Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced a series of proposals in relation to higher education in the Sunshine State, including eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) bureaucracies, as part of the administration’s desire to bring more accountability to the system.
Speaking at a press conference in Bradenton, Florida, DeSantis said that any student who goes to a Florida university will go through “certain core requirements” focused on “giving them the foundation so that they can think for themselves.”
“If you look around the country — and Florida is not immune to this — there’s really a debate going on about what is the purpose of higher education, particularly publicly funded higher education systems,” he said.
“And I think you have the dominant view, which I think is not the right view, but the dominant view is the use of higher education under this view is to impose ideological conformity to try to provoke political activism, and that’s what a university should be, that’s not what we believe is appropriate in the state of Florida,” he continued, detailing his proposals.
The core curriculum, he continued, must be grounded in “actual history, the actual philosophy that is shaped Western civilization” — not revisionist woke nonsense pushed by the far-left.
“Our institutions will be graduating students, I think with degrees that are going to be meaningful,” he said.
“We don’t want students to go through at taxpayer expense and graduate with a degree in zombie studies and so this is going to make a difference,” the governor said before announcing that his administration will “eliminate all the AI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida.”
“No funding and that will wither on the vine, and I think that that’s very important because it really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter,” he said, emphasizing that the higher education system must “focus on promoting academic excellence” and “the pursuit of truth and to give students the foundation so that they can think for themselves now.”
This proposal builds on the DeSantis administration’s theme of education, not indoctrination, which he pushed heavily during his first term in office:
WATCH the press conference below:
The governor’s recent proposals follow the DeSantis administration demanding every state university system to provide a report on expenditures related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and CRT:
This month, the Florida College System presidents also announced that they will not support CRT or other “diversity”-related activities on campuses and will instead focus on ensuring that “all initiatives, instruction, and activities do not promote any ideology that suppresses intellectual and academic freedom, freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and the pursuit of truth in teaching and learning.”