UF Provost’s Plot Against the DeSantis Reforms

Even after years of reforms and personnel changes, University of Florida is a bastion of DEI holdouts who clearly hope that Florida’s higher education reformers lack the bandwidth to deepen and broaden the reshaping of Florida’s flagship university.  

The latest illustration comes from a job search for the Director of UF’s Center for Latin American Studies (LAS), a position that reports directly to Provost Joe Glover in the school’s organizational structure. Glover, UF’s second in command, is conducting the LAS job search himself, a delicate job given the program’s dubious legality.  

Florida’s landmark higher education reform bill, SB 266, requires that the Florida Board of Governors eliminate programs based on “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.”  

UF’s Latin American Studies program has morphed into a program that SB 266 was designed to ban. LAS focuses on tracing inequities in Latin America to the sins of American capitalism, racism, and culture.  

The DeSantis administration has in the past signaled displeasure with LAS’s political nature. Carlos de la Torre, a former director of LAS, vowed to continue promoting “social justice in the Americas” even after he was removed for activism in early 2025. Florida’s Board of Governors removed all LAS general education offerings as part of its reforms earlier this year.  

The job search for LAS’s new director is taking place while the program is on thin ice. The faculty is looking for a director who can maintain the programs even though it skirts Florida law. So they ask candidates questions that prompt candidates to pledge future legal defiance. 

University of Florida job searches have operated under this tension since Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reforms were passed. A series of leaks in April 2025 exposed Glover’s hand-picked candidates boasting of their support for DEI. One finalist pledged to the faculty that “we’re going to continue to do the [DEI] work, even if we label it something else.” As radicals were up for deanship jobs across UF, DeSantis ordered a freeze on all UF high-level administrative hiring until a new president was in place. 

UF administrators instead took their resistance underground, vowing that no such videos would surface again. During a UF Faculty Senate meeting, UF’s then-president instructed the faculty to stop recording interviews or holding public fora for candidates.  

Glover, who oversaw the implementation of DEI programs and personnel at UF, followed that advice during the LAS interviews. A leaked internal memo, sent by UF’s HR department on behalf of Glover, stated on Sept. 12, 2025: “all meetings are 100% in-person, zoom links will not be provided, therefore, the seminars will not be recorded.”  

Despite these efforts, sources within UF leaked footage from LAS interviews from the past two weeks to X account @CommiesOnCampus. In one interview, Carlos de la Torre asked, “What would you do to protect us in this environment of censorship and attacks on academic freedom? Because most of the things that we do at the Center are forbidden by the State and the Trump administration.” Both candidates were asked a question in this spirit. 

The first candidate, Oscar Perez Hernandez, promised that “a guiding light is our values and our work are not connected to specific words or specific things … There are ways to continue to do the work that are compliant with the law but are also consistent with our values.” 

The second candidate, Maria Pilar Useche, responded to the same question by promising to get the laws reversed but hiding her views in public. “We can go directly to our administrators with concerns and figure out what’s the best way to handle them. I would do this in person. Not in any setting where the media is recording.”  

Both candidates wasted no time covering their tracks since they were announced as finalists. Perhaps Glover himself recommends candidates to scrub their personal websites and resumes of past evidence of course materials and comments showing a commitment to violate Florida law. 

Perez scrubbed his resume of all reference to DEI initiatives. What was once a 22-page resume (dated June 1, 2024) is now a 15-pager. Gone, for example, is how Skidmore College, his current employer, charged him with advancing goals of “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging” (DEIB) in 2023-2024.  

He scrubbed his similar effort to promote DEIB in Skidmore’s Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies Program. His resume once boasted of how he “championed the program’s engagement with issues that affect Black, indigenous, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities and individuals through course offerings,” as well as taking credit for having “fostered strategic alliances with departments and programs committed to social justice.” Poof, gone. 

UF’s interim president Donald W. Landry, on the job since August, should look askance at Glover and at programs such as LAS. Glover has proven himself a dedicated opponent of the DeSantis reforms, undermining their spirit when the bright lights are not shining. LAS is a program of dubious legality under Florida law. Perhaps it can continue to exist (insofar as it is funded through non-state funds) but never grant degrees. 

Some nefarious things must be destroyed if UF is to continue to build a world-class university. 

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