Ron DeSantis Asks Florida University and College Systems to Report Expenditures ‘Related to DEI Programs and Critical Race Theory’
“as you know, UNF’s timely compliance is not optional”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is asking colleges and university systems in Florida to detail expenses related to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and critical race theory.
Some academics in the state are clutching their pearls over this.
MEMO: All state university & college systems in Florida have been required to report expenditures and resources utilized for campus activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and critical race theory. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/E4Z4zLuJgC
— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) January 4, 2023
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
A Florida University Is Quickly Assembling a List of Courses on Diversity. Why? DeSantis Asked.
At least one Florida university has been asked to report its “expenditure of state resources” on programs and courses related to critical race theory and to diversity, equity, and inclusion, at the behest of Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, according to an email obtained by The Chronicle. The move is likely to heighten fears among advocates of academic freedom in the state who worry that DeSantis is bent on curtailing professors’ speech in the classroom.
On December 29, Karen S. Cousins, the associate vice president of strategy and implementation in the provost’s office at the University of North Florida, emailed UNF deans with the subject line: “URGENT / New requirement from the Governor.” That same day, Cousins wrote, Moez Limayem, UNF’s president, had received an email from Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida. Rodrigues’s email included a memo from DeSantis’s executive office along with an “activity survey form.”
Cousins seemed to quote from the memo, writing that it is “a request for information ‘regarding the expenditure of state resources on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory within our state colleges and universities.’
The request pertains to all programs and initiatives, including ‘academic instruction.’”
Cousins requested that the deans communicate with their associate deans and department chairs to identify the courses within their colleges that “contain DEI and/or CRT components.” She instructed them to include the course name and number, the number of credit hours, and the instructor of record and that person’s rank, along with other information. (She noted that the instructor’s name would not be included on the survey form.)
“We’re truly sorry to share this with you during Winter Break,” Cousins wrote. “However, as you know, UNF’s timely compliance is not optional.” UNF’s deadline to provide this information to the chancellor is January 10, she wrote.
This is the line that jumped out at me:
The move is likely to heighten fears among advocates of academic freedom in the state who worry that DeSantis is bent on curtailing professors’ speech in the classroom.
Oh. Now they care about free speech in the classroom?
This Florida rep. has her pronouns in her Twitter bio:
Despite HB7's implementation on higher ed being temporarily stopped by the courts, the Governor's efforts to censor higher ed & attack institutions of learning has continued, this time w/a memo targeting DEI programs.
Everyone should be alarmed by this, regardless of party. pic.twitter.com/k6zDRgJ54o
— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) January 4, 2023
DeSantis recently said that Florida is where ‘woke goes to die’ and apparently, he means it.
Good for him.
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The Daily report on Gov Don DeSantis
One would think someone was embedded in the “campaign “
Please stop. This is a conservative site. He’s one of the leading conservative state governors. He’s one of the few actually doing something to fight the Marxist creep.
I’d venture to guess that the vast majority of readers here are very interested in keeping up with what the good governor is doing.
I’m
Sorry I hurt your feelings Paul
I’d like a daily report on President Trump
Let’s have both, with the same support and passion
But it’s not
My blog
Feel free to pass on by my comments
Hurt my feeling? lol, you’re incapable of hurting my feeling because I just don’t care that much about anything you or other loons have to say.
Name calling, always the “tell” when you got nothing
OK, I’ll give you a report on Trump. He spent the day at Mar a Lago. Because that’s what he does most of the time. He only leaves to hold the occasional rally… and who knows when the next one of those is scheduled?
Tomorrow: See above.
Saturday: See above.
What has he actually DONE since 2020?
Really? You missed ALL the campaigning for all his candidates, fund raisers, and rally’s? Like ALL of them?
Dang , keep ups, he’s got more energy that 20 of you, all while running several businesses and dodging knifes and bullets from the FBI, DOJ, what it it 2600 national
Security bureaus, I lose track, RINOs Jan 6 commission
And putting his house in order after the FBI went through his wife’s lingerie, before giving one of the dresses to Mrs DeSantis, you saw that right?
Hilarious, she’s beautiful but not very original.
But handlers gunna handle.
He’s been a bit busy
What have you done?
What’s he supposed to do? His job was stolen from him after he won a 2nd term in the 2020 election. But he’s keeping busy. I don’t agree with everything he does and I think he’s too old to run again — those years can’t be rolled back on the age counter — but he’s certainly useful.
gonzo,
DeSantis is a Gov, he holds office. The news and reporting here and elsewhere are about the things he does, as a sitting Gov, to shape policy in his State and how those actions influence policy discussions Nationally.
As fascinating as DJT is he doesn’t hold office. Until the campaign season begins in earnest Trump isn’t newsworthy in the same way that sitting Gov is. Especially so for a Gov who is a potential future Presidential candidate.
