Fears of Politicization Dog Another Florida Public University’s Presidential Search

In the wake of several contentious presidential searches across the state, Florida Gulf Coast University is set to choose its next leader Thursday. But some students and staff and faculty members worry that there’s an invisible political thumb on the scale for one candidate.

That candidate is Henry Mack III, a senior chancellor at the Florida Department of Education and one of four people vying for the post. The others are Neil J. MacKinnon, provost of Augusta University, in Georgia; Joseph A. Morgan, president of Morehead State University, in Kentucky; and Aysegul Timur, vice president for strategy at Florida Gulf Coast.

Some on campus have concerns about Mack: among them, his public writings and statements, which indicate he agrees with Florida Republicans’ belief that American higher education has gone gravely awry and needs correcting; and his academic record, which is thinner than the other finalists’.

“Is this a legitimate, open search where every candidate has the same opportunity to be offered the position? A lot of people don’t think so,” said Carolynne Gischel, an assistant professor in the department of teacher-preparation programs and president of the faculty union. “He doesn’t seem of the same caliber as the other candidates, and so it seems odd that he’s in this final pool.”

Mack didn’t return emails or a call asking for comment. Contacted through a spokesperson for Florida Gulf Coast University, the chairs of the presidential search advisory committee and Board of Trustees declined to speak with The Chronicle. Grace Brannigan, recently the student-body president who served as the student representative to the search advisory committee and Board of Trustees, expressed trust in the process.

“Having spent a year on the board, I think that the Board of Trustees, the vast majority of them do genuinely care about making the best decision for FGCU,” she said. “You have to lead the horse to water and tell them what it is that the community actually believes to be the best decision.”

Brannigan also confirmed that many students were concerned about Mack’s candidacy but that they believed the hiring process was legitimate.

Florida Gulf Coast University’s presidential search comes at a time of heightened political tensions around public higher education in the state. In addition to a stepped-up campaign by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers to take greater control of the colleges and universities, recent selections of politicians for presidencies have also attracted controversy.

A hotly debated law that was passed last year shielded more of the selection process from Florida’s open-government laws. Supporters said it helped them get better candidates by allowing applicants, who might not want their employers to know they’re job-hunting, to stay anonymous until the last few weeks of interviews. But critics feared it could be used to hide political maneuvering. The University of Florida selected a new president, the former Republican U.S. senator Ben Sasse, under the new process, and it led to protests. And DeSantis has touted his success at appointing trustees who “got rid of the president” of the New College of Florida and installed a new one as interim: Richard Corcoran, the former Republican speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives.

Mack is not a career politician, but he has been closely associated with DeSantis’s aggressive approach to higher education.

People at Florida Gulf Coast said they didn’t think their own presidential search was entirely a political farce. Sentiments were more mixed. Although they were skeptical, or reported their colleagues were, they also acknowledged positive signs that things are proceeding as they should. There’s a slate of four finalists, not just one, as occurred in recent searches at the University of Florida and Florida International University. Members of the search advisory committee have tried to reassure colleagues that their opinions matter. Faculty and staff members say they’ve provided their input in good faith. Said Edwin Everham, a professor of ecology who’s been at the university since 1996: “I refuse to believe we have no choice.”

Florida Gulf Coast has already spent a long time finding a new leader. The search began last year and, six months ago, the Board of Trustees was on the brink of choosing someone when the board chair unexpectedly announced a delay. Some faculty and staff members feared political meddling there, too, because the board chair had said he’d done so after talking on the phone with the chair of the Board of Governors, which oversees the State University System of Florida. All three finalists eventually dropped out, and the search had to begin anew.

In public forums he held April 18 at Florida Gulf Coast, Mack said he wasn’t part of that first search, but he joined the second because he was seeking a slower pace of work. After two years in the Florida Department of Education, Mack rose to his current position, senior chancellor, in 2022. He oversees divisions including the college system (which is separate from the university system) and Career & Adult Education. He works with the governor’s office on “all higher education and workforce education legislative and policy priorities,” he wrote on his CV.

Prior to the Department of Education, he’d been an associate vice president and an associate dean at Broward College. He’s also been an adjunct professor of philosophy for nearly 20 years, but has never climbed the faculty ranks, a point of contention for many Florida Gulf Coast faculty members. “If you’re going to lead a campus with all these different constituents, you need to have been in their place, had to travel in their shoes,” said Eric Otto, chair of the integrated-studies program. Mack defended his dissertation, in education, at the end of 2021.

