Ben Sasse Is DeSantis Hatchet Man as UF Fires All DEI Staff
The New RepublicNov 01, 2022
According to a memo released on Friday, the University of Florida has eliminated all 28 positions linked to the diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) program, closed the office of the chief diversity officer, and ended DEI contracts with outside vendors.
The retrenched employees, who will receive a standard 12-week severance pay, have been encouraged to apply for open positions at the university before April 19 to have their applications fast-tracked.
As DeSantis and his wingman Sasse continue to tilt at windmills in their nonsensical all-out war on the so-called woke culture in colleges, it's higher education that suffers the most. Axing the entire DEI staff at the University of Florida is nothing but a disgraceful political decision.
Other states should learn from Florida and UF, which has shut down a divisive political power-grab bureaucracy without caving in to pressure to continue the program under a new name. Hopefully, other American universities will follow suit and return to their core mission of education rather than indoctrination.
There's a 50% chance that, depending on SCOTUS' ruling on racial preferences in university admissions, at least 53.3% of students enrolled in higher education will be White in 2028, according to the Metaculus prediction community.