Floridians are spending millions of dollars supporting state university diversity and equity efforts, according to the self-reported responses to the DeSantis administration’s inquiry asking all state university and college systems to report expenditures used for any and all activities related to Critical Race Theory (CRT), diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The DeSantis administration requested the information in December, requiring responses by January 13, 2023. It contended that it needed to have a “full understanding to the operational expenses of state institutions” specifically in regards to diversity, equity, inclusion, and CRT:
However, DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said the administration suspects that the self-reported information received is “significantly misreported and under-reported.” He provided one specific example of something not wholly reported — the University of Florida’s Youth Gender program, described as a program for “transgender and gender-nonconforming, or TGNC, youth and their families.”
Griffin provided some of the highlights of the wasteful spending, which includes $1.8 million for the Florida A&M University’s Center for Environmental Equity and Justice, $1.1 million per year for the University of South Florida’s Diversity and Inclusion Office, $1 million for the Florida International University’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and over $75,000 for the University of Florida’s Chief Diversity Officer and staff. Griffin added that the University of Central Florida’s Vice President for Diversity Equity and Inclusion and assistant “are paid a combined $445,000 at taxpayer expense, annually.”
Griffin assured that the DeSantis administration is continuing to identify these efforts focusing on agenda rather than education — something DeSantis mentioned at a press conference this week.
“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, explaining that his administration is working to “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 added.