(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) After winning reelection by a staggeringly wide margin on a popular platform that focused on parents rights and making Florida the place “where woke goes to die”, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking dead aim at holding accountable colleges and universities pushing radical leftist agendas.
In a memo to the state’s education commissioner and the chancellor of the state university system, DeSantis’s budget director instructed officials to fork over receipts for public dollars spent on “programs and initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and critical race theory within our state colleges and universities.”
“As the Executive Office of the Governor prepares policy and budget proposals ahead of the 2023 Legislative Session, it is important that we have a full understanding of the operational expenses of state institutions,” read the Dec. 28 memo that DeSantis’s press secretary released Wednesday.
In addition to gaining insight into the “operational expenses of state institutions,” Policy and Budget Director Chris Spencer instructed that “state law requires dutiful attention to curriculum content at our higher education systems.” To that end, Spencer directed each “Florida College System and State University System institution” to submit a DEI and CRT accounting for their programs and initiatives.
The information was to include descriptions of each program or initiative, staffing levels for each of the same, along with the total funding for each and a breakdown of how much of the funding came from taxpayers.
I look forward to all the DEI supervisors and CRT instructors hastily scrubbing their titles off classroom doors and email sigs. “I’m the Assistant Manager of the Vegan Campus Meal Service! Always have been!” “Adjunct Professor of Zombie Studies over here! It’s a real thing!”
— Cecelia (@Ceceliaism) January 4, 2023
Spencer provided a Jan. 13 deadline to receive responses.
“This is how we win,” tweeted Claremont Institute senior fellow Jeremy Carl.
DeSantis’s work to hold corporations and government agencies accountable that use taxpayer dollars to promote far-leftist agendas and programs propelled the governor to a second term, along with coattails that swept conservative majority school boards into power across the state.
DeSantis kept the hits coming during his swearing-in Tuesday, reiterating his commitment to keeping Florida on the right educational track.
“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.
“We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”
