At a press briefing, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was asked if he's worried about Florida's higher education system as the Trump Administration attacks Harvard.
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00:00At the national level, we're hearing about Harvard, people here are very concerned about our education institutions here in Florida.
00:08We're hearing controversy about it. We want to hear your thoughts on what's happening here with the situation of higher education in Florida.
00:14Well, I can say we are number one in the nation eight years in a row in public university system.
00:20That's what you want to be.
00:21We've done a lot of things that have been pathbreaking, and now I think you're seeing the Trump administration really lean in.
00:33And there have been articles, Wall Street Journal, I think a month or two ago, and then even the New York Times saying, you know, if you want to see the direction, look to Florida and look what we've done.
00:44And New York Times is kind of like pointing out these things like and they're trying to say how bad it is.
00:48And like our voters are like, yes, thank you for doing that.
00:51But some of the things we did is, one, we just laid down a marker.
00:56The goal of our university system is education, not indoctrination.
01:01We are not going to go down the road of a Columbia University or some of these places, which their whole academic programs have really been corrupted by ideology.
01:15We were the first state in the nation to eliminate D, E, and I from our public university system.
01:21We did that years ago.
01:23We did that a couple of years ago, and when we did it, that was like going into the teeth of the monster, because like every elite institution, not just higher ed, corporate America, union government, federal government, they were all for this.
01:38And, and obviously I think people have seen, seen it for what it is.
01:42So we really led, but in 23, 2023 for us to do that, that was, we were standing alone at the time.
01:48Now the, the winds have, have shifted and, and we've got the wind that are back on that.
01:53We've also recognized that universities, public universities need to serve the interests of the people of the state of Florida.
02:03It's not just, they have a right to just do whatever they want and these faculty can do whatever they want and then get money from the taxpayer without any accountability.
02:12That doesn't work.
02:14If you want to start your own private university and do that, that's fine.
02:17But in a public university, our goals are, we want people, we want academics focused on the pursuit of truth.
02:25We want to make sure that the programs are rigorous and we want to make sure we're preparing our students to be citizens of this Republic.
02:32Now that was really what higher education was always through most of Western history until relatively recently, maybe the last many decades.
02:41And so we said that's, that higher education has gone off kilter and we're going to get it back on track.
02:48Now, part of the way you do that is to recognize that ultimately, uh, you can't have a situation where good professors who reject the prevailing campus leftism are blackballed by the existing faculty and not allowed to come in and get a tenured position.
03:06So what we did is two things, one, we now have law in place, all tenured professors must undergo review every five years and can be let go for poor performance.
03:16Now that was, no one thought that was possible just a few years ago.
03:23The other thing we've done is we have taken the hiring and put it into the hands of the boards of trustees and the university presidents.
03:35So for example, you can now go Florida state as president can go, if you want to hire somebody from Georgetown, you can do it.
03:44The board can do and approve it.
03:46And the faculty aren't allowed to blackball somebody, uh, who doesn't have the right.
03:51Cause we're basically academia is if you, if you say what you really believe and it conflicts with orthodoxy, uh, you're in trouble.
03:59And so you either got to bottle it up, you got to tow the party line or, or whatever.
04:04So we've, we've, we transcend it.
04:06So they brought in a lot of great faculty.
04:08They processed out through the post tenure review, a lot of unproductive tenured faculty.
04:13And, you know, the professors that are the most political and activists tend to be the least productive on the core academic things.
04:20And I remember when the post tenure review started, this is probably like a year ago, there was articles, Oh, there's a brain drain from Florida as professors are shown the door.
04:30And I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, if Marxist professors are leaving Florida, that is not a bad thing for Florida.
04:37So we, but we've, so we've, we've done major reforms.
04:50We have very clear expectations and people that are involved in the universities have to meet those expectations.
04:56You know, when they had the October 7th, 2023 attacks in the aftermath, uh, from those attacks by Hamas and Israel.
05:04And what Jewish students were facing on many college campuses around the country was disgusting.
05:10Uh, it was appalling.
05:11Yeah.
05:12You didn't see that in the state of Florida.
05:13You didn't see Columbia university and the state of Florida and.
05:22And the reason is very simple.
05:24I wasn't luck that we didn't have it.
05:26It was just the simple fact that if any university president, our state allowed their university to turn into
05:34another Columbia, they would no longer be president of one of our universities.
05:38And we would make sure of that very quickly.
05:40So, well, thanks everybody.
05:42It's great to see you.
05:44We'll be back soon.
05:45God bless you.
05:46God bless the free state of Florida.