Florida Votes to Hire Bell as President

Stuart Bell survived his first test in the gauntlet to become University of Florida President.

UF’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously Wednesday to hire Bell, who led the University of Alabama from 2015 to 2025. Since Bell was named the sole finalist for the job, his candidacy has been imperiled by a wave of conservative criticism over his embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at his last stop, including a push to enroll more underrepresented students. While the board questioned DEI practices at Alabama, Bell defended his record in the context of the times and noted that he later dismantled such programs.

Now, his candidacy will advance to the Florida Board of Governors for final approval. That board voted down the last person picked to permanently lead UF.

Although multiple conservatives blasted Bell over DEI on social media, the UF board waved off the controversy from the start with Chair Mori Hosseini making a barbed reference to critics “getting paid by somebody to tweet.”

“This board is not going to give in,” Hosseini said. “We’re going to do the right thing.”

Various critics, including Republican senator Rick Scott, have accused UF of not being transparent in the search, but the board disputed that notion in the early minutes of the meeting. Rahul Patel, the trustee who led the search committee, emphasized that it followed Florida law.

“To suggest that we and our committee needed to be more transparent would be to suggest that our committee violated Florida law. So, I hope folks understand that we complied with the letter of the law when it comes to transparency,” Patel said.

Despite the specter of DEI that hung over the meeting, board members lightly touched on the topic during a nearly 90-minute wide-ranging public interview with Bell. Almost 20 minutes into the interview, trustee Dan O’Keefe asked about DEI at Alabama.

“I’d like to understand from your perspective why you had those programs and what the goal of those programs were,” O’Keefe asked.

“First and foremost, let me be clear: I am not coming to Florida to bring DEI or woke back,” Bell said.

Bell emphasized that he intends “to build on the vision of this board and the vision that I find consistent across the state” to develop “a great institution based on merit, based on hard work, based on accountability.” Bell repeated a variation of that theme throughout his interview.

Bell added that “as a public institution, we will follow the law of the land, we will follow what has been given to us by the legislature and the people of the state of Florida.” He also argued that DEI efforts at Alabama—which notably boosted minority enrollment during his tenure—came at a time when many public institutions and major corporations were embracing such practices.

But over time, Bell argued, such efforts morphed.

“They move from that original intention in some cases, into intentions that really don’t reflect what we would say is merit-based hard work and achievement, and so companies, institutions, universities, along with their states, began to evaluate programs [and] laws were passed,” Bell said.

He noted that after Alabama passed anti-DEI legislation in 2024, his team began a meticulous university-wide review to dismantle such practices and programs.

But the question also prompted a response from Hosseini who has publicly clashed with the Florida Board of Governors, which has final say over UF’s presidential hire and rejected former University of Michigan President Santa Ono last year over concerns related to his stance on DEI. (Ono had tried unsuccessfully to distance himself from past statements on DEI.)

Hosseini pointed out that in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the Florida Board of Governors had issued a memo that noted concerns about “racism and social injustice” and listed DEI as a strategic priority for the State University System of Florida.

“So what should we do?” Hosseini asked. “Go kill everybody on the Board of Governors?”

Although UF trustees celebrated Bell’s selection, conservative critics quickly emerged online, including board members at other public institutions in the Sunshine State.

“Further investigation of the ‘sole finalist’ for president of the University of Florida shows that he’s indeed a terrible choice,” Ilya Shapiro, a trustee at Florida Polytechnic University, wrote on X shortly after the meeting. “Big @GovRonDeSantis fan here—and he appointed/reappointed me to the board of @FLPolyU—but this is a mistake. Bell may be worse than Santa Ono.”