Uni of Florida officials ‘lied through their teeth,’ downplaying DEI schemes in report to DeSantis

University of Florida officials massively downplayed the scale of their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in official documents to Ron DeSantisone of the governor’s appointees told DailyMail.com.

Christopher Rufo, a DeSantis education hire, accused university leaders of “lying through their teeth to the governor” by stating they had about 30 DEI plans costing $5 million a year, when they were actually running more than 1,000 .

Rufo provided DailyMail.com with internal University of Florida files showing the breadth of DEI’s work on campus. University officials declined to comment on the allegations.

According to Rufo, university officials were downplaying their DEI initiatives to “hide the radicalism within the campus” that DeSantis was trying to defund and shut down.

Rufo’s assault on diversity schemes as New College administrator sparks student protests at Florida campus

The activist and scholar made the claims while promoting his new book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

“I have discovered through public records requests and the threat of litigation, that the University of Florida, which is under the purview of a red state legislature, explicitly lied to the governor, in his response official on their request about their DEI programs,” Rufo told DailyMail.com.

“But I have discovered through these explosive documents that they actually had over 1,000 separate DEI programs embedded in every facet of the university’s programs and administration.”

Advocates of DEI schemes say they address long-standing racist and sexist discrimination in schools and workplaces, but critics say they end up fueling divisions between groups and marginalizing white men.

DeSantis, a Republican, late last year told Florida’s public universities to disclose all government funds spent on programs, classes and other initiatives related to DEI and the teaching of critical race theory .

In its official response, the Gainesville-based University of Florida, which has about 8,000 academics and 60,000 students, said it operates 30 to 40 DEI programs costing more than $5 million annually.

They included the salaries of DEI employees, including a director of diversity, a deputy director, a senior adviser to the president and an executive assistant, who ate up more than $1 million each year, most of it from state coffers.

The initiatives also involved an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars foster a “welcoming and inclusive work environment” in its various schools of nursing, design, engineering and other disciplines.

The university reported spending $5.3 million on DEI work. The state government funded $3.3 million of it, the filing shows. The university also receives money from federal sources, tuition fees, grants, donations and other sources.

In January, DeSantis appointed Rufo and others to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees as part of his war against the “wokeness” at public universities, a key issue of his 2024 presidential bid.

Using Florida’s freedom of information laws, Rufo obtained internal files showing the university spearheaded 1,018 separate DEI initiatives, focused on recruiting, training and even “affirming diverse identities.”

Rufo obtained internal university files on its DEI schemes through a Freedom of Information request

The documents showed that DEI bosses were actually running more than 1,000 schemes

DEI initiatives, focused on recruitment, training and even “affirming diverse identities”

Much of the DEI’s work was spearheaded by Chief Strategist Damon Williams

A comprehensive inventory of DEI’s work listed hundreds of projects, ranging from “legacies of slavery and oppression” to “curriculum decolonization” and a “gender pronoun initiative.”

The internal list also described a “black storytelling project,” training sessions on “implicit bias” and “microaggressions,” and numerous other entries that were not listed in the university’s original statement.

The internal list does not include the prices of each DEI scheme, meaning the university could spend much more, even several times more, than the $5.3 million figure in its original statement.

Steve Orlando, a spokesman, told DailyMail.com that the university would “endorse” and not respond to the allegations.

Rufo said the problem was much bigger than just the University of Florida.

“What we see time and time again in American institutions is that leaders have been captured by the ideology of the radical left DEI,” Rufo said.

“And then, when they’re discovered, they do everything they can to hide, obfuscate, and conceal the true nature of what’s going on inside their institutions.”

DeSantis signed a law in May banning state and federal funding for DEI schemes in public higher education, saying the measure “will prevent woke ideologies from continuing to co-opt our state universities and state colleges.”

“This bill says that the whole DEI experiment is coming to an end in the state of Florida,” the governor said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis finally eliminated all government-funded DEI spending at Florida’s public colleges and universities

A memo from Florida Budget Director Chris Spence set a Jan. 13 deadline for universities to detail spending on DEI and Critical Race Theory (CRT)

The university is ranked as one of the best public schools in the United States

For some, DEI schemes are important and necessary as they can help overcome historical racism and sexism and make it easier for people of all backgrounds to progress in education and employment.

Many conservatives say that DEI is a form of reverse discrimination that unfairly targets white men.

Others say that DEI schemes can be well-intentioned but rarely achieve their desired goals and often make matters worse by causing divisions in offices and classrooms.

DEI’s staff now makes up more than 3.4 positions for every 100 tenured professors, according to a national investigation by The Heritage Foundation, fueling fears of a ballooning sector that some say is nothing more than a wake-up call exercise.

RUFO’S DEI TIKEDOWN TOME

Christopher Rufo shared the claims against the University of Florida with DailyMail.com while promoting his book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

His 340-page text argues that America’s universities, government, corporations and media have been infiltrated by left-wing intellectuals and militants who are slowly and methodically reshaping society.

He focuses on leftist theorists such as Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, and Derrick Bell, arguing that they permeated American culture with an “insidious mixture of Marxism and racialist ideology.”

Their ideas have filtered through institutions, so workers must now address their racial and sexual “privilege” and overcome their “implicit bias” as schoolchildren must study critical theory of race, he says.

Rufo says the hardline views once promoted by the Black Panther Party are now commonplace at Ivy League universities and in the corporate boardrooms of Wal-Mart, Disney, Bank of America and other major corporations.

Rufo also works at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank

“All these big companies, including oil companies, resource extraction companies and other companies that are normally considered more conservative, have even succumbed to this DEI ideology,” he told DailyMail.com.

“As many conservative state legislatures are abolishing these programs in their public university systems, they will have to contend with the fact that this has escaped the laboratory and entered the highest levels of American business.”

Critics on the left acknowledge Rufo as one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers, but accuse him of fueling intolerance and stoking panic about efforts to make America fairer.

Rufo’s text is published by Broadside Books and will go on sale on July 18.