From the News Service of Florida:
New Chairman Could Be Sign of UWF Changes
By Dara Kam
The News Service of Florida
TALLAHASSEE — As Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies reshape the state’s education system, the University of West Florida could be next in line for an overhaul.
A newly appointed majority of the Pensacola university’s Board of Trustees on Thursday selected as its chairman Scott Yenor, a Boise State University political scientist who is affiliated with the conservative Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life and has railed against feminism while advocating for traditional families.
In an 8-5 vote, the board chose the DeSantis appointee — whose views on marriage and women have sparked controversy — over Richard Baker, a longtime trustee with decades-long ties to the university.
Gates Garcia, another recent DeSantis appointee who also has links to the Claremont Institute, supported Yenor, calling him one of the “greatest leaders” in education reform and saying he has “as decorated a resume as anyone in this space.”
“Sometimes, fresh perspective from the outside, or experience from other places, is warranted in certain circumstances, and provides value that we might need,” Garcia added.
But Alonzie Scott, a trustee who was appointed to the board in 2018 and reappointed by DeSantis in 2019, nominated Baker as chairman. Scott said the Pensacola resident could help the revamped board build rapport with the Northwest Florida community.
“One of the key things of being a great board of trustees isn’t because you have a resume working somewhere else. It is being involved in the community,” Scott, a UWF graduate who serves as the director of mission support for the Office of Naval Research, said. “I’m not saying you (Yenor) don’t have credentials to be the leader, but you have no standing in the community at this stage, and I think we need to build that up before we add a new chair to the board for the University of West Florida.”
Yenor in 2021 drew backlash for calling working women “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be.” Yenor is the author of the books “Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought,” published in 2011, and “The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies,” published in 2020.
Yenor’s articles posted on the Claremont Institute’s website include titles such as “Defending the Family in Liquid Modernity” and “Maintaining a Canon in Woke Times.”
“Effective opposition to the dissolution of the family requires better regime-level family politics. Nations informed by the Christian tradition have a coherent, sensible justification for embracing motherhood, being fruitful, staying married, and fulfilling filial responsibilities no matter the economic system. There is still much support for the Christian idea that men and women have different vocations — both in what Western men and women think and in how they act. Building on these is not irrelevant to making ‘marriage and family part’ of the young’s ‘own life plans,’” Yenor wrote in a 2023 review of the book “Feminism Against Progress,” by Mary Harrington.
DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin lauded the board’s selection of Yenor as chairman.
“Congratulations to Scott Yenor; he’s now tasked with our mandate of ensuring Florida’s institutions of higher learning are focused on classical academic subjects and truth, not progressive ideology,” Griffin said in an email.
As trustees introduced themselves at the start of the meeting, Yenor said he was born and raised in Wisconsin and has lived in Idaho since 2000.
“I’ve been working with the governor on higher-ed reform, among other things, and that leads me to a great interest in higher ed, its possibilities and problems and its challenges going forward, and I look forward, with everyone, to solving them and making UWF a shining light in the area and in the state,” Yenor said.
Trustees on Thursday also selected Rebecca Matthews as vice-chairwoman. The state university system’s Board of Governors last month appointed Matthews as a UWF trustee. Matthews serves as chairwoman of the Florida Education Foundation, a direct-support organization for the state education department.
The overhaul of UWF’s board came two years after DeSantis ensconced a slate of New College of Florida trustees who helped direct a reinvention of the small liberal-arts school. Within weeks after their appointments, the trustees fired New College’s president and replaced her with Richard Corcoran, a former Republican state House speaker and former education commissioner.
Supporters of University of West Florida President Martha Saunders, who has led the school since 2017, appear anxious that her job might be in peril.
Alizabeth Turner-Ward, a UWF graduate student who also received her bachelor’s degree from the Pensacola school, urged the board Thursday to “consider the achievements of this institution under President Saunders’ leadership.”
“I hope to see the selection of a new chair and vice chair who are well connected with this university and who will support the highly successful efforts of President Saunders well into the future,” Turner-Ward said before Thursday’s vote.
In addition to Yenor and Garcia, DeSantis’ January appointments to the UWF board included Adam Kissel, a West Virginia resident who is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and is affiliated with conservative education–reform groups in West Virginia and Texas, and Paul Bailey, a Pensacola attorney who is an adjunct professor at Pensacola Christian College. Yenor received support Thursday from UWF’s freshly appointed trustees, who comprise a majority on the board.
Before Thursday’s vote, trustee Susan James, a UWF professor who is president of the school’s Faculty Senate, warned that the selection of one of the new out-of-town board members as chairman could damage the university’s reputation. She said “community members” supported Scott or Baker to lead the board.
“The cloud of controversy that we now have over us, I’m concerned about. I want us all to work together. We have an absolutely amazing university that has excelled in so many ways,” James said, pointing to advancements the school has made in achieving state university system goals. “I don’t want us to start out with a cloud of controversy over us. I think we can all come together and work very well together … I wish you would consider making it easier for all of us with onboarding by having Trustee Baker as our chair.”
Yenor’s remarks to the board after his election were brief.
“I look forward to serving in this capacity during the year and working with the president and the rest of the board to make UWF as good a university as it can be,” Yenor said.