Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis , this week, has appointed five new members to University of West Florida (UWF), in Pensacola, Board of Trustees. All of the new members are considered conservative leaning including two with ties to The Heritage Foundation -- the conservative think tank behind Project 2025. A couple of them have donated to DeSantis’ 2022 campaign for Governor.
Of the Governor's appointees, Adam Kissel and Scott Yenor, have come under intense scrutiny for their political views.
Yenor now works with the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank described by The New York Times as “a nerve center of the American Right.” He previously served as a visiting fellow on American political thought for The Heritage Foundation and a fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He has been an outspoken opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
In articles and speeches, Yenor has labeled DEI as a “grave and gathering danger to national unity and state governance," called for eliminating certain disciplines like African Diaspora Studies and said even departments of History and English could be on the chopping block. He's also advocated for sex-segregated education and called for banning state employees from collecting data on the basis of race or sex.
Kissel, a West Virginia resident, is a visiting fellow on higher education reform for the Heritage Foundation, a senior fellow for the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy and a visiting scholar for the Texas Public Policy Foundation --- a conservative think tank based in Austin, Tx.
He previously worked for five years on higher education matters for the Charles Koch Foundation and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Higher Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) for a year and four months under Trump.
Kissel has filed numerous discrimination complaints over the years with the USDOE over university policies. One such complaint about unequal treatment of non-Black students at Stanford University was dismissed in March 2023. Another proved more fruitful a year later, when a University of Minnesota Law School fellowship agreed to no longer give preferential treatment to minorities after Kissel challenged the matter six months earlier.
The other appointees include lawyers Paul Bailey and Chris Young and investor Gates Garcia.
Bailey is a lawyer for the Welton Law Firm. He also works as an adjunct professor at Pensacola Christian College and is a registered instructor with the National Rifle Association.
Garcia is President and CEO at Pinehill Capital Partners, a family-owned equity investment firm headquartered in Tampa. He is also a Board of Visitors member of the Catholic University of America Busch School of Business, his alma mater.
He was named the 2024 Richard and Jacqueline Lincoln Fellow for the Claremont Institute (where Yenor now works).
Last month, Garcia said in an interview that after the 2024 election, American conservatives are “in the first inning of an absolute takeover of the media.”
“The Right is taking over that institution,” he said. “It’s been happening for a while.”
Julia Friedland, the governor's deputy press secretary, said the new board members will “break the status quo” and “help refocus the university on the core mission of education."
She did not respond to questions about Yenor's previous statements on women in higher education.
UWF appointments come two years after 'hostile takeovers' at other schools
Desantis’ appointments comes nearly two years after he appointed five DEI critics to the board of Florida Poly Technical University in Lakeland, and stacked the board of New College of Florida, in what critics called a hostile political takeover. Within weeks, New College’s new board fired the sitting president and then replaced her with a former state lawmaker and ally of the governor.
DeSantis has made it clear that he believes overhauling the Sunshine State’s university system has benefits beyond general education.
“Really, the only places we (Republicans) haven’t really outpaced (Democrats) are the places that have universities in them. Orange (County, home of) UCF; Gainesville, (the home of the University of Florida; and) Tallahassee, (the home of Florida State University),” he said in July at the Republican National Convention. “But I will tell you no one is doing more on reforming universities than we are.”
The UWF appointments comes days after DeSantis made two appointments to the FAMU BOT.