On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced a new bill that would eliminate funding for college programs that promote far-left ideologies such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Fox News reports that, at a press conference in Bradenton, DeSantis said that higher education “must be grounded in actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped western civilization.”
“We are also going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding. And that will wither on the vine,” DeSantis added.
The proposal, according to a statement from DeSantis’ office, “raises the standards of learning and civil discourse of public higher education in Florida” by “prohibiting higher education institutions from using any funding, regardless of source, to support DEI, CRT, and other discriminatory initiatives.” The bill will be taken up by the Republican-controlled state legislature at the start of its next session in March.
DeSantis had previously ordered all state universities to report any and all expenditures and resources that were used to fund programs and activities related to either CRT or DEI. He has also called for his state’s Education Department to “realign” history courses at colleges so that they rely solely on the facts of history, and not on misinterpretations based on modern-day identity politics.
Critical Race Theory is a debunked far-left theory which claims that all White people are automatically racist, and that the United States of America, as a nation founded by White people, is an inherently and “systemically” racist nation. It has argued for complete institutional destruction of the country in order to make up for past issues such as slavery and segregation, as well as indoctrinating White students with perpetual guilt over their skin color.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is the broad term used for efforts to artificially increase diversity among a certain group, either at a school or in a corporation, similar to affirmative action policies. DEI has thus led to more qualified applicants, especially White people, being rejected in favor of minorities purely on the basis of their race.