Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo
Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez speaks as Gov. Ron DeSantis listens during a press conference to sign several bills related to public education and teacher pay, May 9, 2023, in Miami.
Noël C. Barengo, the chair of the faculty senate at Florida International University, received a formal notice to attend an FIU board of trustees meeting in early February, a few days after the Miami Herald reported that Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez (R) might be under consideration to lead the university.
There was no crisis that necessitated the breakneck pace to bring Nuñez onboard. Kenneth Jessell, the outgoing president, had been the university’s chief financial officer before being elevated into the role three years ago after a crisis sparked by the abrupt resignation of his FIU predecessor Mark Rosenberg following allegations of sexual harassment.
Jessell was far from an active opponent of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), but his expiring contract provided the governor with an opportunity to place a more ideologically committed conservative at the top of FIU. The board intended to confirm Nuñez as the interim president, signaling that she eventually would be in line for the top slot.
At the board of trustees meeting, Barengo was the only person to vote no. Minutes from the board meeting confirm that the likely accelerant for Nuñez’s ascension was a communication from DeSantis’s office.
In an interview with the Prospect, Barengo compared the unexpected decision to install Nuñez to the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers hypothetically firing their head coach after winning the Stanley Cup in 2024: “You have a good coach, you get to the playoffs. Why would you change the coach?”
Because DeSantis had landed on a simple formula: By moving to place his preferred candidates at top universities like FIU, he seeks to control Florida higher education at every level beyond the laws that the state legislature has already passed to curb academic independence.
In an effort to root out ideological opponents in public spaces, the governor has relied on a pliant higher-education bureaucracy to implement his regressive policies. Florida’s Board of Governors, which oversees public universities in the Sunshine State and has final approval on the selection of any president within the system, has been stacked with the governor’s appointees. DeSantis has also used his bully pulpit to push individual universities’ boards of trustees to move his preferred choices into key roles.
With more than 54,000 students, Florida International University is the largest public university in South Florida. Its main campus is located in Miami-Dade County. The university is an appealing option for students seeking a reasonably priced education in a city where just about everything else is unbearably expensive. There are also three satellite campuses, and digital programs, for commuter students across South Florida.
FIU has climbed the ranks of the coveted U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Colleges” rankings, and The Wall Street Journal recently declared FIU a top public university. The research institution achieved this kind of acclaim with a considerably smaller budget compared to other flagship public universities, such as the University of Florida and Florida State University.
The approach DeSantis has taken is part of a broader, national conservative effort to tie funding for public universities to political subservience. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has stacked the boards of public universities in the Lone Star State with his donors.
Texas A&M University’s board of regents weighed in on a decision to hire Kathleen McElroy, a tenured University of Texas at Austin journalism professor, to revive the university’s defunct journalism program. McElroy said that “DEI hysteria” fed reservations about her status and she decided to remain in Austin.
Meanwhile, the Texas state legislature closely scrutinizes nearly every move its public universities make, so much so that in January, former University of Texas at Austin president Jay Hartzell welcomed the prospect of reducing his interactions with the state’s higher-education decision-makers after taking a job at the smaller and private Southern Methodist University. His successor, Jim Davis, promptly replaced the provost that Hartzell had installed just months earlier with his own pick.
DaveBenRoberts/Creative Commons
On the campus of Florida International University in Miami
New leaders have also sought to transform Florida schools into conservative models for higher education. In 2023, the flagship University of Florida in Gainesville installed a DeSantis-backed president, Ben Sasse, a Republican and senator from Nebraska. But his tenure was short-lived. He resigned nearly a year and a half later with UF’s student-run newspaper’s coverage of improper spending in his office trailing him out the door. The university’s previous president stepped back into the role in an interim capacity, and the governor has pledged to stay out of the selection process, but skepticism remains as to whether the new search will produce a more independent-minded successor.
Former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives Richard Corcoran was selected as interim president of New College at the beginning of 2023. By the end of the year, he’d become the permanent leader. At the same time Corcoran was selected as president, DeSantis appointed anti-DEI activist Christopher Rufo to the college’s board of trustees. In an article for City Journal, Rufo described the transformation at New College as a “revolution” counteracting the “left-wing ideological capture” of public universities. Some New College students transferred out of state after a liberal arts college in Massachusetts made offers to students affected by the changes.
As lieutenant governor, Nuñez fiercely advocated for laws that have had negative impacts on FIU’s campus. She was a vocal proponent of a 2023 law that devastated Florida’s public-sector unions. In order for these unions to remain certified, the new law mandates additional bureaucratic requirements while simultaneously banning unions from pulling dues directly from their members’ paychecks.
The anti-union law led to the decertification of a nonfaculty union at FIU because the union failed to file for recertification after falling below the 60 percent threshold for dues-paying members as outlined by the new law. “They just keep adding more paperwork right to stay certified,” says Tania Cepero Lopez, the president of FIU’s faculty union. “‘Oh, you have to have 60 percent of paying members,’ but then we also have to have people sign an attestation form.”
Nuñez has led efforts to limit diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and has argued that university presidents need more power over faculty hirings in order to combat DEI. The public university system’s Board of Governors has moved against state schools, stripping funding from DEI offices and removing subjects like sociology that they believe are “controversial” from general education requirements.
She has seemed lukewarm at best about protecting spaces for marginalized students. In an interview with the Miami Herald earlier this year, she declined to explicitly support FIU’s Pride Center for LGBTQ+ students. During her tenure in Tallahassee, Nuñez also reversed her previous support for undocumented students paying in-state tuition rates to attend public universities. FIU is one of a small number of state public universities to implement an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that allows its police officers to ascertain students’ immigration status and, in certain cases, to detain them. The former lieutenant governor backed the change.
“I think it’s an insult to the academic community of our state to have political appointees placed in colleges and universities in our state,” says Marvin Dunn, a professor emeritus of psychology at FIU. “It’s a grave mistake for people whose only qualification is their connection to a politician—to a governor.”
He questions whether he would be able to teach classes that had been core courses during his 36-year tenure at FIU, such as the psychology of racism, or if he would be able to continue to lead his “teach the truth” tours to educate students about the racial violence that has permeated Florida’s history. One of his recent talks on the 1923 Rosewood massacre focused on the murders of Black Floridians by white mobs in a northern Florida town.
The Florida legislature may be growing tired of the politicization of Florida’s public universities. A bill recently passed in the Florida House of Representatives would repeal a 2022 law that shielded the presidential search process from public scrutiny and remove the governor’s ability to make appointments to the public university system’s Board of Governors. The bill has support from House Speaker Daniel Perez (R-Miami), who has been battling DeSantis on immigration, the state budget, and a brewing scandal surrounding first lady Casey DeSantis’s charity, Hope Florida.
Leaders more interested in enforcing rigid policies than supporting and preserving academic freedom may ultimately harm the reputations of institutions like Florida International University. If Jeanette Nuñez wants to win the support of FIU faculty and students, she would have to moderate her positions on the key issues that helped her land her new role—a step that she is unlikely to take in the current political climate. Meanwhile, Dunn, the professor, and Lopez, the faculty union president, both told the Prospect that some demoralized FIU faculty members were considering leaving FIU, or academia altogether. FIU’s brain drain could extend to students as well, eroding the recent progress that the university has made.
