Burgess Owens: “I thank Chairwoman Foxx for her remarkable vision and leadership. Mr. Chair, I will speak to the ACE Act, which is a…”

“I thank Chairwoman Foxx for her remarkable vision and leadership. Mr. Chair, I will speak to the ACE Act, which is a part of the End Woke Higher Education Act. Our Nation's education system is built on the fundamental values of free speech, freedom of religion, and the guaranteed rights of hearty and healthy debates. These core principles are so inherent to America that we often take them for granted. We, over time, assume that these freedoms will always be safe, without any effort on our part to protect them. Unfortunately, this is not the case. A glance at our university system reveals a troubling trend: Ideological conformity and intolerance when not compliant is undermining academic freedom. There is a systemic acceptance of a new litmus test in the accreditation world. Institutions of higher learning are facing immense pressure from accreditors to conform to the anti-American Marxist doctrine of DEI and critical race theory or risk losing access to Federal funding. This is not the education our Founders envisioned in their quest for America to continue to be a more perfect Union. My dad was a college professor for 40 years at Florida A&M. Being raised in Tallahassee, Florida, in the shadows of FAMU and Florida State, I remember distinctly the era when our Nation's colleges and universities prided themselves on merit and competition.…”