Sledd Hall at UF, By Ebyabe - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia
CV NEWS FEED // News broke Friday that the University of Florida (UF) fired all of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) employees. The university also reallocated millions of dollars in spending previously earmarked for DEI.
The moves were in accordance with a law that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year to strip DEI funding from the state’s public universities, of which UF is by far the largest.
The UF administration wrote in a memo: “To comply with the Florida Board of Governor’s regulation … [UF] has closed the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, eliminated DEI positions and administrative appointments, and halted DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors.”
“Under the direction of UF Human Resources, university employees whose positions were eliminated will receive UF’s standard twelve weeks of pay,” the memo continued.
In addition, the university noted that it “will reallocate the approximately $5 million in funds – previously reported to Tallahassee for DEI expenses … into a faculty recruitment fund to be administered by the Office of the Provost.”
The memo reinforced that UF “is – and will always be – unwavering in our commitment to universal human dignity.”
“As we educate students by thoughtfully engaging a wide range of ideas and views, we will continue to foster a community of trust and respect for every member of the Gator Nation,” the university stated.
Conservative scholar and well-known anti-DEI advocate Christopher Rufo hailed the decision, writing on X Friday afternoon: “The conservative counter-revolution has begun.”
Two months ago, Rufo wrote an essay detailing how Americans can resist the spread of far-left ideology in universities and other institutions.
“You’ll notice that University of Florida was previously spending $5 million per year on DEI initiatives,” Rufo wrote on X this week. “Now, [UF] President [Ben] Sasse has redirected those funds to recruiting faculty and has pledged to replace the old DEI standard with a new standard of ‘universal human dignity.’”
Sasse is a Republican and has criticized so-called “woke” ideology on several occasions. He formerly served as a U.S. senator from Nebraska from 2015 to 2023, when he resigned to lead UF.
DeSantis praised UF’s decision shortly after it began to make headlines.
“Florida is where DEI goes to die,” DeSantis noted on X Friday.
FOX News reported that UF is “one of the largest universities in the United States with more than 61,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled.”