Mack said he wanted the presidency because he missed the academic community. “What’s driving me now is a return to the academic life, a return to people, and a return to service in view of the success of our students,” he said.

At the same time, he seems to believe academe is deeply broken. In a February interview with City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute, he argued that postmodern thinking and the questioning of truth have taken over American higher education. That has “left the academy — and, by extension, potentially Western Civilization itself — in ruin.” The solution, he said, is a common curriculum grounded in the “Great Books of Western Civilization,” which would help create “informed, virtuous citizens.”

At campus listening sessions, he was decidedly less lofty and dramatic. Although he said, “We’re not just about intellectual formation here. We’re about character formation,” he talked frequently about work-force development and aligning the university with the needs of local employers. When he discussed his goal of increasing Florida Gulf Coast’s research spending, he emphasized that it needed to be on applied science that would benefit the region, not “mere intellectual pursuit.”

His views of diversity, equity, and inclusion work were a major point of concern for students and staff and faculty members who attended the three hours of public meetings he held on campus. Those views were outlined perhaps most pointedly in an email he sent in December, which The Chronicle obtained through public-records requests. As the Florida College System presidents were putting together a public letter about 2022’s House Bill 7, also known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” Mack forwarded a suggested statement for the presidents to use.

“New forms of discrimination and totalitarianism … have taken hold within academia,” the statement read, in part. “In most instances, DEI initiatives now push an ideology opposed to intellectual and academic freedom, freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity and the pursuit of truth in teaching and learning.” The suggested draft had the college presidents promise to reject “any and all DEI initiatives across our campuses.” The resulting final statement preserved much of his suggested language, and drew criticism nationwide.

Mack’s answers to questions from FGCU community members revealed some nuances in his views on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Student groups and activities such as the Black Student Alliance and Lunar New Year festivities are “valuable” and “important,” and even help cultivate critical thinking by exposing students to diverse viewpoints, he said. He also talked about his past work providing wraparound services to improve the graduation rates of Hispanic students at Broward College.

He defended current and proposed Florida legislation as less dire for academic freedom and student diversity activities than many observers believe them to be. “There would be certainly nothing in current legislation or regulation, drafted or not, where your ability to discharge your own beliefs in the classroom about controversial topics that we might disagree on would be compromised,” he said.

Still, some community members weren’t persuaded by his answers. For example, in answer to a question about what he would do to confront discrimination against Black and indigenous students and employees, Mack first said, “Great question. Agree with the premise of the question and everything you said, unequivocally.” Then he added: “The idea that racism and any practice that reeks of discrimination either for Black people, toward white people, to anybody, would be tolerated, in this day and age, on this campus, is unacceptable.”

In response to another question about his views on diversity, he said, in part: “What cannot happen, however, is as a result of the exploration of the equity or inclusion or diversity aim, we predetermine the outcome in a way that compromises objective merit and earning things and learning things on our own terms.” And while discussing grade inflation, he said he had heard it occurred in part because of equity goals.

To Gischel, the faculty-union president, Mack’s answers were dismissive of the particular discrimination that racial minorities face, and played into harmful ideas that people of color get preferential treatment.

Not every Florida Gulf Coast community member was so unhappy with Mack. Robert Kenny, a professor in the College of Education, described himself as open-minded about Mack’s candidacy. Mack’s connections to Tallahassee, which Mack had touted, could help the university, Kenny said. Like Mack, he didn’t think higher-ed legislation in Florida was as restrictive as many have interpreted it. He didn’t think there were any DEI initiatives at Florida Gulf Coast that DeSantis and other state Republicans would oppose. “It’s a wonderful, open university,” Kenny said.

Kenny and others did agree on one point. Fairly or unfairly, it was Mack’s association with the DeSantis administration that was the problem for some people on campus who oppose him. As Everham, the ecologist, put it, “Why would we want to invite a person to run the institution with the idea that we’re all overpaid, lazy liberals who care too much about equity and inclusion?” (Mack did promise to raise staff and faculty pay.)

Florida Gulf Coast’s Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet on Thursday, May 4, to interview and vote to choose the next president. Then the state system’s Board of Governors must confirm the president-elect.