With just days left before a sweeping new anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion law in Florida takes effect, government and college officials have been mum about how or when they plan to implement and comply with the law, causing widespread confusion and anxiety.
Left to be determined includes what the state considers to be a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative.
According to Senate Bill 266, Florida’s public colleges may not spend state or federal funds “to promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities that … advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism as defined by the rules of the State Board of Education and regulations of the Board of Governors.” The law is likely to affect many of the programs colleges have in place to help recruit and retain underrepresented students and faculty and what professors can teach in general-education courses.
Critics of the Florida law, including Adam Steinbaugh, a lawyer for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, say the implementation is bound to be challenging and that the state will likely blow past its own deadline of July 1, when the law is set to go into effect.
“The legislature left it to state regulators to fill in some of the law’s vague terms, but no rules or regulations have been proposed, and they still have to give the public an opportunity to weigh in on their proposed rules and regulations,” Steinbaugh said. “That’s not happening before July 1.”
When signing the bill into law in May, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that DEI should really stand for discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination, which have no place in the state’s public institutions.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion, experts say, refers broadly to efforts by colleges to welcome and support diverse students, faculty, and staff. That goal, advocates say, has become especially critical for the many colleges struggling with slides in enrollment.
Many colleges, including public institutions in Florida, have specific offices dedicated to such work, although the structure and scope of DEI offices vary. DEI offices can include colleges’ efforts to comply with federal nondiscrimination laws, and to help students of color, first-generation college students, students from low-income families, students with disabilities, and veterans to feel a sense of belonging, for example. Some work to advance these goals also takes place outside of DEI offices.
In response to a request by the governor’s office in December to detail their spending on DEI, the state’s 12 public, four-year universities listed programs, offices, and courses ranging from small student programs like a “Friendsgiving” for international students to entire diversity offices. Universities also reported portions of orientation programming focused on DEI, programs to foster more-inclusive environments, and various employee-training programs, for example. Altogether, the universities reported spending less than 1 percent of their budgets on DEI activities, according to a Chronicle analysis.
Faculty are going to shy away from engaging in discussions lest they be seen as promoting one of these concepts.
The new Florida law allows exceptions for compliance with federal laws and for accreditation with approval from the state (although it also prohibits accreditors from compelling colleges to violate state law) and for programs for veterans, Pell Grant recipients, first-generation college students, nontraditional students, certain transfer students from the state college system, students from low-income families, and students with “unique abilities.” Student-led organizations using student fees are also exempt from the ban.
The law does not spell out potential penalties for violating the ban on DEI spending, although it does specify possible repercussions for violations of other aspects of the law.
The Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, and the Department of Education, which oversees the state’s 28 public colleges, “are working together on a common definition and timeline for implementation,” said Renee Fargason, assistant vice chancellor for public affairs of the state’s university system. “The leadership and staff of both systems have met and initiated this important work to implement SB 266 and will work diligently until completion.”
A Department of Education spokesperson also said the department would work with the Board of Governors to adopt rules and regulations “to ensure taxpayer funds are not used for political and social activism.”
Four public universities (University of Florida, University of Central Florida, Florida Atlantic University, and Florida State University) did not respond to requests for comment about how they planned to comply with the law.
The ban on DEI spending is just one part of a wide-ranging piece of legislation. The law also prohibits the use of diversity statements in admissions, hiring, and promotion, and it states that general-education courses “may not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics … or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United states and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities,” among other provisions. The law also requires tenured professors to be evaluated every five years, enshrining a review process that was added by the state this spring.
Several Florida public-college employees, including some who work in DEI offices, told The Chronicle that they had heard little or nothing from administrators about whether their jobs could be affected — or even eliminated — by the new law (many spoke on background because they feared repercussions to their jobs). Lawmakers in 21 states have introduced at least 38 bills this year to restrict efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education, according to The Chronicle‘s analysis. So far, six have been signed into law. A wide-ranging law restricting DEI efforts in Texas will take effect Jan. 1, 2024; other bills that have been signed into law are narrower in scope.
The flurry of legislation was preceded by Florida’s so-called Stop WOKE Act, a state law signed by DeSantis last year that restricts how professors can teach about race and sex, parts of which are currently under injunction after FIRE filed a lawsuit.
In that case, Judge Mark E. Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida called the state’s argument that professors enjoy academic freedom only when they express viewpoints that the state approves “positively dystopian.”
Steinbaugh said that while it’s not unusual for states to leave the details of implementing laws up to regulating agencies, in the case of Senate Bill 266, the state legislature is “essentially handing the pen over to regulators and saying, ‘You finish this.’”
For example, the law does not define what constitutes a campus activity that promotes political or social activism. “I don’t really know what that means,” Steinbaugh said. “And if I don’t know what that means, and a professor in the classroom might not know what that means, that means that faculty are going to shy away from engaging in discussions lest they be seen as promoting one of these concepts that might start sounding a whole lot like the Stop WOKE Act.”
This is what it looks like when bad policy has to go into effect.
Andrew Gothard, president of the United Faculty of Florida union, which represents over 25,000 faculty members, including at the state’s public institutions, said the lack of definitions in the law will cause problems for union members. “The state doesn’t define what DEI means in terms of classroom teaching and programs, so there’s going to be a lot of overreach,” to try to avoid the state revoking funding as punishment for not eliminating the required DEI spending, Gothard said. He predicts there will be arguments over which programs fall under the allowed exemptions, and questions about how the state will enforce a ban on how universities use federal dollars.
In the meantime, Gothard said, students, faculty members, staff, and administrators “are either going to have to self-censor and change the subject area that they teach or the areas they work in so it can no longer be defined as DEI or they will be out of work.”
“I wish I had clearer answers, but quite frankly, this is what it looks like when bad policy has to go into effect, like it’s been poorly written, it’s not well thought out,” Gothard said. “And, you know, everybody is trying to work through what it actually means on the ground.”
