RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was only six days ago, on January 26, when I wrote a post containing a list of proposals for Christopher Rufo and the other new trustees of New College of Florida to take back control of the institution from the insane left. In an uncanny development, as if they having been reading the Manhattan Contrarian blog, Rufo and his fellow trustees, along with Governor Ron DeSantis, have already implemented the first proposal, and are well along on implementing the second.

How about all you other red states? Why can’t you do the same things?

My first proposal was: “Replace the President.” It took them all of five days. From ABC7 Sarasota, yesterday (January 31) evening: “New College President Okker terminated by Board of Trustees.” The newly designated President, according to ABC7, is a guy named Richard Corcoran, a Republican who served as Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2016 to 2018. Good start!

My second proposal was: “Fire the entire ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ staff.” The new trustees aren’t wasting a lot of time on that one either. Again from ABC7 Sarasota: “The board offered to hold off on abolishing the school’s Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, instead opting to terminate four positions within the office.” OK they didn’t fire them all at once, and they are “holding off” on abolishing the office altogether. But they should not wait long to finish the job.

Actually, it may not matter so much what these trustees do on this issue, because Governor DeSantis is separately taking on the job himself. From The Independent Florida, January 31:

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he will completely defund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Florida universities during a press conference Tuesday morning. DeSantis addressed what he called “DEI bureaucracies,” or departments within universities that promote diversity, equality and inclusion, which he said impose a liberal agenda on university students and faculty. “These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom, and really they constitute a drain on resources and end up contributing to higher costs,” he said.

DeSantis’s defunding initiative requires approval by the legislature, which will begin its session in March. But with large Republican majorities in both houses (28-12 in the Senate and 84-35 in the House), I would expect the proposal to pass easily.

My other suggestions for Rufo, et al., boil down to bringing prominent conservatives to campus and seeing if the radical leftists will engage in violent conduct for which they can be disciplined. Those ideas will take a little more time to implement. But it seems like the new trustees and the Governor are not taking the slow route.

Meanwhile, there are around 25 other red states out there, essentially all of which have let their university systems rot while blindly funding them with ever-increasing piles of taxpayer cash. Can any of them learn any lessons here?

In looking around for evidence of any Republican state showing the kind of backbone that is evident in Florida, I find only a few early glimmers of activity. According to Oklahoma’s News on 6 from January 30, the Secretary of Education there has just requested each unit of the state university system to report on how much is being spend on “diversity, equity and inclusion” matters:

The Oklahoma Secretary of Education wants to know how much universities are paying for Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs.  Ryan Walters said that money should be funneled elsewhere. News 9’s Feliz Romero sat down with both sides of the argument to gather the story.  “We need to move away from DEI programs and move into workforce initiatives,” said Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma Secretary of Education.

Requesting information on the level of spending is a good precursor to having the legislature cut the spending, and admittedly that is the exact route that DeSantis has taken. On the other hand, why has it taken Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education until now to get around to this?

Over in Texas, I can’t find anything yet about similar initiatives from the government; but a Report just out from the National Association of Scholars shines a light on the DEI programs at the University of Texas at Austin as “espousing a clear ideological agenda.” From The Texan, January 24:

A new report by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) finds the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin “espouse a clear ideological agenda.”

And from the NAS Report:

Consistently, the initiatives amplify controversial claims about race, gender, oppression, and privilege. Under the banner of DEI, the university has trained faculty and students in “critical race theory,” promoted the thinking of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, and implemented curricula laden with the watchwords of identity politics, such as “microaggressions,” “systemic racism,” and “intersectionality.”

The crazy left has gone so far with these DEI programs that at this point they are huge soft targets. It is long past time to go after them.