Florida colleges fire staff amid anti-"woke" crusade. Expert warns "this tactic will backfire"

Diversity, equity and inclusion staff at the University of Florida became the latest victims of the right-wing war on “woke” after being fired last week under a newly approved state rule stripping funding from equity initiatives at public universities. "This is a long game that is a political effort to diminish the advances that have been achieved through affirmative action and through equity and inclusion efforts on college and university campuses to promote and enhance more equitable educational outcomes," Roger L. Worthington, the executive director of the University of Maryland's Center for Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education, told Salon. The UF cuts are the third university response this year to DeSantis' May 2023 funding ban and the Florida Board of Governors' subsequent adoption and approval of a regulation that loosely defined "DEI," according to the college's student newspaper, The Alligator. We need your help to stay independent Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism The "million dollar question" Canton describes himself and other UF faculty asking mirrors a similar reaction that Ericka Hines, the founder of DEI consultancy Every Level Leadership, saw in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision last summer. What Florida's DEI ban makes certain, however, is that the "institutional inequities," like lower minority student enrollment as well as post-grad wage gaps, will remain, Canton said, echoing a finding of the study.