Danaya Wright had plans and papers to write. After chairing the UF Faculty Senate during Ben Sasse’s tumultuous first year at the university’s helm, she was behind on her duties as a law professor.
The sun was low as she drove home from campus, moments before she received the call that changed everything: “Sasse is resigning."
The news shocked Wright and multiple top university officials who told The Alligator they weren’t aware Sasse planned to resign until 20 minutes before his announcement.
In a lengthy, heartfelt letter posted to X July 18 at 8:22 p.m., Sasse, a former Nebraska Republican senator, attributed his abrupt exit to his wife's recent epilepsy diagnosis and newly developed memory issues.
Sasse officially steps down from his post July 31 and is set to remain at UF in an advisory role as President Emeritus and will teach classes as a professor in Gainesville.
“I’m going to remain involved in serving our UF students — past, present, and future — but I need to walk arm-in-arm with my dearest friend more hours of every week,” Sasse wrote.
After a monthslong search conducted largely behind closed doors, Sasse emerged from a pool of more than 700 candidates as the sole finalist for the UF presidency in October 2022. Sasse’s ascension to the UF presidency was protested by students who opposed his conservative voting record on abortion and LGBTQ+ issues. Meanwhile, faculty questioned whether he would be able to lead as an academic, not a politician.
‘Big ideas’ cut short by sudden resignation
Scott Angle, the former head of UF/IFAS who Sasse tapped as provost in February, said Sasse was “the most dynamic president [he’s] seen in [his] 40-year-plus career.”
“Most new presidents have several major initiatives in their time in office,” Angle said. “Ben had well over 100.”
But in Sasse’s 17-month term as UF president, the shortest of any non-interim president in the university’s history, he was only able to lay the groundwork for many of his plans.
Wright, the former Faculty Senate Chair, said Sasse came in at a time of many administrative “dumpster fires” and he was often “frustrated” he wasn’t able to quickly implement his “big ideas.”
One of Sasse’s major accomplishments was fixing “serious issues” plaguing the governance structure of UF Health, Wright said. Sasse also spearheaded the development of UF’s Jacksonville-based satellite campus, inching within $40 million of its targeted $300 million for construction.
Among Sasse’s larger plans for the university were an expansion of UF’s presence across the state through additional satellite campuses, a “dual core” curriculum overhaul and a “10x10x10” initiative to have 10 of the university’s programs among the top 10 of their kind in the country within 10 years.
Sasse was set to receive final approval for his plans from the UF Board of Trustees in the Fall semester, but it is unclear whether they will carry forward through the looming shake-ups in university leadership.
“I think that what's going to happen is that a lot of those ideas are going to be gradually taken up,” Wright said. “I think the faculty really appreciates a lot of his ideas and that we will continue the momentum.”
Wright said there had been a lot of talk about what would and wouldn’t happen during a Sasse presidency, specifically in regard to LGBTQ+ protections and the elimination of degree programs. However, she said “[talk] was all that was.”
“He's not as bad as the naysayers thought he was going to be,” she said. “In fact, he had a lot of really good ideas and a lot of energy. But he's also not as good as his proponents thought. They kind of thought this guy walks on water.”
In anonymous feedback submitted to the president’s office last fall, faculty blasted Sasse’s early criticisms of UF’s low tuition and arguments that “quiet-retired” faculty had to be disciplined through new, state-mandated post-tenure review processes.
But, faculty have chosen to remain quiet following Sasse’s surprise resignation. The Alligator contacted 154 faculty and all 16 UF deans, all of whom declined to comment or didn’t respond before publication.
Simone Liang, a 21-year-old UF political science senior and former student representative to the UF Faculty Senate, said after the “destruction and chaos [of Sasse’s administration], for him to just step down is really disappointing.”
Sasse led UF during a wave of Republican-backed higher education reforms targeting “wokeness” and “indoctrination” on state university campuses.
In March, UF under Sasse fired 13 full-time diversity, equity and inclusion staffers, eliminated its office of the Chief Diversity Officer and ended all DEI contracts to comply with new state regulations.
A critic of Sasse’s initial selection, Liang worried about how Sasse would uphold DEI initiatives and avoid the influence of state government and donors. Now that Sasse is stepping down, she said her concerns were “warranted.”
Liang said if she were grading Sasse for his time as president, “I would give him a C, maybe C-minus.”
A Sasse spokesperson didn’t respond to The Alligator for comment.
‘Have you seen this man?’
Sasse’s presidency began with a lengthy letter to faculty and students, the announcement of UF’s Jacksonville campus and a raucous protest of about 150 students shouting their demands for his presidency.
But, his loud first week at the university’s helm was followed by a semester of selective silence largely spent behind the scenes in meetings with faculty leaders. In his first six months, he made few public appearances and refused to speak with The Alligator and other news outlets.
Sasse’s elusiveness was a far cry from his predecessor, Kent Fuchs, who was regularly spotted on campus chatting and taking selfies with students. Throughout the first two semesters of Sasse’s presidency, students plastered posters of him across campus reading, “MISSING!” and “Have you seen this man?”
