Jacob Ogles
Scott Yenor may have resigned as the University of West Florida’s (UWF) Board of Trustees Chair, but his controversial nomination still haunts colleagues.
The Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committee advanced three other appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis to UWF’s Board of Trustees. But all had to answer for votes to elevate Yenor to Board Chair at the school despite all saying they had no knowledge of his history of misogynistic and bigoted remarks.
“I find it very hard to believe that these individuals were not aware of what these comments were given how highly publicized they were,” said Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat. “Ultimately, at the end of the day, if you don’t stand for something, then you’ll fall for anything.”
Smith cast a vote against all three nominees — Paul Bailey, Gates Garcia and Christopher Young — but was the only committee member who voted to stop the advancement of DeSantis appointees altogether.
But while Republicans on the committee supported advancing the nominations to the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, several questioned how any Trustee voted for Yenor to chair the Board based on his history of controversial remarks.
As one example, Yenor gave a speech to the National Conservatism Conference in 2021 and said, “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school and the law and every trade.”
The swirling controversy prompted Yenor to resign his post before being formally submitted for Senate confirmation. DeSantis has defended nominating Yenor to the UWF Board, and called criticism of his anti-woman, anti-Jew and anti-gay positions “very flimsy.”
Bailey said he had no knowledge of Yenor’s comments when he voted for the Boise State University professor to chair the Board. He noted that his own mother would never have been able to secure a job based on Yenor’s worldview.
“I had no clue of his statements,” Bailey said. “And I will reiterate once again, and I don’t mind standing up here and being the guy that says I disagree with my prior decision.”
Smith called the response refreshing and a departure from a prior committee hearing when Trustees refused to discuss Yenor’s past statements. Notably, the same committee last month shot down the nomination of Adam Kissel, a Heritage Foundation fellow from West Virginia that DeSantis also nominated to the Board.
Senators did stress to the Trustees testifying to the committee that they felt baffled at the widespread ignorance of Yenor’s record.
Sen. Alexis Calatayud, a Miami Republican, noted that when she researched Yenor’s anti-diversity writing, the anti-woman viewpoint was impossible to miss.
“In my exploration of his writings and his spoken conferences, etc., a lot of that is focused on the shrinking group of students, and having a higher emphasis on recruiting men,” she said.
The other UWF Trustees distanced themselves to various degrees from Yenor. Young, similarly to Bailey, said he would not have voted for Yenor as Chair had he been aware of his controversial statements.
Gates, a Tampa resident, refused to go so far. Instead, Garcia said he had supported Yenor’s advocacy in the past for education reform, though he said he was not aware of the controversial statements that have generated so much press around UWF.
“If you want to be a competitive university, you need to look at the education that you’re providing for those individuals,” Garcia said. “And he’s looked at all sorts of areas where different schools, based on very different circumstances — every school is different — can provide a more tailored education to a subset of students to make that university more competitive in a shrinking pool of candidates.”
But he said his own writing on education shows a desire to include more women in higher education.
“I’m a huge proponent of women. I have a working wife, not only a full-time job, but a public servant as well,” he said.
“My sister is an Assistant U.S. Attorney. She’s married with three children, works about 60 hours a week, harder than anybody I know. I’m a huge advocate of having prepared women in the workforce and women in the workforce. So, I can’t speak super-specific to other people’s comments, other than what I can demonstrate is believed by me.”
Clarification: A paraphrasing of Sen. Jennifer Bradley was included in a previous version of the piece, but was deleted because it inappropriately inferred further meaning in the remark.
