A new presidential profile is emerging in Florida, where those hired or considered for top executive positions are increasingly conservative politicians, often with ties to Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor who has sought to reshape higher education in the Sunshine State .
And in a state where DeSantis and the Republican-led Florida Board of Governors appoint trustees to oversee state institutions, board members also play a key role in shaping the state’s new presidential profile, and many they seem eager to please the governor by hiring candidates who align themselves. with their political priorities.
Ben Sasse, a former Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska, was the first hire. Although Sasse has no direct ties to DeSantis, his hiring in November to lead the University of Florida marked a shift to the right among the presidential candidates; Sasse shares the governor’s policy positions on issues of same-sex marriage, gender identity and other issues that have energized the Republican Party in recent months. And while DeSantis has pushed his conservative agenda in the state, Sasse, like all other presidents of Florida’s 40 public colleges and universities, has remained silent.
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After Sasse came Richard Corcoran, who was hired as interim president of New College of Florida in February. Corcoran, a former Republican state lawmaker, came into the job amid major political upheaval at NCF spurred by a slate of new trustees appointed by DeSantis in January with the specific goal of forcing the small liberal arts college into the right. After the new board members ousted the NCF president, they quickly hired Corcoran with a $400,000 salary increase over his predecessor.
Since then, other candidates aligned with DeSantis, including those with little or no experience working in higher education, have been considered for top jobs at state colleges and universities.
Questionable search processes
In addition to Sasse and Corcoran, three other allies of DeSantis have emerged as candidates for presidential office. Republican lawmaker Randy Fine was as reported by DeSantis, who urged him to serve as president of Florida Atlantic University. Fine, who currently serves in the Florida House, has declined interest, noting that he plans to run for the state Senate.
Last month, DeSantis ally Henry Mack was named a finalist for the presidency of Florida Gulf Coast University when the search was restarted after the initial search identified three candidates but did not select one, making raised questions of interference by state officials. Mack, who serves as the Florida Department of Education’s top chancellor, lost his job by one vote; the trustees chose internal candidate Aysegul Timur, vice president and vice chancellor of FGCU.
But even then politicians stepped in to try to steer the process: Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., who served as a Republican state lawmaker before assuming his current role last summer , encouraged the Florida Board of Governors in its June meeting to give Timur a “shorter contract,” though he did not specify the length. Diaz argued that “performance and testing” should dictate longer contracts for college presidents.
The Florida Board of Governors, however, backed down.
“Oversight by the Board of Governors is very different from trying to impose a will on the Board of Trustees for every decision. We have boards of trustees at each of these universities because they are responsible for the oversight of the individual university and the management of those processes, including the selection of outstanding individuals,” Eric Silagy, vice chairman of the Florida Board of Governors, said at the meeting. , warning against micromanaging patterns.
Diaz and the Florida Board of Governors did not respond to requests for comment. An FGCU spokesman said “negotiations are ongoing” regarding Timur’s contract, which must first be approved by the university’s Board of Trustees before going to the state Board of Governors.
At South Florida State College, Fred Hawkins emerged as a presidential finalist after a failed search. SFSC announced three finalists in March, but all three dropped out suddenly and mysteriously in May. (None responded to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.) The board then launched a new search, dropped requirements for a terminal degree and within a week appointed Hawkins, a DeSantis ally without experience in higher education, as the only finalist.
Hawkins, yes drafted legislation that advanced DeSantis’ battle against the Walt Disney Company, will interview for the job this week, and the board is expected to announce a decision in June. But he seems to believe he has his work cut out for him.
“Pages turn and new chapters begin. I am looking forward to becoming the next president of South Florida State College. My time as an elected official has been the highlight of my life, especially serving in the Florida House.” Hawkins tweeted after being named sole finalist.
The South Florida State College Board of Trustees declined to comment to Inside Higher Ed, but local news coverage suggests that political interference scuttled the initial search.
With a hiring decision before the board, an anonymous source told local newspaper The Herald-Advocate“the governor contacted the school” and stopped the process.
