This past week, the University of Florida was on the brink of hiring a new dean of its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Then officials suddenly called off the search under pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration, which alleged that the candidates were not in alignment with the state’s policies opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Bryan Griffin, a spokesperson for DeSantis, confirmed to The Chronicle that the governor’s office was involved in the decision to terminate the search and that it had to do with the candidates’ statements on DEI.
Griffin cited a video posted on X by a right-wing group calling the four finalists for the dean’s position “radical progressives with disdain for Florida’s DEI laws.” The video included clips of the candidates in presentations for the job indirectly mentioning state and national higher-education policies.
In a Thursday email to university deans, the interim president, Kent Fuchs, said the search was canceled until the university’s next president could participate in the decision. (The university has been searching for a new president since July, when Ben Sasse stepped down from the position. It has not yet named finalists for the role.) Fuchs did not cite DEI as a reason the search was canceled.
“It is inadvisable to appoint a new dean without the full participation of the next president of the university,” Fuchs wrote in the memo. “Consequently, we are terminating this search and will await the advice of the 14th president to initiate a new search.”
But in other academic units, such searches remain open. The university has active job listings for deans in the College of the Arts and for university libraries, both of which say the roles are “open until filled.”
The university did not respond to specific questions and said it didn’t have further comment.
Bernie Machen, who led the University of Florida as president from 2004 to late 2014, told The Chronicle over the weekend that he was deeply troubled by interference from the governor’s office in the dean search. Machen also took issue with DeSantis’s broader attacks on diversity.
“I believe the governor’s anti-DEI campaign has gone too far, with Exhibit A being his office’s halting of the dean search for UF’s largest college,” Machen wrote in an email. “If we all ignore the incendiary rhetoric about DEI, I believe most can agree diversity on college campuses is good — diversity of race, gender, income level, cultural background, political perspectives, and diversity in many other forms.
“It’s good to have Black students, white students, Hispanic students, veterans, students from rural areas, and international students in our classrooms. Diversity contributes to our understanding of human differences. As UF’s president for 11 years I saw firsthand these and other benefits of diversity. It is my hope the governor of one of the most richly diverse states in the country will let UF manage its internal affairs and continue his efforts to make us the best university in the nation.”
Machen’s statement of opposition, aimed directly at Governor DeSantis, stands out at a moment when higher-education leaders in Florida have been essentially mum about recent efforts by the governor and the Legislature to assert more control over university matters. A new law, for example, regulates what is taught about race in core general-education courses. Florida presidents are no doubt fearful of political retribution for speaking up, just as college leaders nationally have tread carefully in the face of threats from the Trump administration.
“Several people in the university system have asked me to speak up about this issue,” Machen said. “And I did so because it’s an important issue for higher education in Florida.”
The search for a liberal-arts dean began in October amid conflicts between the college and university administration. The former dean, David Richardson, had a testy exchange with Sasse about the Hamilton Center, a new academic unit championed by Republican lawmakers and focused on Western and civic education. Some faculty were concerned the Hamilton Center’s academic offerings would overlap with the liberal-arts college; others worried about the center’s seemingly right-wing tilt.
In an exchange, The Chronicle reported, Sasse told Richardson that he felt some professors were obstructing the center’s development, and that Richardson needed to put a stop to it. One person told The Chronicle that Sasse told the dean that his job was on the line. After the conversation, Richardson put some department chairs under investigation.
Richardson stepped down as dean last June, shortly after the investigations of the chairs were suspended (none of them faced discipline). Mary Watt, who worked as an associate dean under Richardson, became interim dean in July and was not among the finalists for the permanent role.
The search for a new liberal-arts dean had effectively been completed by the time it was called off. Interviews with all the finalists had taken place, Fuchs said in Thursday’s memo, and a university website shows that candidate-evaluation surveys were due last Tuesday at the latest. The university did not respond to a request for comment on Friday about whether the candidates were notified that the search had been terminated.
The search committee that had the task of finding a new liberal-arts dean had “no defined role” after selecting the four finalists, Saby Mitra, chair of the search committee and dean of Florida’s business college, told The Chronicle. Mitra did not have more information on the outcome of the search.
As Florida’s Republican governor, DeSantis has championed anti-DEI legislation, and Florida was among the first states to outlaw DEI offices at universities. He has also pushed for political allies to fill university-leadership roles, including the appointment of Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez as interim president of Florida International University and the expeditious hiring of State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo as a tenured faculty member at the University of Florida.
None of the dean candidates directly addressed DEI in the video that Griffin, the DeSantis spokesperson, reposted on X; the clips were originally posted on Wednesday by a right-wing group called Commies on Campus. In one video, a finalist says he “found some things that have come out of Tallahassee troubling.” In another, a different candidate said, “There’s nothing in the laws that is preventing us from going out and networking and engaging with a wide range of people.”
In response to Commies on Campus’s original post, Griffin posted, “Thanks for flagging this. We worked with @UF, and this search has been halted. UF leadership was cooperative & has committed to holding off.”
Jack Stripling, a senior writer at The Chronicle, contributed to this report.