I get that, I know that, but you’d be blind if you didn’t see what’s going on here
Gonzotx, (1) explain your nickname, are you gonzo in Texas? (2) what’s going on here? We like DeSantis. This is no secret.
I know you don’t like this guy G BUUUUUUUUT has he rolled over on any important conservative issues (like LGBT) that other so called conservative governors have rolled over on??
People like deathsantis because he is consistent and isn’t acting like a paid for politician.
He will, he will not disappoint his money men if he every wins the prize…
It’s a beautiful plan,
Really and it’s being executed brilliantly
And I was once a firm supporter of DeSantis, till he became disloyal and to
Me, dishonest , right before the FBI’s circus At President Trumps house
Can’t handle that in anyone
You seem to think he owes ‘loyalty’? Why?
Oh you wanted him to protect Trump, so you prefer Trump. That’s fine. But how is a governor supposed to react when told that the federal government is searching for highly classified stolen documents, or whatever story he was given? I don’t see how he could legally intervene. He wasn’t ready to secede from the US, and it would have failed if he tried.
Dang, didn’t mean to upvote you there, I meant to downvote you.
There I fixed it for you
The best campaign is what Ron DeSantis does which is actual effective governance.
I hope Ron DeSantis keeps dropping these, he is our best man right now.
I agree. I think it would be nice to know where our tax money is going, whether for education or for political correctness.
First, let’s take care of this “academic freedom” concept.
Every college instructor is protected by the First Amendment clause as any other citizen is. Students and faculty alike are free to utter any sort of profanity, pornography, or superstition without fear of governmental prosecution or censorship. This is simply a civil right that applies everywhere. “Congress shall make no law [. . .] abridging the freedom of speech.”
However, on college campuses there is no tolerance for unorthodox political speech, that is to say any political arguments from right of center or any language that offends current so-called “anti-racist” or feminist sensibilities. Recall the extortion of colleges during the spate of riot-provoking engagements by Shapiro, Yannopoulis, Peterson, and others who express right/Libertarian/conservative opinions, or the hysterical demonstrations demanding the expulsion from campus any speakers/lecturers whose opinions deviate from the neo-Marxist worldview. This is not news. Unfortunately, neither is it a violation of anyone’s First Amendment rights.
The real meaning of “academic” freedom, however, is the latitude granted by a college to tenured faculty to formally study and write about any topic that arouses their intellectual curiosity, excusing teaching duties to accommodate the projects, which must be approved by both their respective departments and the college. Professors frequently apply their research to courses they teach, from individual topics to entire textbooks. This includes “critical studies” and its applications. I refer you to the heroic work being done by James Lindsay at “New Discourses” for the details on critical studies. We already get quite a bit of critique from Chris Rufo here at “Legal Insurrection,” but Lindsay’s critique is crucial for understanding the intellectual pedigree of the neo-Marxist force that’s tearing us apart socially.
From Lindsay you will learn that critical studies is not merely theoretical or “academic.” It has a “praxis” to go along with the theory, a social activism component, the application of “criticism” to identify social injustices that emerge within the arcane hierarchies of “oppression” that can’t be explained here in a brief comment. There is an explicit or implied contract to actively work to end such “injustices” once they are identified. Also, the concepts of critical studies are taken up by college graduates and applied in workplaces everywhere, most notoriously in HR departments that apply the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity criteria.
So DeSantis is wanting colleges to essentially purge their critical studies courses and any courses that are informed by neo-Marxist social critique. He can strong-arm colleges into doing this by making state funding contingent on their removal. I don’t object to this at all, but get ready for the usual accusations of “Fascism” and “censorship.”
But it is a Herculean task since so many, if not all, academic disciplines are now “informed” by critical studies, from sociology to the so-called “hard sciences” once believed to be immune from neo-Marxist influence, and the resistance will be great, loud, and ugly.
The real long-term solution is to create academies not infected with the critical social justice virus, an alternative network of colleges that return to the pursuit of knowledge as central to their mission and that reject neo-Marxist social justice activism’s destructive anti-social mind poison.
The problem is that while “praxis” might be called for in the academic field of critical studies, when “praxis” is actually done, it is no longer academic study. It should not retain academic protections as it’s applied in academic administration and the wider world.
The purpose of the academy is to provide education and ideas for our society. But once these ideas are hatched, they have to compete for acceptance in the normal way. They are certainly subject to normal accounting and management controls, as DeSantis is applying now.
The resistance of these jerks to following the rules of our society is indeed ugly. Good, do it harder. I want them to feel pain. I want us to enjoy their pain. They’ve gotten away with far too much for far too long, and we should apply the long arm of the law to them, in ways they expect and ways they don’t expect. They’re screaming. I want them to scream louder!
How dare they think they get to slide their stuff into our society without our consent? Now it’s time for backlash, within the law of course.
If someone wants to start a new academy, that’s fine. It could be very expensive, and if you hire the wrong people, or even think you’re hiring the right ones, it could still flip. UT Austin recently had some sort of a conservative honors program flip because of outside academic pressures, from the wider university. But that’s a state funded university. They have all the money.
First, start de-funding the bad actors. Those campuses are irreplaceable, we don’t want to pay to build new, take back what we’ve got. And if they’re underfunded for a while, it could force needed efficiencies. Learning should be cheaper now for able students, with internet and AI. If it’s more expensive trying to bring along incapable students, that’s an expenditure I don’t support. Everyone can learn to do something useful, but some of those things aren’t academic.
Oh the irony of DEI supporters trying to reframe this issue as academic freedom, when they are the ones trying to enforce ideological purity. Their hypocrisy knows no depths.
It’s about time somebody applied generally accepted accounting principles to our colleges. We have spent decades on a positive feedback mechanism, which has resulted in gross inflation and corruption, with relatively little higher education.
Keep the pressure on them Ron, you’re doing good work!
Yes, DIE and Critical Racists’ Theory established under class-disordered religions. Lose your ethical religion, your politically congruent (“=”) constructs, lower your Rainbow/albinophobic banners. #HateLovesAbortion.
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one.
I am a Floridian and a firm supporter of our Governor, Ron DeSantis. I voted for DeSantis twice. I also voted for Trump twice. But that’s not my point.
We who reside in Florida like DeSantis not because of what he says but because of the things he does to protect our children, keep us safe, preserve our individual freedom and rights and his taking it to the woke corporations, woke universities and the federal government’s overreach are added bonuses.
White, Black, Asian, Latino, Haitian, native indigenous people voted in droves for him. And yes even the European dual citizens with homes in Florida love Gov DeSantis.
Why? Because he works hard to make our lives better and keeps us safe..
I am hoping he will do that for the nation soon.
IMO, what’s coming is the DeSantis professional version of what the Idaho Legislature did to Boise State a couple of years ago.
The Legislature hit Boise State’s budget by the targeted amount of certain CRT/DEI programs (about $1.5 million, if memory serves). Now, those cuts were more of a pinprick warning rather than the punitive meataxe some GOP legislators were wanting to wield, but the message was clear: knock it off or we’ll start cutting your funding to the bone . . . if not further.
And guess what? Boise State seems to have gotten the message, so much so that the usual leftist outlets are now crying about the effects on Idaho legislative budgetary oversight of state colleges on “academic freedom.”
I read DeSantis’ move as particularly ruthless: he’s making the university wokesters dig their own graves before they are financially executed. All these folks who love to virtue signal about how proud they are about all their wunnerful DEI or CRT activities are now required to put it on paper, knowing full well that it is about to be used as Exhibit A on how much their appropriations should be cut.
Like I said, ruthless. I love it.
Exhibit A for why we need to stop discussing eliminating government and discuss actually using it.
There’s plenty of government to eliminate. The part that’s worth saving isn’t that expensive but requires the right people to implement it.
That’s great news! There is precedent!
DIE and so-called “anti-racist” (neo-racist) policies implemented in administrative areas are easy to target, but if there is no effort to remove critical studies courses to go along with the purge of HR and Equity bureaucrats, the pipeline of True Believers into the national workforce will continue.
The issue is with the required courses. Their “holy grail” is to get their stuff into the core required curriculum, and they’ve succeeded a bit but not irretrievably. A lot of it isn’t formalized, meaning it’s relatively easy to steer people away from it by sanctioning it.
There are some thing you can’t teach at a university. One of them is how to build a nuclear bomb. Physics departments have gotten away from it. Certainly one learns related concepts, but not all of the how-to. Similarly we can defang CRT by saying vaguely related stuff can be taught, but it cannot be in required courses because encourages racial discrimination.
“Structural racism” is a hypothesis that can be discussed, but it has to go both ways, all ways. not just one way. Every group (not just every protected class) gets to show how society is stacked against them, and nobody gets to say they’re offended by the speech of the others to shut them down. Somehow I don’t think the left is willing to have the discussion on these terms.
They’ll surely lie and cover stuff up. They’ve done that all along, saying they’re providing classical education with “nuance” and not admitting they’ve redefined “nuance” to mean the invasion of critical theory concepts into everything. It’s so obvious when one looks at the documents, so they hide the documents and lie.
I hope DeSantis has set traps and serious penalties (firing, prosecution if warranted) for lies in this matter. Rooting this stuff out will take energy and a willingness to cut.
As if they aren’t going to lie about it.