Higher education, long dominated by Democrats, is shifting rightward in Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis as conservative politicians become presidents at public universities.
Last year, the Florida Board of Governors hired former Republican state Sen. Ray Rodrigues as chancellor of the State University System of Florida from a pool of eight applicants. The board appoints trustees at the state’s 40 public colleges and universities, which over the past six months have considered five GOP lawmakers to lead schools.
Two of the lawmakers have started work as college presidents, one is expected to assume the role next month, one has downplayed his candidacy and one was narrowly rejected last month after complaints of interference from state officials.
“The selection of a president is up to the college’s trustees. Of course, we support selecting a qualified individual committed to truth and academics and not trendy ideological agendas,” Jeremy Redfern, Mr. DeSantis’ press secretary, told The Washington Times.
Officially, trustees at each institution select a chief executive without input from Mr. DeSantis’ office. Unofficially, conservatives say trustees are wise to hire Republicans with political connections to lobby for funds in the GOP-trending Sunshine State, as Democrats have done in deep-blue states for years.
“In blue states, it is routine for college presidencies to go to blue state politicians and politically connected individuals,” said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at Boston University. “There are far more blue state politicians heading up public colleges than red state politicians.”
In Florida, left-leaning professors worry that the new trustees and presidents support Mr. DeSantis’ agenda to end woke higher education. They say that infringes on their academic freedom to speak freely about race, gender and other hot-button issues in class.
Faculty especially reject language in several recent DeSantis-backed laws that claim higher education is indoctrinating students in leftist ideology, said Meera Sitharam, a tenured computer science professor at the flagship University of Florida. She said some newer trustees have parroted this language.
“They don’t really seem to care whether this would callously destroy a public higher education system painstakingly built over decades,” said Ms. Sitharam, president of the UF chapter of United Faculty of Florida, a statewide professors’ union.
She added: “After such a destruction, Plan B appears to be decentralization and privatization of education, much espoused by donors who are open about their God-given wealth [and right] to impose their God’s kingdom on society.”
Once a blue and then a swing state in national politics, Florida has trended deep red in recent years, delivering its electoral votes to former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. In last November’s midterm, Mr. DeSantis cruised to a second term as governor in a double-digit landslide. Now the governor is running for president.
“Expect this to be just the beginning. There will be more conservative college and university presidents selected to fill vacancies,” said Mike Hill, a former Republican state representative.
He added in an email that recent edicts from the governor and Florida Department of Education purging diversity, equity and inclusion offices from the university system point toward “a more conservative approach to education.”
“This reflects a rejection of the left’s approach to education and the fact that Florida has become a red state and will continue to be in the foreseeable future,” said Mr. Hill, who belongs to Project 21, a network of Black conservatives.
Starting with the University of Florida, at least five prominent conservative politicians have recently become presidents or appeared on short lists of candidates in the state system.
• In November, UF announced that the sole finalist for its top job was Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican and former university president who holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.
Mr. Sasse resigned from the Senate in January to replace Kent Fuchs, who in 2016 was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Science Board and National Science Foundation.
• In January, the Board of Governors appointed a conservative majority of trustees to replace a left-leaning president at New College of Florida. Those trustees proceeded in February to hire Richard Corcoran, a former Republican state speaker of the House, as interim president of the small liberal arts campus in Sarasota.
• After restarting its presidential search and dropping the requirement for a terminal degree, South Florida State College last month unveiled Republican state Rep. Fred Hawkins as its sole finalist. Mr. Hawkins, a DeSantis ally with a bachelor’s degree and no academic experience, has authored legislation advancing the governor’s battle against Walt Disney Co. over its transgender activism.
The college, which operates three campuses in rural Highlands County, recently interviewed Mr. Hawkins and has promised a decision this month.
• In April, DeSantis ally Henry Mack, senior chancellor at the Florida Department of Education, lost the top job at Florida Gulf Coast University by one vote after some faculty complained of interference by state officials. Trustees ultimately hired Aysegul Timur, an FGCU vice president and vice provost.
• In March, state Rep. Randy Fine confirmed Mr. DeSantis had urged him to pursue the presidency of Florida Atlantic University. Mr. Fine expressed disinterest, noting that he plans to run for the state Senate.
In an email to The Times, a State University System of Florida spokeswoman rejected allegations of partisan interference by its Board of Governors in presidential searches.
The board has “delegated the selection of presidents to the individual university boards of trustees, with a member of the Board of Governors appointed to each search committee to ensure a fair and thorough process,” said Renee Ferguson, the system’s assistant vice chancellor for public affairs.
Nationally, former politicians comprise a small fraction of university presidents, but Democrats are far more common than Republicans.
A recent survey of more than 1,000 college presidents from the American Council on Education found that just 4% entered academia from a “public sector/government” career background. Only 0.6% had an undergraduate degree as their highest credential compared with 83.6% who reported holding a doctorate.
Outside of Florida, only three Republican politicians without academic experience have headed public universities in recent decades.
• Former Bush administration official and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels served as president of Purdue University for a decade before retiring on Jan. 1.
• Former U.S. Agriculture Secretary and Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue became chancellor of the University System of Georgia last year.
• Former Oklahoma legislator and Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb is scheduled to become president of the University of Central Oklahoma on July 1.
While conservatives applaud the rightward shift, Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education history at the University of Pennsylvania, calls the moves an “erosion of trust” in higher education to be unbiased.
“DeSantis has made it clear that he thinks the universities are in the hands of a ‘woke mob’ and the only correction for that is appointing leaders who will stand up to it,” Mr. Zimmerman said in an email. “That framing shows just how far we have descended from the academic ideals of objectivity and neutrality.”
By comparison, at least seven Democratic politicians have become university presidents without previous academic leadership experience over the past 20 years.
• Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who served in the Obama administration, headed the University of California system from 2013 to 2020. She now serves in the Biden administration as a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
• Former U.S. Sen. and Oklahoma Gov. David Boren was president of the University of Oklahoma from 1994 to 2018.
• Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, headed the University of North Carolina system from 2005 to 2010.
• Mark Gearan, Mr. Clinton’s White House communications director, led private Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York from 1999 to 2017.
• Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations, headed the University of Miami from 2001 to 2015.
• Former U.S. Sen. and Nebraska Gov. Bob Kerrey served as president of the New School, a college in New York City, from 2001 to 2010.
• William Bulger, a former state lawmaker from South Boston, served as president of the University of Massachusetts from 1996 to 2003.
These names make it “silly” to suggest that it’s “some kind of unprecedented outrage” for career politicians to run Florida’s public colleges, said Wilfred McClay, a historian at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
“None of them had the prior academic administrative experience of a Ben Sasse,” Mr. McClay told The Times.
