DeSantis Higher Ed Bill Heads for Legislature
Florida governor Ron DeSantis promised sweeping reforms earlier this year to, he claims, rescue higher education in his state from “woke activism.” Last week, the Legislature took the first step toward realizing DeSantis’s vision with the introduction of HB 999, which aims to dramatically reshape higher education in the Sunshine State.
The bill, prefiled in the Florida House before the legislative session begins in March, looks to defund diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at state institutions; concentrate hiring power in the hands of trustees; allow for posttenure faculty review at any time; eliminate majors in certain subjects focused on race and gender; and create new general education requirements.
Critics consider the bill an attack on higher education related to broader culture war issues—ahead of a potential DeSantis presidential run in 2024—rather than a serious piece of legislation aimed at fixing current issues or improving higher education. They worry that if passed as written, HB 999 will deal an irreparable blow to Florida’s public higher education system by eliminating academic freedom, exacerbating faculty recruitment issues, causing problems with accreditors and potentially costing institutions millions in federal grant money.
The bill mirrors much of the governor’s recent rhetoric and revisits draft legislation from DeSantis that never made it into the 2022 legislative session.
With the March legislative session approaching, DeSantis made his plans known at the end of January. At the time, he held a press conference that focused on defunding DEI efforts in the state and issued a news release detailing proposed reforms that now appear in HB 999.
Alex Andrade, the Republican House member who filed the legislation, did not respond to a request for comment. And the DeSantis administration had little to say on HB 999.
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Some with close ties to DeSantis are celebrating the move. Chris Rufo, an anti-DEI activist whom DeSantis appointed a trustee in a conservative takeover of the New College of Florida, cheered the move on Twitter last week. “This would be the most ambitious reform to higher education in a half-century,” he tweeted. “Gov. DeSantis is channeling the sentiment of the voters, who have demanded that taxpayer dollars stop subsidizing left-wing racialist ideology and partisan political activism. Democracy returns.”
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The free speech advocacy group PEN America also took aim at the bill; Jeremy C. Young, senior manager of free expression and education, called it “draconian and censorious.”
“FL HB 999 would end academic freedom, shared governance, and university independence in [Florida] public higher education in favor of one man’s authoritarian control of public university decisions. It would be the end of [Florida] higher ed as a space of open inquiry and free expression,” Young said last week in a series of tweets criticizing the legislative proposal.