As Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, was taking fresh aim at diversity initiatives in higher education, the state’s college presidents put out an unusual statement.
Some diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives “have come to mean and accomplish the very opposite and seek to push ideologies such as critical race theory and its related tenets,” said the statement, which was dated January 18 and stamped with the logos of the 28 state and community colleges that belong to the Florida College System. (These don’t include the four-year public universities, which are part of the separate State University System of Florida.)
The 28 Florida college presidents promised not to “fund or support” any practice “that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality.” They pledged to find and remove instruction, training, and policies, though it was difficult to parse what exactly they would get rid of. They said they’d excise anything “opposed to the forms of discrimination described in this statement.”
The statement prompted outrage from faculty members and academic-freedom organizations. Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, lamented to Inside Higher Ed that the statement didn’t “defend academic freedom or challenge the false narrative put forth by DeSantis and others that discussing important topics in the classroom is somehow akin to indoctrination.”
The statement appeared to undermine some of the colleges’ own work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion — a broad phrase that encompasses work to increase the numbers of racial, sexual, and other kinds of minorities who enroll and graduate, among other goals. Individual institutions within the Florida College System had only recently held events celebrating cultural diversity, started a President’s Commission on Race and Equity, and hired a chief diversity officer. Yet all of their logos appear on the statement, which reflected some of the concerns voiced by DeSantis and his allies that higher ed tries to “impose an orthodoxy,” which the governor characterizes as “state-sanctioned racism.”
Documents obtained by The Chronicle via public-records requests suggest that much of the statement came from a high-level administrator within the Florida Department of Education, not the presidents. Though some of the 28 leaders appeared to discuss and edit the statement, altering its tone, they chose to keep much of the phrasing that had been suggested to them by Henry Mack, a senior chancellor within the Florida Department of Education. The department didn’t answer questions about Mack’s role, but his LinkedIn page describes him as “responsible for the Division of Florida Colleges,” and his position is listed under the Office of the Commissioner. The commissioner is appointed by the State Board of Education, whose members are appointed by the governor, subject to Senate confirmation.
None of the major figures in the drafting of the statement agreed to speak to The Chronicle.
“When you look at the drafts of this statement, it’s clear that individual campus presidents defer their authority to state officials in developing the voice that will come from the Florida College System presidents,” said Eddie R. Cole, an associate professor of higher education at the University of California at Los Angeles who has studied how college presidents put together statements during politically tense times in U.S. history, such as the civil-rights era. “That is a huge red flag in higher education.”
‘... For Your Consideration’
Even before the new year, the college-system presidents were working on a statement responding to the law known as the “Stop WOKE” Act. The law, House Bill 7 of 2022, limits what publicly employed instructors can say about race and sex, and in November was partially blocked by a judge who barred the state’s four-year universities from enforcing it.
On December 14, Tonjua Williams, president of St. Petersburg College and chair of the Florida College System’s Council of Presidents, sent Mack the statement, which declared that each campus would avoid training or instruction that “unlawfully espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates or compels belief in concepts set forth in House Bill 7 (2022), unless discussion of the concepts listed therein are part of a course of training or instruction given in an objective manner without endorsement of the listed concepts.” Among those concepts, the statement said, was the idea that a person is “inherently racist, privileged, sexist, [or] oppressive” based on their race, sex, or nationality. It’s not clear what prompted the drafting of the statement.
Two weeks later, on December 27, Mack sent Williams four paragraphs of mostly new text. On the whole, it took a qualified statement of compliance and turned it, at points, into a broadside.
Mack’s statement referenced “new forms of discrimination and totalitarianism that have taken hold within academia” and said that “discriminatory and anti-intellectual practices” could be “found in most diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.” It issued a series of promises on behalf of the Florida College System Council of Presidents — for instance, that it “rejects any and all DEI initiatives across our campuses.”
Kathy Hebda, chancellor of the college system, forwarded the language to Williams, and referenced a conversation from the night before. “Based on that,” she wrote, “here is something for your consideration.”
Mack’s statement arrived at the start of a fresh anti-DEI push from Florida’s Republican-controlled government. The next day, December 28, a member of DeSantis’s staff sent a memo to all the public colleges and universities, asking them to list their activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and critical race theory, the academic concept that regards race as a social construct and acknowledges the existence of systemic racism in American society. DeSantis would eventually say he wanted to defund all such activities, regardless of their source of support. “No funding, and that will wither on the vine,” he said during a news conference on January 31.
