BRADENTON — Gov. Ron DeSantis expanded his drive to steer Florida’s public colleges and universities to the political right Tuesday, outlining plans to dismantle campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs and making it easier for his mostly hand-picked boards of trustees to hire and fire tenured professors.
DeSantis rolled out his higher-education proposals just miles from New College of Florida, a liberal-leaning public honors college that he has targeted for change after appointing a roster of conservative trustees.
The new board is set to meet Tuesday for the first time. But it was evident that DeSantis’ appearance at the nearby State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota was intended to reaffirm his drive to overhaul the state’s higher education system.
“There are some people that think you have a right to have some taxpayer institutions with no accountability. That they should just be able to do whatever they want,” DeSantis said. “That is not happening in the state of Florida.”
Without offering specifics, DeSantis accused colleges and universities of advancing programs based on liberal politics and requiring that staff, students and initiatives meet an “ideological litmus test.”
Vows to change atmosphere
The Republican governor, a Yale and Harvard graduate widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination next year, vowed to change the atmosphere which he said exists.
“The more we’re centering higher education on the integrity of the academics, excellence, pursuit of truth, teaching kids to think for themselves and not try to impose an orthodoxy, you are going to see people flooding into these institutions,” DeSantis said. “Academia, writ large, across the country has really lost its way.”
Among those joining DeSantis at the event was Chris Rufo, the conservative activist who has stirred up the right’s attack on critical race theory.
DeSantis appointed Rufo to the New College board of trustees and had turned to the Fox News favorite for counsel in creating last year’s “Stop Woke Act,” which restricts discussion of race, gender and other topics in university classrooms and in the workplace.
The measure has been blocked by federal courts, with one judge terming it “positively dystopian.” ……..