University of West Florida trustees Zack Smith and Adam Kissel have confirmation hearings this week. They appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee of Higher Education at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 25.
- They also need to be confirmed by the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Don Gaetz. However, they are not on today’s agenda.
The local Concerned Argonauts have sent letters to both committees “outlining many concerns for both Adam Kissel and Zach Smith being potential trustees for the University of West Florida.”
ZACK SMITH
February 23, 2026
RE: Confirmation of Zach Smith to the University of West Florida Board of Trustees
Dear Senator Harrell and Members of the Appropriations Committee of Higher Education,
We are writing on behalf of all Concerned Argonauts. As noted on the agenda for February 25, 2026, Zach Smith will appear before your committee for confirmation to the University of West Florida Board of Trustees.
Zach Smith’s record raises alarm bells for the health, reputation, and success of UWF.
- Perhaps most disturbingly, Mr. Smith has needlessly exposed UWF to potential lawsuits. In his haste to advance a narrow agenda, he has played loose with, and possibly violated, state rules and statutes governing communication between trustees, tenure processes, and presidential search standards.
Further, a member of the neighboring Pensacola State College (PSC) trustees, Mr. Smith waited until he was confirmed by your committee and the legislature to use his positions on public boards to promote himself and his ideology.
Why this matters: Rather than promote the institutions to which he serves as a fiduciary, he has cultivated an extensive, expressly partisan, and highly critical media presence.
- Mr. Smith should exercise greater discretion and concern about the damage his publicity campaigns are causing to the citizens of Northwest Florida. We are a conservative, faith-based community that values freedom of speech and the laws that govern our great nation, yet Zach Smith has promoted himself as an adversary to the region and the institutions he claims to serve.
We ask that you and your committee vote “no” on his confirmation.
Legal Exposure
Zach Smith’s performance on both the UWF and PSC boards of trustees involves several incidents that expose those institutions to potential lawsuits and legal reprimands.
May 2025 – led a coordinated attack on President Saunders (now Emeritus), who later resigned. This maneuver raised serious questions about procedural violations.
- Appointed by the governor to the UWF BOT the day before a regular meeting, Mr. Smith arrived with extensive and detailed “concerns.” He focused on activities that occurred years before SB 266 was enacted, yet implied violations of the law. Two other trustees joined this interrogation of the UWF president, who had enjoyed nearly universal acclaim and support. Notably, Mr. Smith led this attack during the open portion of the meeting. Dr. Saunders’ record was not a preexisting agenda item.
With whom did Mr. Smith coordinate this interrogation? Florida Sunshine Laws forbid outside trustee communication on board business. Were these rules violated? Further, given the nature of the accusations and their manner of delivery, is UWF liable for damages should Dr. Saunders pursue this as an inappropriate or defamatory pressure campaign?
June 2025 – violated the privacy of UWF faculty going up for tenure because the research subject was not in line with his personal ideological views.
- Lacking area expertise, university trustees are charged with overseeing tenure processes rather than judging such applications on their research and teaching merits. Tenure cases are among the most vigorous and exhaustive professional gatekeeping procedures. External reviewers and colleagues across campus review these files before they are vetted the the provost, if they pass those hurdles, moved to the BOT.
In addition, access to tenure files is restricted to protect both reviewers and applicants.
During the 2025-26 tenure cycle, Mr. Smith openly challenged a tenure application during its final stages before final approval. He did so primarily based upon a handful of graduate-level exam questions and similarly marginal but–crucially–politically sensitive issues.
This violation of process left a chilling effect on campus and, again, exposed UWF to a potential lawsuit had his challenge upended a strong tenure file and process.
November 2025 – As chair of the UWF Presidential Search Committee, he failed to adhere to Florida Board of Governors’ Regulation 1.002 and mismanaged the presidential search.
- This regulation plainly states, “The search committee is required to submit more than two qualified applicants, selected by a majority vote of the search committee, to the board of trustees for consideration, other than in exceptional circumstances making fulfillment of this requirement infeasible. If more than one candidate is not coming forward, the board of trustees must be notified of the reason and may decline to act.”
