As a buildup to his Presidentisl campaign, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched legal stacks in “woke,” which meant banning programs to study or promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The Board of Governors of the University of Florida met to enact the new directives, and UF students showed up to protest the state’s efforts to quash DEI, as well as “social and political activism.” They rightly saw these restrictions as interference with their right to speak freely.

Annie Martin of the Orlando Sentinel wrote:

Dozens of students and others attended a meeting of the board that governs the state university system on Thursday in Orlando, hoping to speak against proposals that would ban funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as well as “political or social activism.”


The crowd at the meeting of the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, spilled out of the chambers into a hallway and overflow room at the University of Central Florida.


Many were there to speak on proposed rule changes prompted by a new state law prohibiting universities from funding diversity, equity and inclusion programs.


But the panel set a 15-minute time limit for public comment, which Chair Brian Lamb said was customary. About a dozen people spoke before the allotted time expired. After the board cut off the public comment period, people waiting outside the meeting room started chanting, “Let us speak!”

The board granted initial approval to the proposal, which is expected to come back for a final vote at the board’s next meeting in January.


DeSantis described diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as “an attempt to impose orthodoxy on the university,” during a signing ceremony for the bill earlier this year.


“This has basically been used as a veneer to impose an ideological agenda, and that is wrong,” he said.
The law was part of a broader push by Gov. Ron DeSantis to overhaul higher education in Florida.

The most sweeping changes have taken place at New College of Florida, the state’s small liberal arts college, where DeSantis replaced trustees with conservative activists, who appointed former House Speaker Richard Corcoran as president and have sought to transform the campus into a conservative stronghold.

At the same meeting, the Board of Governors appointed a new trustee for the board of New College:

The Board of Governors for Florida’s state university system on Thursday appointed Don Patterson to the New College Board of Trustees.

Patterson, a Sarasota resident, was the co-founder and chief operating officer of Ascend Wireless Networks and is a graduate of Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian college in Virginia.

DeSantis tightens his grip on the once progressive New College.