TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — For years, political scientist Scott Yenor has advocated for overhauling schools and universities, which he has argued undermine conventional American households by encouraging girls to pursue careers and delay childbirth.
Now Yenor could get an opportunity to implement his coverage proposals after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to the board of the College of West Florida, a public college in Pensacola with about 14,000 college students.
The Republican governor’s appointment of Yenor and 4 others to the UWF Board of Trustees this week comes two years after DeSantis stacked the board of one other public college, New College of Florida, in what critics referred to as a hostile political takeover. Inside weeks, New School’s new board fired the sitting president after which changed her with a former state lawmaker and ally of the governor.
A professor at Boise State College, Yenor has written extensively on what he sees as the risks of range, fairness and inclusion efforts in larger training in addition to the declines of conventional marriage and delivery charges within the U.S. He is additionally a former fellow at The Heritage Basis, which proposed Project 2025 as a policy blueprint for a hard-right flip in American authorities and society.
Talking on the Nationwide Conservatism Convention in 2021, Yenor detailed what he sees because the “evils” of feminism, labeled “impartial girls” as “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome” and decried schools and universities as “the citadels of our gynecocracy” — a type of authorities run by girls.
“If we wish an awesome nation, we ought to be making ready younger girls to turn out to be moms,” Yenor mentioned, “not discovering each motive for younger girls to delay motherhood till they’re established in a profession or sufficiently impartial.”
Yenor argued that larger training “delays rising up,” saying that school and universities are “indoctrination camps” that society ought to de-emphasize so as to make progress on “household issues.”
“Each effort have to be made to not recruit girls into engineering, however somewhat to recruit and demand extra of males who turn out to be engineers. Ditto for med college and the legislation and each commerce,” Yenor mentioned.
“If each Nobel Prize winner is a person, that’s not a failure. It’s type of a trigger for celebration,” he added.
Yenor didn’t reply to questions from The Related Press about his previous statements, however mentioned he helps DeSantis’ training agenda.
“An training system shapes the tradition. Our present training system, with its divisive DEI insurance policies and ideological monoculture, has produced an ever-worse tradition,” Yenor advised the AP in an e-mail, saying Florida’s training system is best off due to DeSantis’ insurance policies.
Chasidy Hobbs, an Earth and environmental science teacher and president of UWF’s college union, referred to as the feedback “disheartening” and “offensive.”
“My most necessary work of my life was being a mom,” she mentioned, “whereas additionally working as knowledgeable girl in a profession that I discover virtually as necessary as motherhood — to assist the longer term era be taught to suppose for themselves.” However she added that she appeared ahead to working with the brand new board.
Julia Friedland, the governor’s deputy press secretary, mentioned the brand new board members will “break the established order” and “assist refocus the college on the core mission of training.”
She didn’t reply to questions on Yenor’s earlier statements on girls in larger training.
In articles and speeches, Yenor has labeled DEI as a “grave and gathering hazard to nationwide unity and state governance,” referred to as for eliminating sure disciplines like African Diaspora Research and mentioned even departments of Historical past and English could possibly be on the chopping block. He is additionally advocated for sex-segregated training and referred to as for banning state staff from amassing information on the premise of race or intercourse.
Yenor and the opposite new appointees to UWF’s 13-member board have to be confirmed by the Florida Senate.