There were 84 applicants for the position, but after $350,000 in spending, only one–Interim President Manny Diaz–was forwarded to the BOT for a vote.
This result appears to be a direct violation of the regulation. By no standard was UWF experiencing “exceptional circumstances.” Advancing more than one candidate was far from “infeasible.” Why did Chair Smith advance only one candidate? Do those spurred candidates have standing to hold UWF liable for damages? Given the appearance of a foregone conclusion to this search, is this a case of fiscal mismanagement?
January 2026 – led opposition to deny the President of PSC a performance bonus due to personal reasons even after the president’s performance evaluation noted “no negative ratings in any category and … the Board unanimously recognize[d] Dr. Meadows as an exceptional leader who has consistently delivered outstanding results for Pensacola State College.”
- Again, Mr. Smith’s version of oversight involves abrupt and seemingly idiosyncratic standards where existing rules and processes already exist. This particular push ended in a tied vote on the PSC board. Is Mr. Smith planning further such votes, some of which are likely to expose his own board to charges of malfeasance or actionable harms?
Uncivil Discourse
Since his appointment to the PSC and UWF boards, Mr. Smith has demonstrated a record of poor judgment regarding his status as a public institutional fiduciary. His dramatic and narrowly partisan proclamations draw attention to his national media profile at the expense of the institutions and community he is charged to serve.
- The UWF community is dedicated to student success. Many of its talented faculty and staff could be working elsewhere, but they have committed themselves to the mission of students’ success.
The State of Florida has taken clear, positive steps to become and remain the #1 education system in the country.
- By contrast, Mr. Smith’s appearance of self-promotion on national topics is not matched by an equal investment in promoting UWF, PSC, and Northwest Florida. For instance, he frequently appears in a narrow slice of national cable news. In itself, this is no breach of faith; however, in his haste to build a national media profile, he is largely absent in the local community. Outside observers might reasonably conclude that UWF is a partisan and polemically-charged institution when nothing could be further from reality.
Closer to home, since his initial appointment to the PSC board in February 2025, Mr. Smith has sparked negative media coverage and caused controversy that threatens the public perceptions of UWF and PSC in the following ways:
April 2025 –publicly attacked a faculty member at PSC because he personally disagreed with the poverty research the faculty member was pursuing.
July 2025 – published an article in The Daily Signal attacking First Amendment rights and the Pensacola City Government.
August 2025 – published an additional article in The Daily Signal attacking the City of Pensacola for hosting the (adult-only) Drag Show, which was a private event over which local government, under the First Amendment, holds no authority. Unfortunately, the argument drove yet another wedge in the community and projected an image of motivated partisanship rather than thoughtful debate.
September 2025 – attacked and led the vote to take down WSRE (PBS affiliate) despite clear support from the community.
This has proven to be a particularly visible and unpopular move in the community. One local blogger to lament that PSC, under Smith, had “kill[ed] off Big Bird.”
UWF’s new president, Manny Diaz, himself has often emphasized how PBS programming helped bridge the language gap as he assimilated into American culture and the education system.
More concretely, WSRE donors have filed a lawsuit against PSC for its handling of WSRE’s dissolution.
October 2025 – publicly attacked Achieve Escambia. Achieve Escambia is a non-profit organization that brings people and resources together to create an environment where every learner can achieve their fullest potential from cradle to career.
Smith’s views are both deliberately provocative and contrary to the typically welcoming and laissez faire outlook of most citizens of Northwest Florida.
A Clear Vote
We believe the community would be best served by not confirming Zach Smith to the University of West Florida Board of Trustees.
This community deserves trustees who are dedicated to the University, as seen with the recent appointments of Kishane Patel, who is an alumnus and has a strong record of service to the University as a former Student Government Association President, and Janice Gilley, who is well-known in Escambia County and has worked at UWF in the past.
