Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Education to stop accrediting agencies from having power over the state’s colleges and universities in his ongoing war against “woke” ideology.
The popular Republican governor and 2024 presidential candidate has built a reputation as a culture warrior in his fight against Disney and his proclamation that Florida is where “woke goes to die.”
DeSantis contends the current accrediting agency over Florida is trying to block his attempts to increase transparency and accountability and eliminate “destructive” political ideologies on campus that stifle free speech and oppose the canons of Western civilization.
“I don’t think the purpose of universities is to impose an ideological agenda,” DeSantis said of the recent politicization of education. “There should be freedom of discussion, freedom of speech, and there shouldn’t be an imposition of an orthodoxy.”
Moody said during the press conference that colleges and universities have been held “hostage” for far too long by accreditors.
“Thanks to the fearless leadership of Gov. DeSantis, we are fighting to take back our public postsecondary education system from unelected private organizations that have no accountability or oversight,” she said.
The lawsuit, which named Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and other U.S. Education Department officials, was filed in the Southern District of Florida Fort Lauderdale Division. It argues that the current scheme is unconstitutional because it gives unelected academics unchecked power over public institutions.
DeSantis said “accrediting cartels” shouldn’t have the power to lock students out of federal loans and grants—something that would happen without accreditation.
Accrediting agencies controlling Florida colleges and universities were able to control their operations by threatening to withhold accreditation if an institution didn’t adhere to the ideological agenda promoted by its accreditor, according to a DeSantis press release.
State law requires more than half of Florida’s public colleges and universities to change accreditors in the next two years.
The DeSantis camp complained that education officials in Washington responded to this legislation with three “guidance documents” expressly aimed at Florida but never addressed the request to change accreditors.
“Their ability to do so is substantially burdened, if not entirely prevented, by the Biden administration’s abuse of the current accreditation scheme,” according to a DeSantis press release.
The tug-of-war between the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS)— which accredits universities in red states such as Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina—and DeSantis has been building over the past year.
DeSantis signed legislation in 2022 requiring secondary educational institutions to seek accreditation from different accreditors in consecutive accreditation cycles.
This spring, DeSantis signed legislation that would defund so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs at colleges, calling it a “scam” that is nothing more than political indoctrination.
Florida’s stance on DEI goes directly against SACS, which “supports and encourages the leadership role of its institutions in promoting and sustaining diversity, equity, and inclusion in all areas of higher education.”
The ideal of equity aspires to engineer equal outcomes for all, in contrast to equality, which espouses equal access to opportunities for each individual.
DeSantis said DEI serves as a self-perpetuating vehicle to enforce critical race theory (CRT) for hiring or promotions within universities.
Critics have described CRT as a neo-Marxist ideology built on class conflict that divides people into oppressors and victims based on race or gender. Like Marxism, CRT’s goal is the equality of results.
Proponents of CRT and DEI say they are necessary to even the playing field for minorities who have been oppressed and discriminated against in the past, even though they are now protected from discrimination and oppression by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.
DeSantis’s office began a new campaign to remove “woke” from the state’s universities and colleges on Dec. 28, 2022.
The students described difficulties in seeking an education in what they described as an anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American culture.
