The University of Florida cut all of its staff positions relating to diversity, equity and inclusion and shuttered the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer to comply with a state mandate, the school announced in a memo on Friday.
“To comply with the Florida Board of Governor’s regulation 9.016 on prohibited expenditures, the University of Florida has closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, eliminated DEI positions and administrative appointments, and halted DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors,” the memo from provost J. Scott Angle and two vice presidents reads.
The announcement assured 12 weeks of severance pay for all employees “whose positions were eliminated.” The provost and vice presidents said these employees would be fast-tracked through applications processes in other university offices, in an attempt to resettle them within the institution.
ADVERTISEMENT
The cuts come just after the Florida Board of Governors ruled that public universities could not use funds to promote DEI-related work. It defines DEI as “any program, campus activity, or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification,” according to the regulation.
Florida governor and noted anti-DEI cheerleader Ron DeSantis celebrated the university’s decision on Friday.
“DEI is toxic and has no place in our public universities,” he wrote on X, retweeting a screenshot of the memo. “I’m glad that Florida was the first state to eliminate DEI and I hope more states follow suit.”
DeSantis’ administration has often made Florida the battleground for many anti-DEI actions. The former presidential candidate banned classes primarily teaching about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, which he has repeatedly derided as “radical woke ideologies,” at both higher and lower levels of education. In 2023, DeSantis made Florida the first state to approve the instructional use of videos by the unaccredited PragerU, which has been criticized for teaching historical inaccuracies about slavery and scientific inaccuracies about climate change, among other issues.
DeSantis has repeatedly insisted Florida is about “education, not indoctrination.”
