Governor asks all public universities for spending data on diversity and Critical Race Theory

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Governor Ron DeSantis has sent a request to the presidents of each of Florida’s 12 public universities requesting details on their spending on programs related to diversity, equity, inclusion, or critical race theory. 

“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,” the memo written by Chris Spencer, DeSantis’s director of policy and budget begins. The memo addressed to SUS Chancellor RayRodrigues and Manny Diaz Jr., the state’s education commissioner, the memo adds that “state law requires dutiful attention to curriculum content at our higher-education systems.

The memo refers the universities to an attached blank table with columns for each relevant program or activity held on campus, the number of employees working on each program, those employees’ titles, the program’s overall funding, and the amount of that funding that comes from the state.
 
DeSantis’ memo was sent to the presidents of each university by  Chancellor Rodrigues in a December 29 email, asking that the information returned by January 10.
 
Neither the Governor’s memo nor Rodrigues’s email specified precisely what the information will be used for.
 
DeSantis’ memo comes at a politically tense time in Florida higher ed, as many professors view the governor as a hostile figure who is invested in restricting their ability to teach freely. 

Like other Republican politicians, DeSantis has railed against critical race theory, which he has called “crap,” and against supposed leftist indoctrination in education. He championed the “Stop WOKE Act,” which aims to restrict how certain topics related to race can be taught. He branded the legislation in the news release as the strongest of its kind in the nation and said, “We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other.” (A federal judge in November blocked the public college system from enforcing the law.)
 
DeSantis who began his second term as governor, on Tuesday, pledged in his inaugural address to “ensure that our institutions of higher learning are focused on academic excellence and the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of trendy ideology.”