Letter: UF’s new leadership raises old DEI questions

Letter to the editor

Florida universities have spent the past several years learning new vocabulary.

After Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature moved against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, universities did not suddenly become conservative institutions. Instead, the fight moved from open push to quiet administrative language: “opportunity,” “belonging,” “access,” “student success,” “community,” and “excellence.”

That sneaky deception is why the University of Florida’s newest leadership decisions deserve our scrutiny.

UF has just installed Dr. Stuart Bell as its new president after the failed selection of Dr. Santa Ono (whose record on DEI at the University of Michigan led to the Florida Board of Governors’ unprecedented rejection of his appointment). Bell arrived promising a clean break. “I am not coming to Florida to bring DEI or ‘woke’ back, period,” he said during the selection process.

That promise should now be measured against two facts: Bell’s own record at the University of Alabama, and his first major academic appointment at UF.

In 2015, Dr. Bell became president of the University of Alabama. Under his leadership, Alabama’s strategic plan included a goal to “enrich” the university’s learning and work environments by providing an “accepting, inclusive community” that attracts and supports a “diverse faculty, staff and student body.”

That language may sound harmless by itself, but Alabama’s Path Forward Diversity Report showed what it meant in practice.

The report recommended embedding DEI competencies into annual employee performance reviews. It called for promotion/tenure to “re-value” faculty’s work in the interest of advancing racial equality. It urged Alabama to include diversity, equity, and inclusion in its general education requirements. It recommended implicit bias training for hiring committees and a restorative justice program for bias incidents. It also called for continuing to build out Alabama’s Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with the staffing and budget needed to advance the university’s strategic goals.

This was not merely kindness or equal treatment. It was an effort to bring DEI into hiring, curriculum, discipline, and faculty advancement.

Then came Alabama’s DEI ban. In 2024, the university announced that its Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion would close. But the old division’s leader, G. Christine Taylor, moved into leadership of the new Division of Opportunities, Connections and Success. This was less elimination and more rebranding.

That concern followed Bell to Florida. At his UF confirmation hearing, Board of Governors member Aubrey Edge, the lone dissenting vote, asked whether Bell had ended diversity efforts at Alabama only “in name.” Bell insisted he had eliminated, not renamed, Alabama’s DEI offices.

Now Floridians have their first major chance to judge what Bell’s promise means in practice.

On July 31, Bell announced that Dr. Brian Hoh had been appointed dean of the University of Florida College of Medicine, following a nationwide search. The appointment is effective on August 7. Bell’s memo said the dean’s leadership is “critical” to shaping the future of UF. According to UF budget data, the College of Medicine had nearly $1.77 billion in expenditures in fiscal year 2023-24, more than double the next-largest college.

In other words, this is not a minor appointment. Bell’s first major academic leadership move places an internal UF figure over one of the university’s most powerful and financially significant colleges.

Hoh is not an obscure candidate. He has been at UF since 2006, serves as chair of Neurosurgery, and is chief of medical staff for UF Health Shands. He is a nationally respected physician with a distinguished record in neurosurgery, stroke care, and research funding.

But Hoh also has a public record of embracing DEI language and goals.

On Jan. 21, 2019, marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Hoh wrote on Twitter that the Department of Neurosurgery strives for diversity in “gender, race, religion, orientation,” with everyone working together toward the goal of eradicating neurologic disease. On March 19, 2021, celebrating new residency matches, he wrote that UF Neurosurgery “strives for diversity & inclusion” and highlighted that the residency program was “55% women & underrepresented minorities.” On Nov. 10, 2021, he promoted a colleague as “a leader in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”

Those posts do not violate UF’s institutional neutrality policy. But they are still relevant because they show comfort with the very ideological language that DeSantis’s reforms were meant to remove from Florida universities.

UF’s policy now says that leadership teams may not make statements on social issues while conducting university business. The policy defines social issues as topics that divide society along political, ideological, moral, or religious lines. It also applies to UF communication resources such as websites, email systems, and social media accounts.

As dean, Hoh will not be tweeting from the sidelines. He will be the leader of UF’s largest college. The question is not if he should be punished for old posts; the question is whether Bell’s administration will hold UF leaders to the neutral posture the university now claims to embrace.

That is the heart of the matter. Florida universities have learned that DEI is politically dangerous when called DEI. But the old commitments can survive under softer names: belonging, access, opportunity, community, student success. The language changes. The beliefs remain.

Bell may prove his critics wrong. Hoh may lead the College of Medicine with genuine neutrality. UF may truly be turning a new page.

But after the Ono rejection, Bell’s Alabama DEI rebrand, and now this first major UF academic appointment, Floridians should not be asked to blindly trust.

The question is not whether UF leaders know how to say the right things. The question is what they will do once DeSantis is gone.

Thomas Lately, Alachua County

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