choice for generations of students.

The ruling takes effect at Florida’s 12 state-governed universities in August. They will still be able to offer the course, but are prohibited from including it as a required general education class that fulfils a graduation obligation.

“Sociology as a discipline is now social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy,” the university system’s chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, told the board meeting in Pensacola, reported by the Miami Herald.

The board elected Rodrigues, a close political ally of DeSantis, as chancellor in September 2022. He has been credited with smoothing the passage of much of the governor’s “anti-woke” agenda in higher education.

In 2024, the board replaced a more advanced course, Principles of Sociology, with one on history as an approved graduation core course.

More widely, DeSantis has driven an ideological makeover in state-run universities and colleges that has outlawed classes and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) classes. The governor also instigated what critics called a “hostile takeover” at the New College of Florida, formerly a liberal arts school, by removing the previous board of governors and installing rightwing allies.

In January 2025, DeSantis conducted a similar operation at Pensacola’s University of West Florida. One of his board appointees was Scott Yenor, an extremist and controversial professor of political science who once called career-oriented women “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome”. Yenor resigned last year.

The rebrandings have not always run smoothly. New College was heavily criticized in 2024 when a local newspaper exposed its dumping of thousands of books, including a total clear-out of its gender and diversity section that some Democrats likened to Nazi-era book burnings.

The same year, the Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper of the University of Florida, exposed the free-spending habits of Ben Sasse, the Republican hard-right former Nebraska senator who resigned as president of the University of Florida after a turbulent 17-month tenure.

Sasse, DeSantis’s hand-picked choice and the only finalist for the job in 2022, fired numerous staff and abolished UF’s DEI program, at the same time as blowing through $17.3m in his first year of office and providing lucrative jobs for former congressional staff and Republican cronies, the newspaper alleged. Sasse denied the claims.

Miami Herald reported that Thursday’s removal of the sociology course came as a surprise, and was not listed on the meeting’s agenda. It said Rodrigues cited faculty resistance to a newly approved, state-designed sociology curriculum and textbook, with professors claiming it stripped core concepts and misrepresented the discipline.

Kimberly Dunn, an accounting professor at Florida Atlantic University, was one of two board members who voted against dropping the course, according to the Herald. “The removal may be premature and broader than necessary,” she said.

“Sociology contributes directly to the competencies we consistently emphasize. These are skills our graduates need across every sector.”

The Guardian has contacted Rodrigues for comment.