Kamala Harris turns down DeSantis invitation to discuss Florida curriculum

Vice President Kamala Harris rejected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ offer to debate the state’s history curriculum after Harris claimed the state was obfuscating the horrors of slavery.

Speaking in Orlando, Florida, at the 20th Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Quadrennial Convention, Harris dismissed the governor’s offer to set the record straight on Florida’s history education.

“They attempt to legitimize these unnecessary debates with a proposal that most recently came in of a politically motivated roundtable,” Harris said in the Tuesday speech. 

DESANTIS ON WHY HE’S STANDING HIS GROUND AGAINST VP HARRIS: ‘IT’S WRONG TO LET FALSE NARRATIVES STAND’

President Biden listens as Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during an event to establish the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, D.C., on July 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

She continued, “Well, I’m here in Florida, and I will tell you there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact. There were no redeeming qualities of slavery.”

DeSantis invited Harris to discuss Florida’s new educational curriculum after the vice president claimed Florida classrooms would downplay the negative impacts of slavery.

A component of the new instruction on Black history — which discusses “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” — has been a point of contention among its critics. 

MATT GAETZ CALLS DESANTIS ‘THIRSTY’ FOR INVITING KAMALA HARRIS TO DISCUSS BLACK HISTORY STANDARDS

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Getty Images)

In a letter sent Monday, DeSantis, who is seeking his party’s nomination in the 2024 presidential election, touted Florida as the “number one state in the nation for education” and argued he was making record investments in students, teachers and schools.

“We are committed to teaching truth, not partisan narratives,” DeSantis wrote, promoting the school choice program. “We have rooted out hateful Marxist theories like ‘Critical Race Theory’ from our classrooms. We have eliminated ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ initiatives in school administration and hiring practices. We have, instead, focused on the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, science, civics and history.”

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gestures as he speaks at the Republican Party Of Iowa’s annual Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday. (Rachel Mummey/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

DeSantis said politicians in Washington, D.C., have chosen to “malign our state and its residents.” He added that over the past several weeks, the Biden administration has repeatedly “disparaged” the state of Florida and misinformed Americans about its education system.

“[Harris] came to Florida to attack us, and she’s trying to attack me,” DeSantis said Tuesday as he answered a question from Fox News Digital. “But she’s really attacking the people that worked hard on this and have done a lot of yeoman’s work. And so that’s just wrong. I think it’s wrong to let lies be perpetuated. It’s wrong to let false narratives stand.”

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.