Scott Yenor, chair of the Board of Trustees on the College of West Florida, resigned Wednesday forward of a looming combat with lawmakers, The Pensacola Information Journal reported.
Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State College, made nationwide headlines in 2021 when he made misogynistic remarks on the Nationwide Conservatism Convention, taking purpose at feminism and arguing that girls shouldn’t pursue sure profession fields, corresponding to engineering.
He additionally described “impartial ladies” as “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.”
Yenor and different conservative trustees appointed at UWF in January confronted protests from the group. However it was finally strain from state lawmakers over different remarks that appeared to push Yenor out. In a sequence of social media posts in February, Yenor appeared to suggest that solely straight white males needs to be in political management posts. Some critics, together with Randy Effective, a Republican state senator on the time of the publish, learn his remarks as exclusionary of Jewish males. (Effective just lately received a particular election to characterize Florida’s sixth Congressional District.)
Effective, who’s Jewish, subsequently known as Yenor a “bigot” and “misogynist.”
Below Florida regulation, a trustee appointed by the governor can start serving instantly, earlier than affirmation by the State Legislature. With the affirmation course of underway, Yenor stepped apart amid hypothesis that lawmakers may refuse to log out on his appointment.
“Gov. Ron DeSantis’ greater schooling reforms are fashions for the nation,” Yenor wrote in a resignation e mail obtained by The Pensacola Information Journal. “I used to be trying ahead to bringing the Governor’s constructive imaginative and prescient for greater schooling to the College of West Florida (UWF) as a member of the Board of Trustees. Opposition to my nomination amongst a bunch inside Florida’s senate, nonetheless, leads me to resign from UWF’s Board of Trustees successfully instantly.”
The potential rejection would mark a uncommon break between DeSantis and Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature, which has largely supported the governor’s agenda throughout his time in workplace. Earlier this yr, the Senate Appropriations Committee didn’t verify Adam Kissel, one other UWF board appointee, although there’s nonetheless a path for him to be confirmed anyway. In 2023, the Florida Senate rejected one other DeSantis choose and bumped Eddie Speir from the New School of Florida board just by not taking motion on the affirmation fairly than rejecting it.
