Wokeness Expelled from Florida Higher Education

~ Wokeness to Be Expelled from Florida Colleges and Universities ~

Rob Jenkins, a Higher Education Fellow with Campus Reform and a tenured associate professor of English at Georgia State University – Perimeter College, recently voiced his support of some proposed reforms to Florida’s education system by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In an opinion piece for Campus Reform, he states:

“According to a recent report from Campus Reform, DeSantis’s legislative agenda for 2023 includes a bill that would ‘[eliminate] politicized bureaucracies like DEI,‘ prevent colleges from funding CRT and DEI initiatives ‘regardless of the source,’ and abolish ‘political loyalty oaths and DEI statements.’”

Jenkins goes on the say that the bill also adds $100 million to university budgets for “the recruitment and retention of highly qualified faculty” and increases “the amount of research dollars for programs that will feed key industries with talented Florida students.”

“As someone who has written extensively on free speech, academic freedom, and shared governance, I find myself fully on board with the governor’s anti-woke agenda and unsympathetic to his detractors,” states Jenkins. “I hope his counterparts in other red states (like mine) take note and follow suit.”

Jenkins lists as “wokeness” educational philosophies including affirmative action, political correctness, social justice, diversity, and says the work agenda has been a growing problem in higher education since at least year 2000.

He points to campuses embracing critical race theory, teaching students to hate each other and themselves based upon race; selling them the lie that sex is changeable; and insisting that faculty regurgitate these woke philosophies to achieve and maintain employment in the academic world.

“This is unsustainable,” he says. “Academe cannot survive the mindless onslaught of wokeness. DeSantis is right to go after and destroy it, if he can.”