Williams forwarded Mack’s December 27 suggestion to a handful of other presidents, with little comment. “Prior to the winter holiday break, we submitted our statement of support for HB 7,” she wrote. “Below is a suggested revision for our consideration. I’ve asked the Chancellors to meet with us before sharing this system wide.”
From there, several of the presidents, as well as Hebda, worked together to revise Mack’s document. They removed some of its fieriest claims, about higher education being discriminatory and totalitarian, and softened others. They spun some complaints into positive assertions of what they would do. For example, Mack’s draft had said: “In most instances, DEI initiatives now push an ideology opposed to intellectual and academic freedom, freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity and the pursuit of truth in teaching and learning.” In the final draft, that sentence became a vow to “ensure that all initiatives, instruction, and activities do not promote any ideology that suppresses intellectual and academic freedom, viewpoint diversity and the pursuit of truth in teaching and learning.”
Emails obtained by The Chronicle suggest that one president played a key role in shaping Mack’s language into something her colleagues could support. About an hour and a half after receiving Mack’s draft from Williams, Georgia L. Lorenz, president of Seminole State College, sent a proposed revision to Williams and seven other fellow presidents.
That revision deleted many of Mack’s draft’s complaints about DEI, and proposed rewording the rest into forward-looking assurances. Lorenz added a subtle reminder of community colleges’ mission. She didn’t concede the idea that diversity initiatives “have come to mean and accomplish the very opposite.” That phrase only returned in later drafts.
“Thanks Georgia, great Statement,” Timothy L. Beard, president of Pasco-Hernando State College, wrote in reply to Lorenz’s first revision. “I think the way you wrote the Statement any of our institutional constituents can support.”
“I agree,” Jim Murdaugh, president of Tallahassee Community College, wrote. “It is more about what we support vs. what we oppose.”
Mack and Hebda didn’t respond to requests to talk about the drafting of the statement in order to understand aspects of the process that might not have been captured in emails and attachments. A spokesperson responded on behalf of Williams, and Seminole State College’s general counsel, for Lorenz, both to say the presidents had no comment.
On January 18, the day the statement was published, Williams wrapped up the three-week-long editing process with an email to the 27 other college presidents. “Thank you all for your contribution and consensus on our DEI statement,” she wrote. “I am so proud of our system and you as a leader.”
When all was said and done, the presidents had incorporated a few lines from their December 14 statement, such as the idea that critical race theory might be taught in some courses “in an objective manner,” as well as some new writing. But much of the wording of the final statement came from Mack’s December 27 suggestion.
‘What Else Would You Expect …?’
Pamela Eddy, a professor of higher education at the College of William & Mary who studies community-college leadership, said Mack’s message may reflect the nitty-gritty realities of governance rather than an extraordinary intrusion by the state. It’s logical, she said, for a state’s Department of Education to set policy, and for presidents at institutions to adopt some of that language to implement the policy.
“This is not an activist statement,” Eddy said. “This is trying to say, ‘These are the cards we’re dealt. This is how we’re going to show that we are in compliance with whatever the mandates are.’”
But Cole, the UCLA professor, said the emails revealed a clear breach of academic freedom. “Do individual campuses have the authority to make decisions and statements about actions on those campuses?” he said. “That’s one of the basics of academic freedom, campus officials having the authority and autonomy to lead their respective campuses and not to have state political interference.”
Eddy, like some other observers, noticed careful word choices in the statement, like the pledge that the colleges wouldn’t support anything that “compels belief in critical race theory.” (Teaching about and discussing the theory don’t necessarily compel belief, as the thinking goes.) She pointed to the statement’s last paragraph, which begins: “The FCS presidents reaffirm our commitment to nondiscrimination ...” Taken at face value, she suggested, these commitments support exposing students to a range of theories, which many observers can agree with.
Both Eddy and Cole noted the steep challenges the Florida College System presidents face. “What else would you expect a college president to do in Florida?” Cole asked. “These threats have to be listened to — even if you think they’re ridiculous — to slash funding, if someone deems anything on your campus to be DEI, whether it is or not.”
Andy Thomason contributed to this report.
