Florida’s Gov. DeSantis Declares Financial War on ‘Woke’ Universities in State

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threw down the gauntlet on Jan. 31 against repairing higher education and vowed to eliminate all funding for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) statewide.

Public universities shouldn’t be using taxpayer money to offer degrees in “zombie” studies, but should embrace academic excellence and truth and allow students to think for themselves, DeSantis said.

“Our institutions will graduate students with degrees that will actually be useful,” he said. “We will eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in Florida. It will wither on the vine.”

DeSantis offered a number of legislative proposals to purge political ideologies from universities, including allowing university presidents and the university board of trustees to conduct post-term reviews of professors if necessary.

He also wants to transfer the hiring powers ceded to the faculty to the university president.

DeSantis says he wants to ban campus hiring committees from using DEI oaths, which certify candidates to adhere to ideologies. One is the Critical Race Theory – a Marxist ideology that divides people into oppressors and victims based on race or gender.

Currently, candidates who reject the ideology of social justice and embrace belief in equality and a color-blind society are deducted points during the hiring process to weed out those who disagree, he said.

DeSantis said DEI bureaucracies have become part of the administration within universities that enforce a political agenda and ideologies such as implicit biases that encompass the idea that America is systemically racist.

“These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom and they are actually a waste of resources,” he said.

DeSantis said he rejects the dominant view in academia across the country that higher education should impose ideological conformity to provoke political activism.

He suggested that higher education curricula should include a course on the history and philosophy of Western civilization.

The governor said DEI bureaucracies had “metastasized,” adding that they mandate training in political ideology. He pointed out that the state’s Stop Woke Act, passed last year, gives employees, particularly from private companies, the right to opt out of CRT or DEI training.

He commended the presidents of the Florida College System (FCS) who on January 18 publicly supported his vision of a higher education free from indoctrination and open to truth and intellectual freedom. FCS consists of community colleges and state colleges.

The Stop Woke Act is currently being challenged in court, but DeSantis said he is confident the law will survive.

The law addresses historical injustices related to race or gender that may have created a false sense of guilt among those not to blame, like the idea of systemic racism.

It prohibits “indoctrination” practices in education or the workplace that knowingly or unknowingly label people as inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive because of their race, gender, or national origin.

The law allows the board of governors of the state university system to require tenured professors to undergo a “comprehensive post-tenure” review every five years.

DeSantis’ announcement is his latest attack on the “woke” ideology he says is rampant on college campuses in Florida and elsewhere.

The governor has also mandated that public universities report their spending on CRT and DEI programs. He praised a recent decision by community colleges to defund all DEI programs to their campuses as well.

DeSantis’ Dec. 28 order came four days after The Epoch Times documented the experiences of six conservative students attending a major Florida university.

They described difficulties in finding an education in a culture they described as anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American.

At the DeSantis press conference, a conservative University of Florida student described being attacked for her beliefs, echoing what students told The Epoch Times.

“My university has fallen prey to the awakened ideal taught by leftist professors in the classroom,” said Emily Sturge, a sophomore at UF.

She said professors told her America was the most racist nation and women had no rights. She said professors are lecturing on the importance of the Covid vaccine rather than teaching content.

Sturge said she received an F for writing a paper on how empowering it is for women to get their concealed carry licenses. But when she wrote tactically about the virtues of Marxism, she got an A.

Sturge said she had “a target on her back” for being a pro-American Christian and had been called “every name in the book” by fellow students.

In January, DeSantis dealt another blow to the “awakened” culture in the college system by appointing six conservatives to the board of trustees of the failed New College.

These included Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute grantee who has used CRT in schools nationwide.

Rufo, also speaking at the press conference, spoke about how the left manipulated public perception using terms like DEI, which sounds great on the surface but is a dark concept.

“It’s an Orwellian abuse of language, manipulating you to feel beneath the surface that this is a good thing. It’s something completely different,” he said.

Rufo said DEI is the same as CRT, which divides the world into oppressors and oppressed. Professors train students, faculty, and staff that certain people are oppressors and others are oppressed.

He said the full New College board would meet after the press conference. He and Trustee Eddie Speir, who toured the New College last week, were met with opposition from students and faculty.

Speir wrote in a Jan. 29 blog post that he would fire all faculty staff and administration and immediately rehire those who fit “the new ‘financial and business model’.”

Rufo wrote in a Jan. 12 City Journal article that he hopes to build a classic curriculum at New College that would involve abolishing the DEI and replacing it with the principles of “equality, merit and color blindness.”

Chancellor Ray Rodriguez, Chancellor of the State University System of Florida, commented at the press conference that Florida would decline to require DEI pledges.

He said the university systems in California and Illinois pioneered this requirement, which is incorrect.

“It’s a political litmus test of ideology, so they only invite those who fit the dominant ideology to this campus,” he said.