Before the vote, the incoming president, the center, faced several questions from board members about his position on DEI.
The Florida Board of Governors voted Wednesday to make former University of Alabama President Stuart Bell the next president of the University of Florida, giving the leading research university a permanent president after two years without one.
During the special meeting, all but one governor backed Bell following a heated question-and-answer period, where board members pressed Bell on his DEI record, plans to fill leadership positions at the university and a free speech position. Winning the board’s approval was the last hurdle Bell had to clear to become president after the University of Florida Board of Regents in June voted unanimously to hire him. The support of the governors was not guaranteed; the board rejected the University of Florida’s final choice, Santa Ono, last year.
“I’m ready to go to work,” Bell said in a statement following the vote. “The University of Florida is an incredible institution with exceptional talent, incredible momentum and limitless opportunity. I look forward to working with our students, faculty, staff, alumni and supporters as we continue to build one of the world’s leading public universities.”
Bell will assume the presidency immediately, replacing Interim President Donald Landry. His formal inauguration will take place “later this year,” according to a news release.
The board was supposed to vote on Bell last week during its regularly scheduled meeting, but Board Chairman Alan Levine postponed the vote, citing concerns raised by Sen. Rick Scott said the University of Florida board violated state law in part by allowing Chairman Mori Hosseini to approve Landry’s $2 million severance package. Florida Board of Governors member Nick Sinatra referred to last week’s game during Wednesday’s meeting, telling Bell, “I know it doesn’t feel right and it might not feel like it at times, but we’re glad to have you here.
“I thought some of the allegations that were coming out around you and you were not very good, and I made that clear,” he continued. “But I want to move forward here today, and I think it’s very important that we all – publicly on the record – move forward.”
Before the vote, the incoming president faced several questions from board members about his support for policies to increase student diversity while he was president of the University of Alabama. Bell repeated the same words he told the university’s Board of Trustees: “I’m not coming to Florida to bring DEI or wake up,” he said. Bell’s work in Alabama was focused on growing the district’s enrollment, “so we’ve been very focused on rural areas and all the demographics that go along with that rural focus,” he told the board.
Aubrey Edge, who cast one “no” vote, told Bell about this issue, asking him to speak to the Alabama Senate meeting three minutes ago – before Alabama’s law prohibiting diversity, equity and inclusion programs went into effect – which Bell explained by saying that the DEI programs will continue to operate under a different name.
In response to the law, “We closed all DEI offices,” Bell said. “We have continued the work to ensure that every student – especially in rural areas, where we had many students who did not go to university … we see higher education as an opportunity for them …
Vice Chair Timothy Cerio asked Bell if he had read the state university program’s statement on free speech. Bell said he hasn’t done that yet, but he supports Chicago’s statement about campus neutrality and that such positions allow “free discussion and free speech and public discourse to happen on our campuses.”
Board member Carson Good asked Bell where “free speech and hate speech” is.
“I think we have to be very careful on our campuses. We certainly shouldn’t be looking too closely at Oct. 7, because there was a lot of hate speech going on on campuses that really disrupted our work,” Bell said. So I’m a supporter of free speech among our students, but certainly there are guidelines there.
Bell also came out strongly against the campus.
Alabama “didn’t have camps … We believe that students should be able to have civil speech, and have that happen on our campus, and be very clear about what you’re doing. [cannot do]. You will not interfere with our ability for students to attend classes. You will not change our ability to have classes,” he said, “If you try to have a camp, the next day we will sell tents.”
Good also asked Bell if he believed critical race theory should be taught in universities, to which Bell responded that the theory had a “limited place” in the curriculum.
“We’re not trying to teach our students what to think; we’re trying to teach our students how to think,” Bell said. In the classrooms of the K–12 education system, “I don’t see a place for that in that field. [CRT] He will not be in that field. Are there specific areas [in which] our students should know what is that theory and what is that theory? There may be, but we will have that conversation.”
Several board members were also concerned about the growing number of job vacancies at the University of Florida, including an open provost position and several deanships. Members asked Bell what he would do about filling those roles, and how soon he planned to do so.
“Work hard, work fast. As engineers, we have strengths and weaknesses. One of our strengths is that we build a system and move quickly,” he said. “We’re going to work hard to build that team, so I’m going to be launching a bunch of searches, and we’ve already launched a bunch of faculty searches. We’re going to complete that quickly. I think it’s important to have your senior leadership, your president, in place, because when you go out you’re trying to hire — whether it’s a dean or [vice presidents]— they want to know what they are joining.”
