Ron DeSantis is fulfilling his promise to oust the 'woke mob.' Is he taking it too far?

After he decisively won reelection in November, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave a fiery speech, saying that his state would “never surrender to the woke mob” and that “Florida is where woke goes to die.” 

He wasn’t kidding. 

DeSantis has made a name for himself as a culture warrior not afraid to take progressives to task for what they’re doing to K-12 and higher education – and to the corporate world. It has helped raise his national profile at a time when he’s considered a likely GOP candidate for president in 2024. 

All this has made him a hero to many conservatives, but an archenemy on the left. 

Last year, he shepherded through hotly debated laws that placed limits on what young children could be taught at school related to gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as a bill – the Stop WOKE Act – that curbed instruction on race and diversity at both K-12 and higher education, and even in the workplace. 

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It’s the latter law that has run into legal obstacles, with a federal court last fall putting an injunction on its limits on higher education, which the judge found unconstitutional and “positively dystopian.” 

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That hasn’t slowed DeSantis and his administration from forging ahead. 

A few weeks ago, DeSantis sent a letter to the state’s public universities, requesting information about programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion as well as critical race theory. The governor wants to know whether these efforts are being funded with state dollars, and if so, how much.

It’s fine for a governor or legislature to seek information about how taxpayer funding is used. Lindsey Burke, education policy director at The Heritage Foundation, recently wrote that the average American university “has more than 45 individuals with jobs devoted to promoting so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion.” She argues it’s not only fair but also important for DeSantis to call out this bureaucratic bloat. 

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What’s legally troublesome is if the government is attempting to silence viewpoints it doesn’t like or chill speech in any way. 

And that’s how a group of Florida professors saw this latest move. Last week, they filed a motion to prevent the enforcement of the memo, which they consider an end run around the enjoined law. 

“The First Amendment is clear: No politician holds more power than the Constitution,” said Jerry Edwards, staff attorney of the ACLU of Florida, in a statement about the letter.

A federal judge on Thursday, however, ruled in the DeSantis administration's favor that it could go through with the information gathering without violating the court order. 

It’s not just the ACLU that has gotten involved with the Stop WOKE Act. It’s also the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (a group that hardly can be confused for progressive), whose lawsuit helped earn the initial injunction. 

This is the legal quandary facing DeSantis. 

Shouldn't Florida taxpayers have a say? 

So what’s a conservative governor to do?

After all, it’s Florida residents’ tax dollars that are funding much of the leftist ideology at public universities. It’s a fair assumption that the general population of Florida leans more right than the typically liberal college campus. In fact, it’s well-documented that faculty at U.S. universities are overwhelmingly Democratic, and that lack of political diversity has shaped what’s happening in classrooms. 

Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, said the wrangling over what universities can teach is a byproduct of having government-run colleges funded by taxpayers. 

“You have a fundamental problem of requiring people to pay for the propagation of ideas and often values that they don't like or they disagree with,” McCluskey told me. “And DeSantis in his reelection captured the dissatisfaction of a lot of people in Florida who are saying, ‘Why should we keep paying for these things that we don't agree with and we find morally problematic?’ 

“And so you have an incompatibility between the idea of government-run institutions with forced taxpayer support and academic freedom, the idea that academicians should be totally in charge of governing themselves but they should be funded by other people who don’t have a choice in the matter.”

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Conservatives should stay on side of free speech

Yet, it strikes me as uncomfortable to have a governor – or any state official – placing limits on speech at a public institution. This is, after all, what conservatives and free speech advocates have long fought against at universities. 

DeSantis' frustration is understandable, but using the government to force a more level academic playing field comes with risks. Even if you’re sympathetic to DeSantis’ mission, if he can limit expression in this way, so could a very different governor. 

DeSantis would be better off focusing on reasonable K-12 parameters, as these schools don’t have the same tradition of academic freedom as their higher ed counterparts. Plus, by design, young children learn differently than college students do.

Rather than push for limiting viewpoints on the quad – regardless of how woke or progressive – the governor should encourage greater political diversity among faculty and administrators. 

DeSantis would likely achieve the same results without running into constitutional roadblocks – a safer way to become a conservative warrior. 

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at Paste BN. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques