Former University of West Florida Board of Trustees Chair Scott Yenor spoke at a political meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, last night. He took credit for helping to “conceive and implement” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s higher education agenda. Inweekly received a recording of the public meeting.
Background: When the governor announced his appointment in January, Yenor came under fire for his controversial stance on the role of women in American society, labeling career-oriented women as “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.” He decried colleges and universities as “the citadels of our gynecocracy”—a form of government run by women.
- Gov. DeSantis claimed limited familiarity with Scott Yenor’s most controversial beliefs, particularly regarding Yenor’s views on women and higher education, but repeatedly defended his appointment on broader ideological grounds.
HELPING RON
At the Coeur d’Alene event, Yenor, who is a Boise State professor, outlined his involvement in education policy reforms in Idaho and Florida.
He described being recruited directly by the governor: “But as a result of kind of my actions, I got a call from Gov. DeSantis who wanted to do some of the same things in Florida, and I haven’t been on sabbatical that year. And so, I got an apartment in Tallahassee and I lived in Florida for a year.”
What started as a one-year arrangement extended to two years. “And then I ended up living in Florida for two years, helping the governor both conceive of his agenda on higher ed and K through 12 education and implement that agenda over the course of a couple of years, which was purely the honor of a lifetime.”
Yenor also shared candid observations about his time in Tallahassee: “It was a lot of fun. It was kind of lonely. It’s Tallahassee. I don’t know… And I’ll say that it’s kind of a swamp. It’s 90 degrees and 90 degrees, about 90% humidity kind of days.”
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He detailed his direct involvement in several Florida education reforms:
On DEI elimination: “And the governor passed all of the DEI ban was really the first person who did it, went after the offices and the functions of the offices and then implemented it with determination by taking the heads off these offices and really improving Florida’s higher ed system that both colleges and universities from the top down with these policies banning everything on the universities.”
On curriculum changes: “And then he did more things that were really cool that I was involved in. He looked at the General Ed courses, courses that everyone had to take in if you’re going to graduate from Florida’s universities. And you just went through and identified the ones that were left-wing ideology, and they eliminated them from the General Ed. Lots of conversation among the faculty. They just did it, and no one talks about it anymore.”
On teacher certification: “They regulated schools of education, which usually are among the most left-wing departments or colleges on college campuses. And they basically said, if your school of education is a left-wing school of education, there’s ways of identifying this, but you can’t certify teachers. And every one of those schools went, ‘Oh, you have plenary power over teacher certification.’ Yes. And they all started changing how to do teacher preparation.”
Yenor concluded that Florida proved a model for other states: “And what the DeSantis administration, I think, proved is that with the use of political power and a good vision, you can get things done in your education system.”
So Yenor is stating in public that the DeSantis team conspired to systematically target and remove courses based entirely on their perceived ideological content. Not established or proven but perceived content. Further, that targeting is not equal “viewpoint diversity” but deliberately prejudiced against only one set of perceived positions. The lawsuits practically write themselves.