Florida University Conceals Rampant DEI, CRT on Campus, Insider Report Says

A University of Florida insider released a report exclusively to The Epoch Times showing that the university underreported its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, even as the governor’s office confirmed universities across the state have spent millions of dollars promoting DEI.

The insider, who spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, said the University of Florida (UF) funding numbers turned in at the direction of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did not disclose a vast network of personnel and programs pushing DEI, which includes Critical Race Theory (CRT).

He pointed out that as many as 33 DEI liaisons at UF fell under the radar when the university self-reported its DEI programs to the governor’s office.

The insider also noted that the university had ties to a “Youth Gender” program, which he said has conducted 50 mastectomies on teens 16 and older.

Dr. Michael Haller, who heads the gender clinic, said in a June 2022 interview with University of South Florida’s Health News Florida that UF Health provides gender-affirming treatment to approximately 200 patients.

The insider said a local news article printed in August 2022 reported that the Youth Gender Clinic performed mastectomies on teenagers, some of whom were only 16 years old.

He included a report from the “Do No Harm” medical organization that reported that UF’s College of Medicine admission and educational programs were “indoctrinating students using teachings at the core of CRT.”

In a Thursday statement, the governor’s press secretary Byran Griffin said DeSantis’s office believes that DEI and CRT initiatives in the state’s public education institutions are “significantly misreported and underreported,” noting the lack of transparency surrounding the gender clinic.

“Nonetheless, what was reported revealed an extraordinary misuse of taxpayer dollars to promote a political agenda at the expense of academic focus,” Griffin said.

Key findings by the governor’s office released to the media on Thursday showed that taxpayers had financed a chief diversity officer at the UF for $750,000 per year, and another $445,000 for the University of Central Florida’s vice president for DEI and their assistants.

The Center for Environmental Equity and Justice at Florida A&M University cost $1.8 million in tax dollars per year, according to the news release.

The DEI offices at the University of South Florida and Florida International University cost taxpayers another $2 million dollars, according to Griffin.

“As an example of a failure to report completely, we know from their website that UF has a ‘Youth Gender’ program. Unfortunately, this was not reported in their survey response,” Griffin said.

The UF insider said his 67-page report took five months of research and included interviews with staff and students at UF. In most cases, the report included material that documented his sources. With his permission, The Epoch Times provided the report to the governor’s office for comment.

According to the insider, UF spent $3.4 million in total on DEI programs.

The total for DEI programs across the Florida university system was more than $15 million in public funds, according to a spreadsheet he supplied.

His report showed that DEI has tentacles extending into UF colleges of education, journalism, law, and medicine.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/exclusive-florida-governors-office-only-scratched-surface-of-crt-at-university-of-florida_5033252.html

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Chicago Public Schools Are Corrupt and Unsafe. School Choice Is the Only Solution

Earlier this year, the Chicago Board of Education’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released its annual report, which notes, “In Fiscal Year 2022, the OIG received 1,825 complaints alleging misconduct, waste, fraud and financial mismanagement at Chicago Public Schools [CPS], including allegations of adult-on-student sexual misconduct and other misconduct by CPS employees and vendors.”

For the sake of brevity, let’s focus on the three most alarming red flags identified by the report: rampant adult-on-student sexual abuse, extensive fraud concerning the spending of pandemic relief funds, and persistent miscoding of truant students as transfers.

It is only a matter of time before Chicago reaches the tipping point in which public schools will finally have to compete with private schools and all other educational alternatives on an even playing field.

Obviously, the most disconcerting allegation is the apparent widespread sexual abuse inflicted by CPS staff on students. In fiscal year 2022, the OIG received 470 complaints about alleged sexual abuse, including 81 instances of inappropriate touching, 35 of grooming, 33 of sexual abuse, and 26 of sexual acts.

As the report notes, adult-on-student sexual abuse has been a longstanding problem within CPS. In fact, over the past four years, the OIG’s Sexual Allegations Unit (SAU) has opened 1,735 cases. To date, the SAU has closed 1,384 of those cases. However, it has found “policy violations” in only 302. Even more incredibly, only 16 have resulted in criminal charges.

Perhaps most concerning is that even when the SAU found ample evidence of sexual abuse, CPS repeatedly ignored the findings, dismissed the SAU’s recommended actions, and gave the staff members a slap on the wrist. In one example, in which a high school teacher was accused of grooming and the evidence overwhelmingly supported strict disciplinary measures (“The OIG recommended termination of the teacher’s employment and placement of a ‘Do Not Hire’ designation in his personnel file”), CPS decided to give the perpetrator a “Last Chance Agreement, issued a second warning, and made him complete additional training prior to reinstatement.”

