Chronicle of Higher Education (“Inviting a Fight, U. of Florida Taps President with DEI Record“):

The University of Florida’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Wednesday to appoint Stuart R. Bell as the institution’s next president, advancing the former University of Alabama leader toward a state-level confirmation process that might get ugly.

In a state where political fights over diversity, equity, and inclusion remain dominant, Bell has spent the past few weeks defending his past DEI record and fending off conservative critics who’ve labeled him unfit. His appointment by the university board on Wednesday sets the stage for a confirmation from the state’s Board of Governors — a group that, about a year ago, voted down another would-be UF president over his past diversity advocacy.

The Board of Governors’ spurning last summer of Santa J. Ono, a former University of Michigan president, proved to be a watershed moment in a larger national battle over DEI in higher education. By rejecting the leader of a top-tier university with an impeccable public pedigree, the board signaled that a time-honored rule of presidential hiring — aspirant institutions should reach just beyond their grasp — no longer applied. Political purity, it would seem, matters most.

All of this may help explain how the University of Florida, an institution that has for two decades monomanically prioritized national rankings, is now keen to hire as its next president the leader of a much lower-ranked institution, the University of Alabama. Bell presided over a major DEI program at Alabama, increasing Black enrollment and taking down Confederate markers, but UF has publicly positioned him as an apostate of the DEI movement who loves football and loathes “ideologies and fads.” (A UF news release on his selection as the sole finalist for the job quoted just one reference from Tuscaloosa, Ala.: Nick Saban, the legendary former Crimson Tide football coach.)

Before UF’s Board of Trustees voted on Wednesday, Bell sat for a public interview in Emerson Alumni Hall, the same room where Ono sat last spring for a similar proceeding. Like Ono, Bell was questioned by the board over his positions on DEI. Bell defended what he described as the initial aim of DEI programs, which he said were adopted across universities and corporations to help anyone from any background achieve “the American dream.”

“What occurred, though, is those beliefs morphed,” he said. “They moved from that original intention in some cases into intentions that really don’t reflect what we would say is merit-based hard work and achievement.”

Alabama “scrubbed” all of its DEI programs in 2024, Bell said, complying with a law that was passed that year. Repeating a phrase he had used at a previous public forum, Bell said, “I’m not coming to Florida to bring DEI or ‘woke’ back. Period.”

“As a public institution, we will follow the law of the land,” Bell said.

Because I’m both a career academic and an Alabama graduate, I’ve followed this story somewhat closely.

The notion that Bell is some sort of woke leftie is hilarious. He’s 69 years old, grew up in Texas, and worked for ExxonMobil for a bit between his undergraduate and graduate education in engineering. He spent 16 years on the engineering faculty at Alabama before leaving for administrative posts at Kansas and LSU, before returning to the Capstone to serve as president. He served a decade before stepping down last summer.

So, where did the idea that Bell is some wild-eyed leftie come from? The best explanation I’ve seen is by the Manhattan Institute’s John Sailer:

When he took the helm at Alabama in 2015, Bell pushed a strategic plan that made DEI a key pillar. He hired the university’s first vice president for DEI, Christine Taylor, who spearheaded the “Path Forward Diversity Report,” which ratcheted up the university’s “equity” infrastructure. Archived webpages show how the report became a de facto action plan, with each recommended strategy assigned a timeline and organizational lead. In 2022, after Alabama’s diversity efforts received national recognition, Taylor referred to the report as a “beacon” for the campus.

Alabama’s DEI overhaul shaped every facet of the university. The report called for “a robust network of diversity and inclusion leaders” that would “infuse diversity and inclusion efforts throughout the university community and operations.” It pledged to conduct “a review of the tenure and promotion process” to reward faculty for their diversity efforts and to embed “DEI competencies” into employees’ performance reviews. Using Orwellian language, it promised a “restorative justice program” for students who “engage in bias events.” And perhaps most troublingly, it aimed to establish a DEI course requirement in its core curriculum.

Bell showed nothing but support for this DEI takeover. In one promotional video, he boasts that more than one-third of the university’s undergraduate curriculum is “diversity related.”

Under Bell’s leadership, Alabama became a nationally recognized diversity and inclusion pioneer. The Chronicle of Higher Education describes his diversity plan as one of the most robust in the nation. In 2022, Alabama won INSIGHT into Diversity magazine’s Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award. Even after Alabama’s legislature abolished DEI offices at public universities, Bell merely renamed the office and retained its staff. Taylor remains a senior administrator.

Bell’s questionable judgment extends to other senior hires, whose scholarship focuses predominantly on issues of race, gender, and power. In her scholarly career, Susan Carvalho, Bell’s handpicked graduate school dean, specialized in gender and feminist studies, publishing a book on how the female protagonists of certain Spanish American authors “challenge the spatial barriers erected by capitalist hegemony.” Prior to becoming Bell’s honors college dean, Tiffany Sippial authored an “intimate biographical portrait” of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary associate Celia Sánchez Manduley. The book, according to one review, “helps readers reimagine the Cuban Revolution through a feminist lens.”

While I’m not sure the scholarly interests of the graduate school and honors college deans are all that meaningful — they’re administrators, after all—the rest of the critique strikes me as relatively fair. Bell indeed introduced a DEI program that appears to be more than just a nod in the general direction of fairness.

The timing is interesting, in that the strategic plan predates the federal Department of Education’s DEI push or the Black Lives Matter protests. My strong guess is that Bell saw it as a necessary part of his larger agenda of raising Alabama’s profile as an academic institution.

The University is, after all, best known for its football team. And, alas, both the state of Alabama and its flagship university bear the stain of Jim Crow and George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” stunt. Presumably, Bell believed that he needed to do something big to change that perception. I’m not sure, alas, that it worked. Indeed, I strongly suspect the Diversity Award came precisely because it was the University of Alabama making the effort.

Regardless, it’s notable that Bell rebranded the program in order to comply with anti-DEI laws pushed by the Trump administration. Presumably, he’ll follow the same law—and Florida’s—as UF’s president.