DeSantis Office Fires Back After Claims Students Need to Register Their ‘Political Views’ in Florida
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office on Wednesday responded to viral claims that students have to register their political views with the state.
A spokesman for the Republican governor, Bryan Griffin, told Fox News that it’s not true that students, professors, and faculty have to register their political views.
“No, students and faculty are not required to ‘register their political views,’” Griffin said Wednesday. “This same fake claim was circling the liberal Twittersphere after the bill was signed in 2021. It was debunked then. It has been debunked again, now.”
This week, several verified Twitter users—including author Stephen King, USA Today reporter Josh Meyer, MSNBC columnist Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and MSNBC analyst Fernand Amandi—spread the claim. Some re-posted a 2021 article from left-wing outlet Salon that claimed that a Florida state law that calls for viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom in colleges forces students and faculty to register their views.
King, without making any citations, simply wrote, “DeSantis signs bill requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with state. I. Can’t. Even.”
But Griffin said that “viewpoint diversity surveys are anonymous, voluntary, and no personal information is collected by them at all—only feedback on the intellectual freedom of the campus environment, which is what the survey was designed to determine.”
Law
According to the text of the law, which was signed by DeSantis in June of last year, it directs the Florida State Board of Education to “require each Florida College System institution to conduct an annual assessment of the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity at that institution.”
“The State Board of Education shall select or create an objective, nonpartisan, and statistically valid survey to be used by each institution which considers the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and members of the college community, including students, faculty, and staff, feel
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