UWF is a strong university with strong leadership and deserves trustees who are willing to put the success of the university and its students above personal gain.
We appreciate your help in continuing the success of the University of West Florida by not confirming Zach Smith as trustee on the UWF Board of Trustees.
Sincerely,
Concerned Argonauts
Pensacola, FL
ADAM KISSEL
RE: Confirmation of Adam Kissel to the University of West Florida Board of Trustees
We are writing on behalf of all Concerned Argonauts. As noted on the agenda for February 25, 2026, Adam Kissel will appear before your committee to be confirmed on the University of West Florida Board of Trustees.
For the continued success of UWF and its central contributions to the panhandle and Florida, we ask that you and your committee VOTE NO on his confirmation.
Back Again, No Better
Last year, thousands of Northwest Florida citizens and UWF alumni called for a ‘no’ vote on Mr. Kissel. Indeed, Florida Senators from both parties expressed extreme skepticism on Mr. Kissel’s nomination. Both subcommittees voted against him.
- Recognizing that Mr. Kissel is a political millstone, Gov. DeSantis declined to move his nomination to the full Senate. Instead, the governor waited until the end of the legislative session and used a statutory loophole to reappoint him.
Instead of confirming a viable and valued new member of the UWF BOT, this committee now must revisit a candidate who received low marks and had to be reinstated outside legitimate legislative oversight.
This is your opportunity to confirm the people’s will and assert the legislature’s prerogatives ensuring quality higher education and access for Floridians.
Protect Florida Students
Just last week, UWF visited the Capitol. As you saw, UWF attracts some of the state’s brightest students, many of whom call the panhandle home. At the heart of our mission is to catalyze student success and contribute to the economic success of Northwest Florida and the state as a whole.
- Adam Kissel displays no commitment to that regional mission. He has no personal connection to UWF or the region and resides in West Virginia. Rather than joining the #1 higher education system in the country, he is an adjunct professor at another institution in the northeast. Mr. Kissel also works with a nationally-oriented think tank and frequently engages national policy debates. In theory, he might bring national insights to UWF’s oversight. In practice, UWF and similar universities are targets of Mr. Kissel’s project of radical change.
Florida has developed one of the strongest, most affordable public higher education systems in the country. Whatever Mr. Kissel’s goals, they do not appear to include deep investment in the UWF region or its students.
“I want college access to drop.”
Mr. Kissel displays a deep professional and personal antagonism toward supporting average middle class and working Floridians. Just this month (February 13), in a nationally-visible interview published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he stated, “I want college access to drop.”
- Elsewhere, he has written, “One solution in these circumstances is to stop funding public colleges in the first place, which means to stop having them, and instead, to privatize them.” Mr. Kissel argues that financial aid policy has undermined higher ed. Rather than study creative solutions to fund and support student access and cutting-edge research, his answer is to exaggerate the problem with vivid anecdotes and then cut off access for millions of our children and grandchildren.
Incredibly, Mr. Kissel has even claimed that the GI bill was the beginning of the downfall of higher education. UWF is a university that is consistently ranked as a top “Military Friendly” university. Just this past fall, our new president, Manny Diaz, established a new Office of Military Services to expand UWF’s military partnerships.
How would this look to the region if a trustee is confirmed who has criticized one of the most positive benefits given to our service members?
An Easy Vote
Adam Kissel is a uniquely poor choice to serve as a UWF BOT member. The governor himself recognized that Mr. Kissel would struggle to pass a Senate vote. He was correct, and for good reason.
Floridians pride themselves on affordability and have become a springboard for success. UWF itself has earned a top 3 ranking in performance-based funding due to excellence.
UWF works. Mr. Kissel, however, appears to see the university he helps oversee to be a problem that he hopes to close or privatize.
We appreciate your help in continuing the University of West Florida’s success by not confirming Adam Kissel as a trustee of the UWF Board of Trustees.
Sincerely,
Concerned Argonauts
Pensacola, FL
