DEI-vestment: University of Florida sheds ‘inclusion’ for innovation

The University of Florida boldly advanced to the front of the academic line last week by closing its DEI office. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is the ideology that that depicts an America locked into a permanent struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors, with African-Americans in the starring role as the forever oppressed and the LGBTQ+ contingent in the lead supporting role.

Perhaps what the University of Florida just did could be called DEI-vestment. It definitely has a financial component. The university says it will now reallocate about $5 million per year that it had previously earmarked for racial shakedowns, i.e. DEI personnel and programs.

Even if the administrative apparatus is gone at the University of Florida, a good many of its supporters and former employees remain.

While the University of Florida deserves high praise for its initiative, it didn’t come up with this reform all on its own. Florida’s State Board of Education voted in January to eliminate DEI programs in 28 state colleges. And in November, the board of governors of the state’s university system called for the same rescission at Florida’s 12 public universities. These bureaucratic bodies acted at the urging of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is an outspoken opponent of the DEI ideology.

Most of these educational institutions have been slow-walking their compliance or looking for ways to evade their legal responsibility to amend their policies. The University of Florida under its president, former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, was simply the first to step up. The immediate result was the elimination of 13 positions, including that of chief diversity officer. That office alone had a budget of more than $400,000 in the 2022-23 academic year.

If I may offer some free advice to Sasse: Dig deeper. Eliminating those 13 positions is a fine start, as is the ending of 15 other DEI-based “administrative appointments.” The translation of that second category is faculty members who get paid extra for their DEI work, which, one suspects, consist mostly of fitting into a valued identity group that the DEI chiefs wanted to be more conspicuous on campus.

But DEI on most campuses is something like the green anacondas and other exotic snakes that have found a home in Florida’s inland waters and proliferated there, throttling the life out of native species. The DEI anaconda, like its reptile brethren, hides in the recesses and isn’t easily done away with. Even if the administrative apparatus is gone at the University of Florida, a good many of its supporters and former employees remain. Will they content themselves with playing by the rules of civil rights law and the university’s legitimate educational mission? Sasse should keep his eyes open.

This story matters because many states have passed laws or taken other steps to uproot DEI programs in their public colleges and universities. Bills have been introduced in 33 states and have become laws in 13 of them. The University of Florida is now the test case of whether such laws can have a meaningful effect in turning back these neo-racist and ideology-driven programs.

Proponents of such reform face not only the careerists who staff the programs but much of the higher education establishment. The mere existence of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education testifies to how well established DEI is, and naturally this association is summoning its allies to the cause.

Defenders of DEI argue that “free speech” is trampled if DEI is defunded. This is especially notable since one of the major activities of DEI offices is the suppression of everyone else’s free speech.