‘He feels empowered’: DeSantis kicks off takeover of second liberal Florida school

Republican governor installs conservatives including self-described anti-feminist to University of West Florida board

Florida's rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has engineered a second hostile takeover" of a liberal-leaning state school, education watchers say, after he installed a number of staunch conservatives to the board of trustees at the University of West Florida (UWF).

The move almost exactly mirrors the governor's 2023 seizure of power at Sarasota's New College of Florida, in which he ousted the sitting board of the popular liberal arts school and replaced them with hardline cronies in what a national university professor's union denounced as an aggressively ideological and politically motivated" move.