ATLANTA—Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t fund education systems that seek to undermine American values, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday.
“We have a radical idea that the tax dollars that Floridians pay should not go to fund universities that are hostile to our freedoms and way of life,” DeSantis, a Republican, said at conservative commentator and radio talk show host Erick Erickson’s The Gathering conference in Atlanta.
The Florida governor said taxpayer funding instead should go to colleges and universities dedicated to pursuing truth, high academic standards, and preparing students to be good citizens of the republic.
DeSantis listed his efforts so far to improve Florida education.
He mentioned Florida’s Bright Future scholarship program, which allows students with good test scores to graduate college free of debt. The governor said he has sought to restore academic rigor in the Sunshine State and attract talented professors to teach at universities.
“We did a reform that all tenured professors must undergo review every five years and can be terminated,” DeSantis said in his speech at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead in Atlanta.
DeSantis discussed his overhaul of the New College of Florida, which he said he turned from a “Marxist commune” into a classical, liberal arts school. He appointed seven conservatives as trustees and hired a conservative president for the college who abolished a gender studies program.
“They were the first university in America to eliminate DEI,” DeSantis said, referring to the left’s emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. New College’s mission, he added, changed to becoming “the nation’s top publicly funded classical liberal arts college, similar to Hillsdale College.”
Some students and faculty left, but many more wanted to apply, the governor said.
“Let me tell you, if Marxist professors are leaving the state of Florida, that is good for the state of Florida,” DeSantis said to enthusiastic applause.
Parents who work hard to give their children a good K-12 education shouldn’t have to worry that a college or university will undermine their efforts, he said.
“You’re working hard to instill values. You do that for 18 years, and then your kids go to some university where they want to undo that with indoctrination,” DeSantis said. “That is not good. So I think this higher education issue is critical … because of what’s happened at Columbia and all this other stuff.”
Last spring, Columbia University had to cancel in-person classes and graduation ceremonies due to pro-Palestine, anti-Israel protesters who occupied the New York City campus. Police arrested more than 100 students.
“If we do not have a counter with higher education, we are ultimately going to lose a lot of the battles that lie ahead of us,” DeSantis said. “I’m just proud of Florida. No state has done more to reclaim the historic, traditional mission of higher education than the state of Florida.”
Many Minnesotans have fled to Florida because of Gov. Tim Walz’s radical agenda, DeSantis said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, now Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, chose Walz as her running mate Tuesday.
“Minnesota has lost population since he’s been governor, and so I think the policies have been very destructive when you’re driving out people,” DeSantis said.
Walz set up what DeSantis called a “COVID snitch line” so that Minnesotans could report their neighbors for leaving home during government-imposed lockdowns. Yet, the Florida governor said, Walz tells Republicans to “mind your own damn business.”
“He wanted you reported to the authorities,” DeSantis said. “That is not ‘minding your own damn business.’ That is a total abuse of government power.”
Walz repeatedly has used the word “weird” to describe Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, yet he is the one who put feminine hygiene products in boys’ restrooms at school, DeSantis said.
“This is a guy that used Minnesota tax dollars to put tampons in the boys’ bathroom,” DeSantis said.
Many of America’s maladies are rooted in leftist ideology, said the Florida governor, who challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination this year.
“We’ve seen them overtake K-12 education, [the] federal bureaucracy, even a lot of corporate America, all these different things,” DeSantis said of the Left.
Yet Florida is winning the culture war, he said.
“Florida shows not only did we fight these people, we beat them on issue after issue,” DeSantis said. “We beat the teachers unions when it came to being open during COVID or having universal school choice and even paycheck protections for teachers union dues.”
As of last summer, union dues no longer are taken directly out of paychecks in Florida. As a result, the teachers union in Miami-Dade County doesn’t have enough members and is going to be decertified, DeSantis said.
Although he is a conservative, the governor said, he doesn’t want to “conserve” the current state of the country.
“I think what Florida represents nationally is a great rediscovery and restoring [of] the timeless truths that have made this country great,” DeSantis said. “When we have fidelity to those founding principles, we do well as a country. … These are things that endure.”