If extensive adult-on-student sexual-abuse allegations are not enough to make CPS clean up its act, how about the fact that it has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funds on unwarranted teacher bonuses?

Overall, CPS received $2.8 billion in federal pandemic relief funding, which was supposed to be spent on pressing projects such as upgrading HVAC systems. Alas, to date, CPS has spent $1.49 billion of its emergency relief money, with a whopping 77 percent of that amount going to “employee salaries and benefits.”

Unsurprisingly, CPS has a long track record of funneling money to its employees in the forms of “Extra Pay,” “Stipends,” and “Overtime.” Per the report: “In 2021, Extra Pay hit nearly $74 million — a 17 percent increase from the most recent pre-pandemic calendar year of 2019. Over five years, Extra Pay jumped 74 percent — far more than the average teacher’s salary rose over a similar five-year period.”

In other words, CPS has been caught red-handed using federal COVID-19 relief funds to pad their employees’ paychecks rather than using that money for its intended purpose of addressing the adverse academic impacts wrought by public school closures during the pandemic.

Lastly, the report details the ongoing malfeasance concerning “Persistent Miscoding of Student Transfer and Lost Child Data.” In a nutshell, CPS has a bad history of “deliberately miscod[ing] students who were truant as transfers or lost children so that these students’ absences would not count against the school’s attendance rate.”

In 2021, the OIG uncovered more than 5,000 “unverified out-of-district transfers districtwide.” Why does this matter? First, far too many of these unverified transfers eventually get “lost” in the system, meaning they do not enroll in a new school, as they are required to do by law. Second, there is a financial incentive to misreport because schools receive more money if their attendance and graduation rates remain above certain thresholds.

By no means is the OIG report an exhaustive list of all the problems that have manifested in CPS over recent years. Aside from the issues highlighted in the report, CPS is abysmally failing to sufficiently educate the more than 320,000 students it is responsible for.

Last year, CPS spent a record-setting $29,000 per student. On the other hand, the top 20 private schools in the Windy City spent on average $11,442 per student. What’s more, these private schools stayed open for in-person learning throughout the pandemic, their students consistently outperform their public school peers, and incidents of sexual abuse are almost nonexistent.

If ever there were a time for Chicago families to demand universal school choice, wherein funds are allotted directly to students instead of government-run schools, it is now. School choice is a nonpartisan issue that is widely supported by almost all demographic groups, particularly among minority families who are all too often stuck sending their kids to poor-performing schools based solely upon their ZIP codes.

If there is any reason for optimism, consider this: Over the past 11 years, CPS enrollment has been in a precipitous decline. Almost every year, data show that thousands of students are fleeing CPS and enrolling in private or charter schools or being homeschooled. Throughout the nation, the school-choice revolution is gaining momentum. It is only a matter of time before Chicago reaches the tipping point in which public schools will finally have to compete with private schools and all other educational alternatives on an even playing field. That is what school choice is all about, and the results show that it works.

https://spectator.org/chicago-public-schools-are-corrupt-and-unsafe-school-choice-is-the-only-solution

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Harvard fires far-Left fat monster

Harvard has scrapped its 'misinformation' research program and severed its ties with the project's controversial director, who used her position to cast doubt over the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The project's leader Dr Joan Donavan is a so-called expert in the dangers of social media misinformation, and has publicly challenged the Hunter Biden laptop story during her time at the university.

She led the project since its inception in 2019 with the aim to 'help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation'.

Donavan used her role to cast doubt over the media's coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which saw the president's son's missing laptop appear in a Delaware repair shop containing a treasure trove of illicit images and damaging emails from his work at Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

The story was notably suppressed by several major media corporations ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

The director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy announced the institution was cutting ties with Donovan in an email obtained by Semafor.

The email stated that the Technology and Social Change Project, which studied disinformation online, was being shuttered for what the outlet referred to as 'bureaucratic reasons.'

'The Kennedy School's standing policy is that all research projects must be led by a full faculty member,' said the email.

'While there can be limited exceptions, those can't continue indefinitely without a faculty member as the principal project leader and academic head.

According to her Harvard staff page, Donavan supposedly 'leads the field in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation and disinformation campaigns.'

Alongside her focus on the Hunter Biden laptop story, she has also analyzed topics including white nationalism and social change activism online.

Donavan utilized her position within the Harvard project to cast doubt over the Hunter Biden laptop story's veracity after it was first published by the New York Post on the eve of the 2020 presidential election.

Despite the story being stood up in the years following its original publication, Donavan remained defiant in her public skepticism.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11710991/Harvard-shuts-misinformation-program-releases-director-skeptical-Hunter-Biden-laptop.html

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