TALLAHASSEE — Scores of students and professors expressed their opposition Monday to a bill aimed at achieving Gov. Ron DeSantis’ goal of cleansing the state’s universities and colleges of what he deems to be socialist ideology.
More than 150 people traveled from all over Florida to speak out against HB 999 at the bill’s first House subcommittee. Chair Lauren Melo R-Naples, restricted their allotted time to 30 seconds each, and then as the hours passed, cut their time at the mic to just a one-word declaration of opposition.
Sponsored by Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, the measure was roundly criticized as a violation of both academic freedom and the First Amendment rights of both students and faculty. But the committee voted 12-5 along party lines to approve it, after rejecting an amendment to protect Black fraternities and sororities, minority unions and multicultural centers.
A Senate version is set to be heard in committee later this week.
The House bill would remove all funding of university and college administrative programs and courses that support diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, unless they are required by federal law or regulations. It also would prevent any school from requiring a pledge of any political viewpoint as a condition of hiring, promotion or admission.
A survey of the state’s 12 universities conducted by the governor’s budget chief showed a combined spending of $34.5 million on DEI programs and faculty, with $20.7 million coming from the state, less than 1% of those universities’ budgets.
DeSantis has targeted DEI and other university diversity programs, calling them a drain on resources and forcing a far-left dogma on students and faculty.
“And so that clearly has no place in American institutions,” the governor said at a roundtable discussion Monday hours before the committee hearing in Tallahassee. “It’s more something you would expect to see in like the CCP,” a reference to the Chinese Communist Party.
But Alexis Dorman, a student at Florida State University whose grandmother is from Taiwan, likened the legislation to the Chinese Communist Party’s ban on teaching the three T’s: Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen Square.
“It is no different from the Republican Party’s censorship of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Dorman said. “Legislators who vote for this are fearful of the power of knowledge and no better than the CCP.”
Noting a line in the bill that the core curriculum for higher education should promote citizenship, said Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando. “The citizens are here. They showed up overwhelmingly.”
One after the other, students and professors said the bill would stifle academic freedom on campus, risk their schools’ accreditations, and tarnish the university system’s reputation as one of the best in the country. They predicted a brain drain as students and teachers would go elsewhere for graduate school and careers.
Besides defunding all DEI programs, the bill expands the Board of Governors’ authority over state university missions, including requiring the removal of majors and minors based on or using critical race theory or any derivative that could lead people to embracing “divisive concepts.”
The board of governors would have to periodically review all existing academic programs at each university to remove any major or minor that is based on or otherwise aligned with Critical Theory, Critical Ethnic Studies, Radical Feminist Theory, Radical Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Critical Social Justice, or Intersectionality.
It gives the university boards of trustees more power in reviewing faculty tenure status at the request of the board chair and the authority to hire and fire faculty.
Florida’s push to end DEI is part of a nationwide trend of conservative states adopting laws restricting public schools and universities from teaching about systemic racism, critical race theory, sexism and LGBTQ subjects. According to Education Week, at least 15 states passed similar legislation last year and 26 others were looking at bills to restrict those studies.
Government control of university and college curriculum could violate the constitution, Jason Cohen of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education testified before the subcommittee.
“When you start inviting government to dictate speech on campus it’s unconstitutional. None of the other states have gone into the curriculum, only Florida,” Cohen said. “You can double down, but it will cost you a lot more in attorney fees.”
Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, said she worried how the bill would affect her daughter, a junior studying health care disparities among minors at the University of Florida. “Is that program going to be eliminated because it’s adjacent to diversity, equity and inclusion?” she asked.
“Parents really need to pay attention,” Bartleman said. “If we lose accreditation at the university level we will lose financial aid. We need access for those dollars for our kids to attend. If all those changes occur, what is a degree worth if we lose accreditation?”
Rep. Kelly Skidmore said the bill would change everything about higher education in Florida.
“To suggest government is dictating the curriculum is completely unconstitutional,” Skidmore said. “People are free to learn what they want to learn about.”
Anthony Man of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel contributed to this report.
