Florida is at the “vanguard” of a cultural shift that will move higher education away from divisive diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that have become a “distraction,” and that are a “clear and present danger for America’s future,” according to participants in a roundtable discussion hosted by Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday morning.
The hour-long roundtable highlighted the DeSantis administration’s ongoing efforts to recapture Florida’s education establishment from left-wing activists and ideologues. DeSantis said Florida is bringing accountability back to the state’s colleges and universities, “and I think a lot of states around the country are going to follow us,” he said.
The roundtable, which included nine participants, was stacked with DeSantis allies: the state’s education commissioner, the state’s state university system chancellor, conservative think tankers aligned with the governor, sympathetic board of trustee members, and two conservative university students who say they have faced discrimination for their political beliefs. It started with montage of news clips of university wokeism run amok, accompanied by menacing background music.
There was little dissent on the theme “Exposing the DEI Scam,” as the participants largely agreed with DeSantis that while DEI may sound “very harmless,” it is in practice “using the administrative apparatus of the university to impose an ideological agenda.”
Exposing the DEI Scam pic.twitter.com/xaajJCtNs3
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 13, 2023
DeSantis, who is expected to announce a run for president in the coming months, has been positioning himself as a leader in the conservative war on wokeism.
DeSantis used the roundtable to talk about his efforts to remake New College of Florida in Sarasota into a model of a classical liberal arts college. Earlier this year, DeSantis appointees on the school’s board removed the college’s president and abolished its DEI apparatus.
He also touted proposed legislation in the Florida House and Senate aimed at eliminating discriminatory activities, including prohibitions on DEI pledges in the state’s colleges and universities. Ray Rodrigues, a former Republican state lawmaker who is now the chancellor of Florida’s university system, called the proposed legislation “important.”
“DEI statements are political litmus tests, but they’re political litmus tests with teeth,” Rodrigues said. He said that nearly half of all large universities in the U.S. are now requiring DEI pledges, which are used to determine who gets hired, promoted, and receives tenure.
“Florida is on the vanguard of ending this nonsense and saying in Florida we support free speech, free association, and we’re not going to be a party to these games,” he said.
Rodrigues said Florida’s Board of Governors, a 17-member board that governs the state university system, endorsed diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in 2020 as part of a “well-intentioned and a good-faith effort based on the common definition of those words.” But, he said, DEI “has become a distraction. It is not what was intended, and it must be corrected.”
DeSantis said that DEI pledges are a “filtering mechanism so they can exclude people who may challenge the orthodoxy. It definitely leads to less diverse viewpoints amongst the faculty.”
Scott Yenor, a DeSantis-aligned researcher with the conservative Claremont Institute and a political science professor at Boise State University in Idaho, agreed, and said that DEI initiatives are also used to determine which students are admitted. He said that limits free speech as well.
“Determining who’s in the classroom will determine what they say,” Yenor said. “You can call it free speech, you can say what you want, it’s just that everyone says the same thing.”
Yenor has researched political indoctrination efforts in Idaho, where he has been a controversial figure, and in other states. His most recent research has been in Florida, where he is now working as Claremont’s inaugural senior director of state coalitions.
Yenor said that in the past, campus radicalism tended to come from students, college departments, and professors. But that has changed in recent years, he said.
“The administration has become the driving force for radicalizing universities,” he said. “It used to be a bottom-up problem, but now it’s become a top-down problem.”
He said he found that all of Florida’s universities have strategic plans with DEI ambitions, but the University of Florida in Gainesville “has led the way in DEI in the Florida system.” In 2020, the university’s then-president established an anti-racism task force that led to changes in the school’s hiring plans, soft quotas for admissions, and decisive but subtle curriculum changes.
“We consider this ideology to be a clear and present danger for America’s future, or at least a grave and gathering danger for America’s future,” he said.
Christopher Rufo, a pugilistic conservative filmmaker and activist from the Manhattan Institute whom DeSantis appointed to the New College board in January, participated in Monday’s roundtable virtually. DeSantis asked him to provide some “appalling examples” of DEI initiatives he’s uncovered in his research. Rufo said the University of South Florida has “racially segregated student programs and scholarships.” And he said Florida International University’s social-justice programs have been used to promote left-wing activist groups and to encourage students to advocate for the redistribution of power, in part through violent protests.
“They tell students, bring a bandana to cover your nose and mouth. Download a messaging app that has end-to-end encryption, because they’re training students how to participate in violent protests without getting caught,” Rufo said.
Roger Tovar, vice chair of the FIU board of trustees, told DeSantis that Rufo’s description “has not been the experience that I have encountered at FIU.” That was the closest any member of the roundtable came to disagreement.
“If we have that type of activity going on, we need to explore it,” said Tovar, who added that DEI programs may have been well-intentioned, but they “go off the rail and then they’re not monitored.”
In January, DeSantis’s administration called on all of the state’s universities to report their DEI spending. He said the tally was at least $34 million, but added, “we think its significantly higher than that.” He noted that schools nationwide are spending fortunes on DEI, and argued that the money could be spent more wisely.
“If you look at the amount of money being spent across the country, you could fund huge numbers of scholarships for students,” he said.
DEI “has effectively become a scam, because people are making a lot of money off this,” DeSantis said, adding that DEI has essentially become “an attack on merit, an attack on achievement.” Doing away with standardized tests and measurements of success do a disservice to students, to taxpayers, and to society generally.
“We want people to shoot for the stars,” DeSantis said. “We want people to achieve the best that they can with their God-given talent. But you will be measured and you’ve got to produce.”
Rodrigues, the state university chancellor, vowed that Florida’s universities will be focused on providing the best education possible, not indoctrinating students in left-wing ideology. An education at a Florida university, he said, is “one of the best investments anyone can make in the country.”
DeSantis agreed, saying “there is room to be very optimistic”
“A lot of people are just throwing up their hands and saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do. These universities can just get away with whatever they want,’” he said. “Well, we’re funding these universities as taxpayers. They absolutely should follow the mission that’s in the best interest of our state and our taxpayers. And the way to do that is you have elections, people are in positions of authority have the ability to make appointments, set policy, enact legislation, and that’s what we’re doing.”
“We’re bringing accountability to this,” he said. “It’s going to be good for Florida taxpayers. It’s going to be good for Florida students.”
“Ultimately,” he said, “I think we’re charging a good course.”