Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently gave an update on several education reforms implemented under his watch over the last several years. He made the comments at The Gathering conference in Atlanta recently.
“Let me tell you, if Marxist professors are leaving the state of Florida, that is good for the state of Florida,” DeSantis said to applause, the Daily Signal reported.
“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.”
The Daily Signal reported:
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.
Read the full article at the Daily Signal.
MORE: 39 professors flunk University of Florida’s new post-tenure review
IMAGE: Ron DeSantis /Facebook
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Add to the Discussion