Ron DeSantis lashes out against university activism

Florida’s universities need to beware of the kind of activism that gets in the way of competing views, Gov. Ron DeSantis told the State University System of Florida Board of Governors Thursday.

DeSantis did not touch on the controversy arising in the Florida Legislature this spring as lawmakers debate ordering a survey of political views on university and college campuses.

But he did touch on the Republican lawmakers’ rationale for the controversial survey proposal: a fear or suspicion that one train of political thought might squelch other, particularly conservative, viewpoints on campuses. He urged that universities be places where people are “not just fed an orthodoxy.”

HB 839 would require Florida public universities to survey faculty members and students about their political viewpoints. It is moving in the House, with Republican lawmakers expressing concern that universities’ liberal viewpoints may be indoctrinating students, while Democrats are raising concerns that the survey could be used as a tool to clamp down on liberal academics.

DeSantis held out the University of California-Berkeley, long a national symbol of liberal campus activism, as the kind of environment he did not want to see in Florida.

The Governor’s brief remarks Thursday to the state’s university governing board, meeting at Florida A&M University, mostly offered the themes that he thought they were doing a great job, that Florida has great universities, and that his priorities include promoting higher education for a variety of reasons.

And then he offered a concern.

“I would just caution you, you see some of these other universities around the country, some things that happen, like the culture in places like a Berkeley. That’s a bad way to go here,” DeSantis said. “I want to make sure that we’re focused on achievement, academics.

“I don’t care about activism. People can do that, but that should not be the university’s mission. The universities’ mission should really be academic-focused and really promoting high-achievement in an environment where people are exposed to competing views and are not just fed an orthodoxy,” DeSantis continued.

“I think the people here agree with that, and I don’t think our universities have had the problems that you have seen. But I would just caution, the more you do that, go in that direction, I think the less we’ll be preparing students to actually succeed in society,” he concluded.

Shortly before DeSantis spoke, the Board of Governors approved Thad Seymour Jr. as the University of Central Florida’s interim president. The UCF Board of Trustees offered him that role last week, following the February resignation of former President Dale Whittaker in the wake of that school’s misspending scandal.