In fewer than four months’ time, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s hard-right governor, will be termed out of office, and what critics saw as his relentless eight-year, “anti-woke” assault on higher education in the state will finally be over.
But while DeSantis himself will be gone, numerous hand-picked loyalists will remain in positions of power to protect his ideological makeover of universities and colleges. The latest, Alex Kelly, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff, and Florida commerce secretary, was named last week as the sole finalist in Pensacola state college’s search for a new president, at least the ۱۲th close DeSantis ally to win such a plum post.
If he is paid the same salary as Edward Meadows, the college’s outgoing president, Kelly’s earnings will soar from $۱۸۶,۰۰۰ at the commerce department to more than $۳۵۳,۰۰۰, according to the Miami Herald.
DeSantis’s two terms were marked at regular intervals with unprecedented attacks on the established order, notably his “hostile takeover” of New College, the former liberal arts college; a push to end campus diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and stifle free speech, struck down in July by a federal judge.
There was also a steady drum beat of conservative Republican acolytes placed controversially in key university leadership roles, many with no previous experience of higher education administration.
They include Jeanette Nunez, DeSantis’s former lieutenant governor, installed despite protests at Florida International University; and Marva Johnson, a lobbyist, businesswoman and tight political ally nicknamed “Maga Marva”, who last year became president of Florida A&M, the state’s largest historically Black public university, over fierce objection from students, faculty, alumni and four board trustees.
Republican former state representatives Mel Ponder, Tommy Gregory, Fred Hawkins and John Temple all secured lucrative presidencies at state colleges; as did three of DeSantis’s former education commissioners, Anastasios Kamoutsas, Manny Diaz and Richard Corcoran.
All were selected by university boards of trustees and confirmed by the state university system’s board of governors, a ۱۷-member panel of which ۱۴ are direct DeSantis appointees. Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the state system, is another long-serving Republican politician.
William Johnson, Florida director of PEN America, the free expression advocacy group that has challenged many of DeSantis’s policy changes and political maneuvers, said his administration had “made public education an apparatus of the state”.
He said: “Political influence over higher education isn’t new. Rick Scott [DeSantis’s predecessor] did something similar, but the difference is the scale and the explicit ideological goals behind it.
“It’s been this gigantic sea change on how higher ed is run. One of the key differences between DeSantis and everyone else is basically that you know these appointments have no experience in higher ed, so we can infer their main skill set is simply to follow the administration’s ideological mandates.
“I can’t speak to the cronyism aspects. What I am interested in is cross-checking how many folks have come from any kind of higher ed background and understanding of academic freedom and has that ever been the focus of any of his appointees?
“That’s what I’m curious about. And I would imagine that the answer is very few, if any.”
Amanda Phalin, an associate professor in the University of Florida’s school of business, experienced first-hand the state’s approach to university hires as a faculty representative (not appointed by the governor) on the state board from ۲۰۲۳ to ۲۰۲۵.
She remains outraged by its rejection of Santa Ono, an experienced academic chosen as UF president last year by the university’s own trustees, after his earlier advocacy for DEI initiatives came to light.
“My position and opinion about the state university system changed pretty dramatically after the despicable and borderline insane treatment of Dr Ono by the board of governors,” she said.
“You had members of the board of governors who were going against the choice of the board of trustees. They were all DeSantis appointees, but they were having sort of an internal squabble.
“The two years I worked on the board of governors, I approached everything in ۱۰۰% good faith. I had, and still have, strong political disagreements with folks, but I did my best to take them at their word, hear their concerns and really try to work with them constructively and productively.
“What I saw during the whole Santa Ono debacle is that these people do not actually have the best interest of the state university system at heart. For them, the project is either ideological, or about personal power, or both.”
DeSantis has never made a secret of his desire to impose his Florida “blueprint” nationally, and his legacy, Phalin said, could ultimately become other red states following his lead in injecting more politics and dollars into higher education, and tightening their grip on how it is run by appointing faithful followers to key roles.
“The way the state university system of Florida is structured is that each university has a board of trustees, the governor controls who’s on those boards of trustees, and the boards of trustees ultimately answer to the board of governors, and the governor also controls everyone on the board of governors, except the student representative and faculty representative,” she said.
“So it’s not even about the presidencies. That is almost beside the point. What DeSantis has really done is, in a behind-the-scenes structural way, politicized the entire system, top to bottom, in terms of its governance structure.”
