Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making an effort to request more information on diversity expenditures from state universities.
A December 28 memo, addressed to Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz and Florida State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, was posted to social media on Wednesday by DeSantis Press Secretary Bryan Griffin.
The memo instructed Diaz and Rodrigues to gather data on diversity initiatives in higher education systems, as the Florida legislature begins to consider budget proposals.
“It is important that we have a full understanding of the operational expenses of state institutions,” the memo said. “This letter is a request for information from the Department of Education and the State University System regarding the expenditure of state resources on programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory within our state colleges and universities.”
University administrators were told to include a brief description of each initiative, the number of staff positions associated with it, the total funding used to support the program and how much of that funding came from taxpayers.
Several reports have noted the significant increase in capital towards the diversity sector, which garnered attention following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. A Fox News report revealed that public universities in Michigan, Maryland, Virginia and Illinois hired diversity officials who were given salaries ranging from $329,000 to $430,000.
An analysis from the Heritage Foundation, meanwhile, found that colleges hire three diversity staffers on average for every 100 tenured faculty.
“State legislatures, boards of higher education, and university trustees should investigate the extent of resources devoted to DEI personnel at the universities they oversee and subsidize,” the conservative think tank concluded. “Stakeholders should demand evidence about whether DEI resources are necessary and effective for achieving appropriate goals.”
DeSantis, who demolished his opposition in a historic landslide reelection, entered his second term as chief executive of the Sunshine State. He has previously enacted a number of reforms meant to combat the spread of Critical Race Theory.
The governor has previously signed Senate Bill 1108 and House Bill 233 into law two years ago. The first of these “requires state college and state university students to take both a civic literacy course and a civic literacy assessment as a graduation requirement,” while the latter “requires state colleges and universities to conduct annual assessments of the viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom at their institutions.”
DeSantis has been a major reformer of primary and secondary education systems, something that has drawn much ire from his liberal critics. Media outlets and large corporations alike railed against certain new parental rights laws, which they claimed discriminated against proponents of the LGBT movement.
Perhaps the most famous of these, the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by many leftist activists, prohibited instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity for students between kindergarten and third grade.
“We must ensure school systems are responsive to parents and to students, not partisan interest groups, and we must ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology,” DeSantis said during his second inaugural address. “We will enact more family-friendly policies to make it easier to raise children and we will defend our children against those who seek to rob them of their innocence.”
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