Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law yesterday that will defund diversity and inclusion initiatives at the state’s public colleges and solidify his quest to prevent the teaching of race, identity, and history in the classroom.
“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination,” DeSantis said at a news conference discussing the bill. “And that has no place in our public institutions. This bill says the whole experiment with DEI is coming to an end in the state of Florida.”
DeSantis has consistently whipped up public sentiment against what he calls “the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory” while triggering nationwide alarm with Florida’s 2022 Parental Rights in Education bill, which prohibited discussion of gender and sexual identity in early grades and was later expanded by the state board of education to include grades through 12th. All of this has had a chilling effect on educators, who have canceled classes in increasingly vain attempts to hang on to their jobs.
There are reasons to be hopeful.
In what will likely be a harbinger of more legal action, last November, a Florida judge issued a temporary injunction against DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act," legislation designed to curtail discussion of race in Florida schools and businesses. While the injunction didn't last, the judge framed the debate for future action by blasting the bill as unconstitutional, Orwellian, and “positively dystopian."
On another front, a powerful corporate player appears poised to give DeSantis a real fight.
DeSantis has picked a series of expensive legal battles with Disney—and CEO Bob Iger specifically—after the two publicly clashed over the education bill in 2022. DeSantis has now turned Disney into a “woke” leadership talking point and punching bag. Disney, which recently sued the DeSantis administration for “political retaliation,” seems unlikely to tolerate the administration’s attacks on its business or inclusion much longer. “Iger never loses,” Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld tells the Washington Post. “He won’t miss his moment when it comes up.”
But until then, the battles are personal.
Florida fifth-grade teacher Jenna Barbee is under investigation after a parent complained that she showed her students a Disney movie featuring a gay character. The film, Strange World, is about the fragile relationship between humans and the environment and was screened as part of a teaching module on ecosystems and interconnectedness. In a minor subplot, the character has a crush on another boy, which Barbee says she missed.
But that's not the point, she says.
"[The module] talks about love to all things, and that's literally what this movie represents," the Hernando County School District teacher tells NPR. "I find it interesting that now I'm getting in trouble for a similar topic."
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ruth Umoh.
