Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing criticism for his controversial pick to chair the board of trustees at the University of West Florida, with a bipartisan group of Jewish lawmakers raising concerns about the appointee’s “history of antisemitic and misogynistic rhetoric.” 

Scott Yenor, a political scientist at Boise State University and a staffer at the right-wing Claremont Institute, is under fire for suggesting last month that only straight white men under 65 are capable of rising to political leadership positions. 

The Florida Senate has approval power over appointments to university boards, including UWF, a public university in Pensacola.

In a series of tweets Yenor posted during Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearings in January, he described Democrats’ “slim pickin’s” for “national leadership or for reforming the party.”

“Of the 47 Democrat Senators, only six are straight white men under the age of sixty-five,” Yenor wrote. “Nine are Jews, two of whom are women and four of whom are 65-years-old or older.” 

Then, he named “the six straight, white non-Jews,” and added that the “three male Jews under sixty could also fall into the category of party reformers.” 

Florida state Sen. Randy Fine, a Republican who is widely expected to win an upcoming special congressional election to fill the seat vacated by former Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), now President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, called on DeSantis to “reconsider” his appointment of Yenor. A spokesperson for DeSantis did not respond to a request for comment. 

“Antisemites have no place in Florida’s universities, let alone as its leaders,” Fine wrote in a post on X last week. Fine, the only Republican Jewish senator in Florida, signed his name to a letter by the Democrat-dominated Florida Jewish Legislative Caucus calling Yenor’s rhetoric on social media — which has also taken aim at career-oriented women — “deeply offensive” and “incompatible with the principles of leadership and integrity that should define Florida’s higher education system.” 

The Florida Senate voted on Tuesday to take Yenor out of consideration for a position leading the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a move spearheaded by Fine. Yenor remains in his role as UWF’s board chair.

In a tweet on Thursday, Yenor stood by his comments and said that criticism of them is a “deliberate mischaracterization by dishonest media & the left actively working to prevent the reform of Florida’s institutions.” Yenor called himself an “ardent supporter of Israel and the Jewish people.”

He told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that he “was saying that Democrats would not abide having Jews in leadership roles, based on the Josh Shapiro experience.” He was referring to Kamala Harris’ decision not to choose Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat, as her running mate.

In Florida, the governor has the power to appoint trustees of public universities, and DeSantis has set out to fill the institutions with people committed to fighting what he has described as progressive dominance of higher education.