The Herald-Advocate also reported on complaints that arose during a recent workshop in which Councilman Joe Wright expressed “concern about being on the board” after “problems intervened” in the presidential selection process, according to documents obtained by the newspaper. An anonymous source he said to the paper that DeSantis had expressed his displeasure with the finalists.
A The Tampa Bay Times reports explained the interference in clearer terms.
“You have to understand that we are political appointees, and they were all Democrats,” SFSC Councilor Louis Kirschner told a Tampa Bay Times reporter, referring to the three finalists. “The governor doesn’t appoint all the Republican councilors and expect us to select a Democrat.”
Kirschner, who also chairs a local Republican Party committee, added that he saw no problem with state officials participating in the presidential selection process and expressed concern that a left-leaning college president would impose a “woke” ideology in the state of South Florida.
DeSantis’ press office did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
And DeSantis’ allies aren’t just being employed as college presidents; Last year, the Florida Board of Governors hired former Republican state Rep. Ray Rodrigues as chancellor of the Florida State University System after a search yielded only eight candidates for the position.
Politicians as presidents
While hiring a university president with a political background may be controversial, it’s not new. Both Republican and Democratic politicians have held executive jobs at colleges in the United States
Sonny Perdue, a former governor of Georgia and secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, was hired last year as chancellor of the University System of Georgia. Mitch Daniels, a former Republican governor of Indiana, led Purdue University for a decade before retiring this year. And the late Rebecca Blank served in various roles in the Obama administration, including acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, before leading the University of Wisconsin at Madison for nearly a decade. Most recently, former Oklahoma legislator and Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb was named president of the University of Central Oklahoma, drawing ire of some teachers.
There are many other examples in both public and private colleges. Even so, moving from politics to the university presidency remains quite rare.
The latest presidential poll of the American Council on Education, which was completed by more than 1,000 senior leaders, found that only 4 percent of respondents indicated “public sector/government” as the career path that led them to their university president positions. Hawkins, who has only a bachelor’s degree, is an even more unusual case; the ACE survey found that only 0.6 percent of respondents had a bachelor’s degree as their highest credential, with the vast majority, 83.6 percent, holding a doctorate.
Having a political background does not necessarily determine how a candidate will perform as university president. The two recent Republican lawmakers hired in Florida have demonstrated very different approaches. Sasse has been a barely visible presence on the campus of the University of Florida, dodging the student newspaper as questions persist about where he is and what exactly he is doing.
Corcoran, however, has left few questions about his role at New College of Florida, where he has carried out the governor’s agenda by pushing for swift and aggressive change in the face of protests. Under his leadership, the college has closed its office of diversity, equity and inclusion; denied tenure to five teachers; and abruptly fired two LGBTQ+ employees for unclear reasons, among other actions.
Critics worry that DeSantis is meddling in presidential selection processes in an effort to recruit loyal foot soldiers for the state Legislature’s war against what he has called the “ideological conformism” and “woke activism” of the ‘higher education
“What’s happening is that the Legislature and the Board of Governors are trying to turn the position of president into an all-powerful CEO position with little or no shared governance,” Andrew Gothard, president of the United Faculty of Florida, told Inside Higher Ed. “This political takeover of this position should really be seen in terms of the bare partisanship that it is.”
In the spring of 2022, the Florida Legislature passed a bill allowing universities to be more opaque in presidential hiring processes, releasing only the names of three finalists; previously, all applicants were identifiable under state public records laws. Last fall, that process made Sasse the only finalist for the University of Florida presidency.
Gothard said that knowing who ran “allowed us to keep our politicians and our leaders honest to make sure the best candidates made it to the final round of interviews, so there couldn’t be this old horse business to become some of the most powerful, unelected individuals in the state who control billions of dollars in research funding and tax dollars.”
Now he believes lawmakers are being hired as president in exchange for political favors, which he sees as a disaster in the making, especially for candidates who are unqualified for the positions.
“These people who don’t have experiences in these roles and don’t know what they’re doing will cause disruption and chaos at worst,” Gothard said. “At best, they will only be neutral entities as we have seen with Ben Sasse. It might as well not even exist as a UF president.”