In August, Sasse broke his silence during controversial, faculty-only previews of his vision for the university and was spotted hauling refrigerators into dorms during a freshman move-in day. In the following months, Sasse slung Gatorades at football games and was formally inaugurated in a ceremony full of pomp and circumstance.
Breaking his ‘political celibacy’
During his nomination, Sasse pledged to UF trustees he would divorce himself from partisan political activities as university president and said he would urge the Republican-majority state legislature not to micromanage the school under what he called a vow of “political celibacy.”
He stuck to his promise in the first half of his presidency, but in a letter sent to Jewish alumni in October, Sasse called out presidents of “elite universities” for not condemning Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The letter was lauded by conservatives and thrust Sasse back into the national spotlight.
In a follow-up column, Sasse wrote presidents of “elite universities” had “drunk the Kool-Aid of a new and cultlike worldview” and were “acolytes of a shallow new theology called ‘intersectionality.’”
Following a wave of pro-Palestinian protests in April, Sasse said in a Wall Street Journal column that protestors who violated university policies would be trespassed for three years.
In the column, titled “The Adults Are Still in Charge at the University of Florida,” Sasse derided the “asinine entitlement” of the protestors and described them as “20-year-old toddlers” with “little grasp of geography or history.”
Holding true to Sasse’s promise, UF recently issued suspensions of up to four years to the nine protestors arrested in April.
Meera Sitharam, president of the faculty union, said Sasse “used students as scapegoats for national grandstanding.”
“Is the person seeking national media attention on the backs of students the adult in the room?” Sitharam said. “Or is it the students who care so much that they, during finals week, sit there and quietly protest?”
Oscar Santiago Perez, the former UF Student Senate President, said Sasse’s response to the protests breached his vow of political celibacy.
“Instead of trying to place reasonable restrictions [on protestors], he tried to politicize it,” Santiago Perez said. “It felt like he was trying to win Republican brownie points.”
Santiago Perez told Sasse during his confirmation vote in Nov. 2022 that he would have to climb “a hill of trust” with students in light of his political history. But in Sasse’s relatively short tenure, Santiago Perez said he only made “marginal” progress toward the hilltop.
An impending presidential search
With less than two weeks before Sasse steps down, UF is expected to tap Kent Fuchs as interim president and fast-track its upcoming presidential search, although no clear timeline has been announced.
Presidential searches at Florida universities, including Sasse’s, have attracted national attention in recent years for suspected interference from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration. Florida Atlantic University suspended its presidential search last year after Rep. Randy Fine (R-33) publicly alleged the governor’s office told him he was a lock for the job.
In a more overt case, DeSantis last year fired half of the New College of Florida’s trustees and installed several well-known conservative activists. The new board immediately fired then-President Patricia Okker without cause and installed Richard Corcoran, a DeSantis ally, as interim president.
Elliott Hirko, an 18-year-old UF nuclear engineering freshman, said Sasse fueled partisan decision making through his connections to Republicans such as DeSantis.
“[A university president] should be neutral enough such that they keep the student body happy… not being a puppet for higher level politicians,” Hirko said.
The 2022 state law which shielded UF’s last presidential search from public view is still in effect, meaning students and faculty will have little say in the search process until finalists are announced.
In an email sent to faculty senators a day after Sasse’s resignation, Faculty Senate Chair Sarah Lynne wrote the upcoming presidential search presents an “opportunity to consider reaffirming and/or revising” its Resolution Affirming the Qualifications of the next University of Florida President.
The resolution, passed in May 2022, outlined 10 qualifications a prospective presidential candidate should have, including a commitment to DEI initiatives and administrative experience at a university that spends at least $50 million in research — neither of which Sasse qualified for.
Lynne said any changes to the resolution will come from “faculty engagement” and that she will be “advocating strongly for faculty representation on the search committee.”
Scott Angle, the Sasse-appointed provost, said he expects the search to take a minimum of six months and will begin in “the next month or so.” In the meantime, Angle said the possibility of Fuchs temporarily stepping back into the presidency will be a “steadying influence following the sudden transition.”
“Our faculty are anxious,” Angle said. “We need the calm that President Fuchs will bring.”
Contact Garrett, Morgan and Avery at gshanley@alligator.org, mvanderlaan@alligator.org and aparker@alligator.org. Follow them on X @garrettshanley, @morgevande and @AveryParke98398.
Avery Parker is a third-year English and History major covering university affairs for The Alligator. Outside of reporting, Avery spends his time doting on his cats, reading, and listening to music by the Manwolves.
Morgan Vanderlaan is a second year Political Science major and the Fall 2024 Politics Enterprise Reporter. When she's not on the clock she can be found writing, reciting, and watching theatre!
Garrett Shanley is a fourth-year journalism major and the Summer 2024 university editor for The Alligator. Outside of the newsroom, you can find him watching Wong Kar-Wai movies and talking to his house plants.
