Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a roundtable on how socialist ideology has hijacked the benign-sounding Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) departments in universities, costing taxpayers a minimum of $34 million.
The discussion, “Exposing the DEI Scam,” was broadcast on social media Monday to examine problems and possible solutions to eradicate DEI.
“In Florida, we are not going to back down to the woke mob, and we will expose the scams they are trying to push onto students across the country,” said DeSantis. “Florida students will receive an education, not a political indoctrination.”
Roundtable participants included: Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr.; State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues; Christopher Rufo, New College of Florida Board of Trustees; Scott Yenor of the Claremont Institute; Carrie Sheffield from the Independent Women’s Forum; Debra Jenks, Chairwoman of the New College of Florida Board of Trustees; Roger Tovar, Vice Chair of the Florida International University Board of Trustees; and students impacted by DEI initiatives.
DeSantis said that DEI serves as a self-perpetuating vehicle to enforce critical race theory (CRT) for hiring or promotions within universities.
CRT is 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.
The ideology pushes the idea that America is a racist country and must be destroyed and rebuilt on a socialist model of equity for all.
“I think [DEI] has been used in the administrative apparatus of universities to try to impose, not diversity of thought, but to imposed uniformity of thought,” DeSantis said. “And instead of inclusion, the people that dissent from this orthodoxy are actually excluded and marginalized.”
He said universities across the country aggressively use DEI as a hiring tool and force students, staff, and faculty to follow a narrow, radical ideology.
Those on the left, however, maintain that DEI levels the playing field for minorities who have been discriminated against in the past.
In January, the governor asked universities to self-report their spending on DEI programs. He said the $34 million they self-reported was a low figure because the ideology has been embedded into the curriculum and programs in the universities.
The students detailed difficulties in seeking an education in what they described as an anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-American higher education culture.
DeSantis said taxpayer dollars could be used to give students a better education, and that DEI had no place in American institutions of higher learning.
“It’s more something you would expect to see in, like, the CCP,” DeSantis said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
DeSantis said House Bill 999 and Senate Bill 266, which address DEI and CRT, will go before the Florida legislature this week.
He said the bills seek to eliminate DEI and other discriminatory programs and activities at colleges. They also would prohibit soliciting pledges to practice DEI, CRT, or any political viewpoint as a condition of hiring, promotion, or admissions.
Scott Yenor, a political science professor on the panel, said on Monday that he authored a report on Florida universities for the Claremont Institute, a conservative think-tank.
His report found that universities created student activists and incorporated DEI into the hiring process.
The report said that DEI is “anti-American” and wants to ban free speech, equal rights, and meritocracy. The ideology insists these bedrock American principles are in fact part of white supremacy, which must be dismantled in order to free minorities.
Almost every university in Florida has a strategic plan to further DEI, the report said, adding that the ideology is most developed at the University of Florida. The report recommended defunding and dismantling DEI in all Florida universities.
“It is tearing the country apart. It will tear Florida apart,” the report said. “It marks a grave and gathering danger to national unity and state governance.”
Another panel member was Chris Rufo, who brought CRT to the forefront of the public in K-12 schools and now serves as a trustee of New College in Florida. DeSantis appointed Rufo and other conservative trustees to New College and wants the struggling “woke” university to evolve into a thriving classical education university.
Rufo said he did a series of investigative reports on DEI in Florida universities and found that Florida State University created a social justice ally training program that denounces the United States as a matrix of oppression, resulting in racism.
The program categorizes Christians, white students, faculty, and staff as “oppressors.” It encourages the “oppressors” to use their “unearned privilege” against themselves and destroy the system, Rufo said.
He added that DEI pushes hiring based on minority status instead of merit, a “myth that advances racism.”
Darryl Boyer, a black law student at Florida State University who attended the University of North Florida (UNF) as an undergraduate, described how he was pressured to buy into DEI because of his skin color.
“During my time in undergraduate studies at the University of North Florida, I was discriminated against. I was discriminated against based on my political party affiliation,” he said during the meeting.
Boyer, who belonged to a student government organization, said when people found out he was a Republican, the left orchestrated a campaign to try to smear and crush him.
He said many of his peers blocked him on social media and claimed that some in the student organization tried to destroy his character publicly.
Boyer said a black organization on campus went so far as to create a fake social media account displaying his voter registration.
“And they were encouraging other students to go burn down my home,” he told the panel.
Conservative university student Aleyda “Ally” Matamoros, who studies engineering at the University of South Florida, said her professors remind engineering students that one mistake in a design could cost lives.
Yet the universities seem to value minority status over merit, she said.
“It could [result in]the equivalent of a bridge collapse, and it could be a nuclear explosion,” Matamoros said.
Moving away from a merit-based system and focusing on superficial things such as skin color or political beliefs isn’t a good idea, she said, adding that if universities allow unqualified students into programs such as engineering, the results could be disastrous in the future.
“You’re opening up the fact that more of these mistakes can happen. And it could lead to a lot of dangerous things down the road.”
