University board nominee DeSantis says women should be mothers, not pursue higher education

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – For years, political scientist Scott Yenor has advocated for an overhaul of colleges and universities, which he says undermine traditional American families by encouraging women to pursue careers and stop childbearing.

Now Yenor may have the opportunity to implement his policy proposals after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appointed him to the board of the University of West Florida, a public school in Pensacola with about 14,000 students.

The appointment of Republican governor Yenor and four others to the UWF Board of Trustees this week comes two years after DeSantis amassed the board of another public school, New College of Florida, in what critics called a brutal political takeover. Within weeks, New College's new board ousted the incumbent president and replaced him with a former state attorney and governor's aide.

A professor at Boise State University, Yenor has written extensively on what he sees as the dangers of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in higher education and declining traditional marriage rates and birth rates in the US. He is also a fellow at The Heritage. Foundation, which proposed Project 2025 as a policy blueprint for a radical shift in American government and society.

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in 2021, Yenor elaborated on what she saw as the “evils” of feminism, labeled “independent women” as “medicated, narcissistic and paranoid” and called colleges and universities “strongholds of our feminist empire” – a form of government run by women.

“If we want a great nation, we have to prepare young women to be mothers,” said Yenor, “and not find all the reasons for young women to delay becoming mothers until they have a degree in work or are independent enough.”

Yenor argued that higher education is “retarding growth,” saying that colleges and universities are “bootcamps” that society must press to make progress on “family issues.”

“Every effort must be made to not include women in engineering, but to recruit and seek men who will become engineers. Ditto for med school and law and every job,” Yenor said.

“If every Nobel Prize winner is a man, that's not a failure. It is a reason to celebrate,” he added.

Yenor did not respond to The Associated Press' questions about his past statements, but said he supports DeSantis' education agenda.

“The education system shapes the culture. Our current education system, with its divisive DEI policies and monoculture ideology, has produced a very bad culture,” Yenor told the AP in an email, saying Florida's education system is better because of DeSantis' policies.

Chasidy Hobbs, an Earth and environmental science teacher and president of the UWF administration union, called the comments “disappointing” and “outrageous.”

“My most important job in my life was to be a mother,” she said, “while working as a professional woman in a job that I find important as a mother – helping the next generation to think for themselves.” But he added that he was looking forward to working with the new board.

Julia Friedland, the governor's deputy press secretary, said the new board members will “break the status quo” and “help refocus the university on education.”

He did not respond to questions about Yenor's previous statements about women in higher education.

In articles and speeches, Yenor called the DEI “a serious and cumulative danger to national unity and governance,” called for the abolition of certain fields such as African Diaspora Studies and said that even the Departments of History and English could be at a higher level. advocated gender-segregated education and called for a ban on government employees from collecting data based on race or gender.

Yenor and other new appointees to UWF's 13-member board must be confirmed by the Florida Senate.

___ Kate Payne is a member of the Associated Press/Reporting America Statehouse News Initiative team. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on hidden stories.