It didn't take long for the revamped New College of Florida board of trustees, now dominated by conservative allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis, to make another major move in its quest to remake the small liberal-arts college.

Amid broader efforts to recruit new faculty to New College and attract students that trustee Christopher Rufo called "mission-aligned," the board also has set its crosshairs on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives.

Rufo, one of DeSantis' six recent appointees, is a senior fellow with The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. According to Rufo, DEI in higher education "restricts academic freedom," "degrades the rigor of scholarship" and "treats people differently" based on skin color.

The board on Feb. 28 directed Richard Corcoran, the university's new leader, to eliminate the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence and move its employees to other departments. The office has a $442,227 budget, four full-time employees and three part-time student employees.

The trustees a month ago made waves in higher education by selecting Corcoran, a Republican former House speaker and state education commissioner, as the school's interim president after removing its former leader, Patricia Okker. A Feb. 28 meeting of the trustees was Corcoran's first at the helm.

Another part of the move to scrap the school's Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence involved a regulation that will prohibit the Sarasota liberal-arts school from establishing a DEI office or hiring an officer for such a department.

The regulation defines DEI, in part, as any "effort to manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to race, sex, color, or ethnicity, apart from ensuring colorblind and sex-neutral admissions and hiring" in accordance with state and federal standards.

The regulation is based on a report written by Rufo for the Manhattan Institute titled "Abolish DEI Bureaucracies and Restore Colorblind Equality in Public Universities."

Rufo's influence on the changes drew criticism from Diego Villada, a professor of theater and performance studies at New College.

"I'm just a humble theater director, but I would hate for you to be making systemic decisions based on the work of board members who are citing themselves in a politically minded think-tank piece from nonempirically approached and nonpeer-reviewed scholarship," Villada told the trustees Tuesday.

The New College board also elected to nix mandatory diversity-training exercises on the roughly 700-student campus.

Trustee Grace Keenan, who also is president of the New College Student Alliance, challenged the board's decisions, essentially arguing that the DEI requirements on campus are not overbearing.

"This is not a very impressive DEI bureaucracy is what I'm saying," Keenan said.

"Then there should be very little resistance to eliminating it. In a sense, that's good news," Rufo interjected.

Keenan replied that it "seems like we have spent more time and resources to find out what DEI we do than we are [spending] on doing actual DEI."

DON'T SAY THEY?

A proposal filed this week for the 2023 legislative session aims to bar instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity through eighth grade, expanding a controversial 2022 law that prohibited such instruction in early grades.

The bill (HB 1223) would build on the measure that was given the formal title "Parental Rights in Education" by sponsors but disparagingly dubbed "don't say gay" by opponents. The 2022 law prohibited instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade.

But the eight-page bill has drawn attention for another provision designed to prevent school employees from telling students their preferred pronouns if those pronouns "do not correspond to his or her sex" or asking students about their preferred pronouns.

The bill says that it "shall be the policy" of all public-schools "that a person's sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person's sex."

Some opponents have labeled the bill "don't say they."

The LGBTQ-advocacy organization Equality Florida criticized the measure and said the 2022 law was part of a "censorship agenda" driven by DeSantis.

"The DeSantis regime isn't satisfied with a hostile takeover of traditional public schools. They envision a future where LGBTQ families have no school choice to find dignity or respect," Jon Harris Maurer, Equality Florida's public policy director, said in a statement.

Rep. Adam Anderson, R-Palm Harbor, filed the bill for consideration during the legislative session that will start Tuesday.

SOFTENING THE BLOW

With state regulators poised to consider proposals that would increase monthly electric bills, Florida Power & Light on Wednesday said lower-than-expected natural gas prices this year could take the edge off.

FPL filed a petition at the state Public Service Commission that would trim increases proposed to take effect in April. FPL's filing came two days after Duke Energy Florida filed a similar petition based on natural-gas prices.

The utility companies' moves could mean that customers of both would still pay more each month — just not as much as originally proposed.

"This is good news for customers," Armando Pimentel, president and CEO of FPL, said in a statement. "We recognize that sharp inflation is impacting our customers and that every dollar counts, which is why we are pleased to provide relief to customers as fuel prices have moderated."

Ryan Dailey reports for the News Service of Florida.

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