A professor and conservative activist nominated by Gov. Ron DeSantis to chair a Florida university board is in political hot water this week over a series of tweets counting the number of Jews, women, seniors and gay lawmakers among Senate Democrats and lamenting that there were too few “straight, white non-Jews” available to lead or reform the party.
The bipartisan rebuke of Scott Yenor comes as DeSantis and nation’s other leading conservatives have mounted a broader attack on higher education with a particular focus on its diversity initiatives, an effort Yenor is aligned with.
Accusations on identity politics
Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State University in Idaho, was chosen by DeSantis to serve as the head of the board of the University of West Florida in Pensacola. But he’s drawing attention for a series of social media posts last month in which he remarked that Democrats had “pretty slim pickin’s” for “national leadership or for reforming the party” because so many of the party’s senators “rose to power on identity politics.”
He went on to criticize Senate Democrats for “only” having “six straight, white non-Jews.”
“Nine are Jews, two of whom are women and four of whom are 65-years-old or older,” Yenor, a fellow of the right-wing think tank Claremont Institute who has authored several papers criticizing diversity efforts in higher education, remarked about Senate Democrats. He allowed that “the three male Jews under sixty could also fall into the category of party reformers,” apparently referring to Sens. Brian Schatz, Adam Schiff and Jon Ossoff.
Yenor has a deeper history with the antisemitic far right, as well. Last year, The Guardian reported that he secretly ran a short-lived website in Idaho from 2021-22, which trafficked in stories going after local Pride events and other topics. In this context, Yenor had spent months trying to recruit a conservative writer and DeSantis booster, Pedro Gonzalez, who previously made numerous antisemitic and racist posts on message boards. (Yenor also paid Gonzalez to deliver a lecture at Boise State in 2021; he told The Guardian that Gonzalez turned down the website job offer.)
DeSantis has continued to defend Yenor against antisemitism charges, but is meeting bipartisan pushback. On Tuesday the state Senate, in a rebuke of Yenor’s remarks, removed him from consideration to serve in a separate position on a research board affiliated with the university.
Yenor’s appointment to chair the UWF board also requires confirmation from the state Senate, though he can serve as chair in the meantime.
Jewish Republican state Senator Randy Fine, a rising right-wing star who is no stranger to inflammatory rhetoric, is among Yenor’s most vocal opponents.
This week Fine, who is expected to win the race for a US House seat in a deep red district in April, called Yenor an “idiot.” Last week, he tweeted, “Antisemites have no place in Florida’s universities, let alone as its leaders,” and added his name to a condemnation of Yenor by the state’s Jewish legislative caucus.
“Yenor implied that only non-Jewish white men are viable political leaders,” the caucus wrote, urging DeSantis to reconsider the appointment. The letter continued, “At a time when antisemitism is rising nationwide, our state must take a firm stance against those who seek to marginalize or disparage any community.”
Yenor’s comments have drawn scrutiny along with past statements that colleges had become “citadels of our gynocracy” and other remarks attacking “independent women,” including one saying they are “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be.” Students and lawmakers alike rebuked his comments, with hundreds of protesters on the UWF Pensacola campus opposing him.
Yenor has insisted that his remarks were not antisemitic. He told Jewish Insider that he “was saying that Democrats would not abide having Jews in leadership roles, based on the Josh Shapiro experience,” referring to presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s decision to pass up the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania as her 2024 running mate.
His posts did not mention Harris’s decision, nor clarify, other than his mention of “identity politics,” why straight, white men are in a better position to lead or reform the party.
On X Tuesday, Yenor said he’s “been an ardent supporter of Israel and the Jewish people in my career” and called criticisms of his comments “a deliberate mischaracterization by dishonest media & the left actively working to prevent the reform of Florida’s institutions.”
On Wednesday, DeSantis defended his pick of Yenor during a press conference in Tallahassee. Asked about Fine’s criticisms of the pick, the governor instead went after the legislator, a onetime friend turned political enemy.
“I stand by the appointment of Scott Yenor. He has been a champion for the types of reforms at universities we need,” DeSantis said, according to local reports. “I don’t think he’s antisemitic at all.”
Then, regarding Fine, the governor added, “Let’s just consider the source: that same senator called me antisemitic.” DeSantis went on, “I just think it’s misplaced criticism. I think it’s part of a separate political agenda.”
(Fine has gone after DeSantis for, in his view, failing to do enough to stop white supremacists in the state, and for making a state visit to Ireland, which has been a harsh critic of Israel.)
DeSantis also recently filled the New College of Florida with his own political appointments in a successful bid to remake the school’s academic mission. The school, which used to be known for a progressive approach to education, has tacked markedly more conservative in the months since DeSantis’s appointees took over, and is now offering a class on “the Woke movement.” Alan Dershowitz, the Jewish law professor, author, pro-Israel activist and firebrand, is headlining a new “Socratic Stage Dialogue Series” at the college this spring and also serving as commencement speaker. (The speaker series also features a talk on the Hebrew Bible.)