Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed an viewers at Sarasota’s New College of Florida Saturday in a speech that touted the state’s academic accomplishments and reforms and bashed the “woke” stranglehold on academia.
“In the last 5½ years, there’s been no state that has done more to reform and improve education. … We took on school choice. We made sure schools were open during COVID, battling school unions, all this stuff. So it was really, really good.”
New College of Florida, the state’s liberal arts honors school, has been the location of a contentious energy battle between the earlier faculty administration and the governor, which has seen DeSantis search to remake the establishment in the picture of Michigan’s Hillsdale College.Â
In January 2023, DeSantis appointed a brand new slate of six board members, together with outspoken activist and DEI and demanding race idea critic Christopher Rufo.
RON DESANTIS SHAKES UP LIBERAL UNIVERSITY, APPOINTS SIX MEMBERS TO THE NEW COLLEGE OF FLORIDA
Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a Never Back Down marketing campaign occasion in Keene, N.H., Nov. 21, 2023. (Reuters/Sophie Park/File Photo)
DeSantis praised the college makeover, arguing “it was so much about ideology. You know, no accountability, no grades, none of this other stuff. … This is a public institution. And we have, not only a right, we have an obligation to make sure that our public institutions are serving the best interests of the state of Florida.”
The governor aimed his fireplace at using public resources for what he construes as ideological indoctrination.
“If you want to go be on some Marxist commune, if that’s what you want to do with your life, who am I to say? But I don’t want the taxpayers of Florida funding that. So, we made some big changes. … What’s in the best interest of the state of Florida. And I think what you’ve seen, I don’t think you’ve seen more dramatic improvement at any other institution.”
DeSantis argued the brand new imaginative and prescient for the college is akin to the tutorial philosophy of the nation’s nice writers and thinkers on the daybreak of American democracy.
“The mission is, we want a liberal arts education that is rooted in the Western tradition — a classical education similar to what our Founding Fathers had when they went to universities. That is something that I think will attract people not just throughout Florida, but throughout the country.Â
“I believe there are loads of dad and mom, particularly with what you see occurring in a few of these different college campuses. … Now, the madness in universities just isn’t new, however … since [the Hamas attack on Israel on] Oct. 7,” people see “how insane this has turn out to be.”
Governors Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis (Getty Images)
Referencing the nationwide campus protests over the war in Gaza, DeSantis contrasted Florida’s public education system with perceived Ivy League permissiveness and promised to deal with disruptions with a firm hand.
“Letting the inmates run the asylum does not work. So, you’ve got seen a illness in these universities. … I’ve talked to people who find themselves very, very excessive up in finance and all these different issues. But [with respect to education] you are higher off in Florida than Columbia or Harvard. … Now they’re saying that, individuals.”
DeSantis has been a leading critic of left-wing bias on university campuses and has frequently butted heads with the state’s educational establishment.
“What you are seeing in academia is what occurs when leftist ideology infects an establishment. It corrupts the establishment. … You know, the issue is, the left infects company America,” DeSantis said. “It corrupts when it infects academia. It corrupts when it infects the medical [establishment]. … When it impacts company media, it corrupts.
“Now you have the BLM riots — remember a few years ago? — and you have a reporter from CNN standing in front of buildings burning saying that it’s a mostly peaceful protest. So, the facts are totally out the window. It’s ideology.”Â
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to members of the media after an occasion July 27, 2023, in Chariton, Iowa. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post by way of Getty Images)
The governor then pivoted to the state’s pandemic insurance policies, castigating the nation’s medical institution for corruption and following a political agenda quite than science.
“[During the pandemic], ideology had trumped evidence-based science. … There was an agenda, and they were playing on a team. And you saw the corruption in that. You saw … the mutilation of minors. That is not consistent with the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, cut off somebody’s private parts who is 14 years old. … And not very many Western countries have indulged in this. Only here you see this … corruption of the medical establishment.”
Finally, the governor credited Florida’s COVID policies with sparking an enormous inflow of individuals and funding in the state as blue state residents bored with larger authorities, lockdowns and better taxes.
“Of course, we bucked the consensus on COVID. And, you know, Florida, when COVID started, we were doing well as a state. Most people would prefer to live in Florida than with the governments of California, New York, Illinois then, for sure. But the contrast with how we handled COVID versus them is it sparked a massive infusion of people, investment, businesses, unlike what really any state has ever seen.”