A reckoning for DEI at the University of Florida

Want good news? Here’s some, courtesy of the Washington Post:

The University of Florida announced Friday that it had eliminated jobs and halted contracts focused on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts to comply with a 2023 state law.

Thirteen full-time positions were eliminated, and administrative appointments were ended for 15 faculty members, officials said.

The $5 million that the state flagship school in Gainesville had allocated for DEI efforts will be redirected to a faculty recruitment fund. . . .

Imagine that: Taking money dedicated to advancing a corrosive left-wing agenda item and redirecting it to a genuine educational purpose. What’s next, sacking “violence disrupters” and using the money to hire more police officers?

According to the Post, “advocates for [DEI bureaucracies at colleges] say they make campuses more welcoming, supportive, and reflective of society as a whole.” Unexplained, is why it takes thirteen DEI bureaucrats and 15 faculty members to make students from minority groups feel welcome and supported. Also unexplained, is how having more than a dozen hand- holders for minority group members is “reflective of society as a whole.”

Student affinity groups perform welcoming and supporting functions, and almost certainly perform them better than bureaucrats. If any student is being harassed, discriminated against, or otherwise unfairly treated, that student still will have access to normal campus mechanisms for resolving such complaints.

If there’s a group of students that needs to feel more welcome and supported on campus, I submit it’s conservative students. The evidence shows that such students often feel intimidated and afraid to express their opinions. I’m not proposing that bureaucrats be hired to remedy this problem, though.

Another group that could use welcoming and support on campus is conservative speakers who visit colleges. For example, Kyle Duncan, a federal court of appeals judge, was harassed at Stanford Law School by leftist students encouraged by. . .the Law School’s DEI dean.

One critic of the University’s decision, a former law professor, complained that “without any information or data about the success of [the DEI bureaucracy’s] efforts, the whole enterprise has been dismantled.” The former professor has it backwards. In the absence of information or data showing that the DEI efforts are yielding benefits that exceed their cost — financially and culturally — it’s fitting and proper that the enterprise be dismantled and the money redirected into education, itself.

The same ex-professor alleged that there has already been a “brain drain” from the public universities in Florida. Dismantling the DEI bureaucracy “is just going to make that reality worse,” he warned.

To the extent that leftist professors are leaving Florida, I would call this phenomenon a sorting, not a brain drain. Let those who can’t stand working at a university without a DEI apparatus migrate to California, Oregon, or Michigan (for example). Let them be replaced by less doctrinaire professors.

Meanwhile, here’s some more good news from the same article:

Florida is not alone in its backlash against diversity-related initiatives. Lawmakers in other states have targeted DEI programs, some companies have cut jobs and activists have pushed to eliminate other efforts.

Eighty-one bills attacking DEI in higher education have been filed in 23 states since 2023, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

At best, DEI bureaucracies have outlived their usefulness. In my opinion, though, they were always a bad idea and perhaps something of a hustle. Now they face an overdue reckoning.

Thank you, Ron DeSantis.