Exposé reveals one Florida university's divisive DEI programs

Florida International University (FIU) in Miami is the subject of a recent exposé for implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming that depicts the U.S. as an inherently racist country. 

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo obtained documents showing “that starting with the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020,” FIU administrators’ statements have claimed that the U.S. is a nation of “white supremacy,” according to the Daily Mail. 

Rufo’s Mar. 1 Substack report, “The Commissars Will See You Now,” describes racially-segregated discussions, activism training for students, and dictates for diversifying students and faculty. 

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The DEI office-sponsored discussion series, Rufo writes, segregates students into groups labeled “self-identified People of Color” and “self-identified White Students,” teaching them that “blackness is inherently noble, and whiteness inherently corrupt.” 

FIU also incentivizes students’ activism through a badge system, but the activism training is exclusively for left-wing causes like Black Lives Matter and the “anti-gun movement,” according to Rufo’s report. 

To diversify faculty, or at least to measure their commitment to diversity, FIU requires a diversity statement from applicants. The search committee must participate in DEI training and is overseen by “diversity advocates” that Rufo says “work to maintain the party line.”

Graduate programs are subject to similar calls for diversity, including through scholarships that only allow certain racial groups to apply. 

FIU is one of several campuses investigated by Rufo. Recent exposés include a deep dive into the University of South Florida (USF), a campus “pushing DEI, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and related ideologies onto its students,” according to Campus Reform. 

Around the time of the USF investigation, Rufo said that Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis should “not hesitate in demolishing these offices, terminating the employment of their commissars, and restoring the colorblind equality, individual merit, and scholarly excellence as the guiding principles of the academy.”

The recently-introduced HB 999, part of DeSantis’ 2023 legislative agenda, would do just that. One provision of the bill would effectively end DEI programming at Florida’s public colleges and universities. 

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Rufo’s Substack report suggests that DEI advanced so quickly at FIU that the system of administrators must soon be dismantled. 

“If left unchecked, the DEI bureaucracies will swallow universities whole,” he says. “They will gradually re-segregate higher education according to the dictates of intersectionality and turn the principle of individual rights on its head.”

Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties listed for comment and will update this article accordingly. 

Follow Brandi Cunha on Twitter.