The office of Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has officially requested information regarding diversity expenditures from the universities of the state.
A memo slated to head to Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz and Florida State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, which was officially sent on the 28th of December and subsequently highlighted on social media this past Wednesday by DeSantis Press Secretary Bryan Griffin, explained to officials that they would be required to gather data regarding the various diversity initiatives in place throughout the state’s higher education system as the Florida legislature starts to look into budget proposals.
“It is important that we have a full understanding of the operational expenses of state institutions,” stated the memo. “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.”
For each of these initiatives, administrators for the university were ordered to include a short description of the program, the total number of staff positions utilized by the program, the total amount of funding utilized in support of the program, and the portion of the funding that was made possible by taxpayer funding.
A number of reports have stated that the massive influx of capital into the nascent diversity sector, which stole the attention of the public in the wake of the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. A number of public universities across Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, and Illinois utilized diversity officials who managed to pocket salaries from $329,000 to $430,000, as explained via a report from Fox News, while an analysis from Heritage Foundation discovered that colleges on average hire a total of three diversity staffers for each 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,” concluded the conservative think tank. “Stakeholders should demand evidence about whether DEI resources are necessary and effective for achieving appropriate goals.”
In the wake of securing his second term of Governor of the Sunshine State with a landslide reelection victory, DeSantis has set up a large number of reforms in an effort to fight the spread of Critical Race Theory. He chose to sign Senate Bill 1108 and House Bill 233 into law just two years ago; with first piece of legislation “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 second “requires state colleges and universities to conduct annual assessments of the viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom at their institutions.”
