One of the guys — and I do mean guys — who’s bound and determined to turn the United States into Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale is now where he can move society back at least one hundred years: midwest conspiracy theorist and Christian Nationalist turned Florida Man Scott Yenor. Florida Governor and champion of recrudescence Ron DeSantis recently nominated Yenor for a position on the board of the University of West Florida, located in Pensacola.
Yenor made some waves back in 2021 when speaking at the National Conservatism Conference, where he railed about the “evils” of feminism, labeled “independent women” as “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome” and referred to universities as “the citadels of our gynecocracy.”
He said: “If we want a great nation, we should be preparing young women to become mothers, not finding every reason for young women to delay motherhood until they are established in a career or sufficiently independent.”
ℹ️ By the bye, it’s ridiculous that I need to clarify my position here, but there’s nothing wrong with being a mother. I just think it shouldn’t be the ONLY goal for women, just as fatherhood isn’t the ONLY goal for men.
He also said: “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school and the law and every trade.” Yenor said.
“If every Nobel Prize winner is a man, that’s not a failure. It’s kind of a cause for celebration,” forgetting how much we owe Marie Curie (who won it twice — first for physics in 1903, and then in 1911 for chemistry).
“Perhaps mandatory gun training and promotion of wrestling and other acts of physical courage are necessary in our age of soy boys.”
In addition to being a professor at Boise State University in Idaho, he’s also quite unsurprisingly a former fellow with the Heritage Foundation and behind a now-defunct extremist website called Action Idaho, which produced a lot of far-right inflammatory screeds.
Yenor’s creepy little club
Through public records requests, a good number of Yenor’s emails (as a professor at a state institution, Boise State University, his emails can be accessed this way), it was discovered that he was involved with a secretive “boys” club” kind of organization called SACR — the Society for American Civic Renewal.
Talking Points Memo describes SACR as “A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a ‘national divorce.’”
You should read the article. Here’s a taste:
Group members hold a distinct vision of America as a latter-day ancient Rome: a crumbling, decadent empire that could soon be replaced by a Christian theocracy. To join, the group demands faithfulness, virtue, and “alignment,” which it describes as “deference to and acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebears in the political realm, a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household, and acceptance of traditional Natural Law in ethics more broadly.” More practically, members must be able to contribute either influence, capability, or wealth in helping SACR further its goals.
“Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm,” a mission statement reads.
Once in the group, the statement says, members can expect perks: “direct preferential treatment for members, especially in business,” and help in advancement “in all areas of life” from other members.
A very telling set of appointments
Yenor was one eight new appointees to the University of West Florida’s Board of Trustees. The announcement on UWF’s site subtly makes it clear that there were two sets of appointees:
- One set was appointed by the Florida Board of Governors,
- and one was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis
See if you can spot the differences. Here’s the set appointed by the Board of Governors…
| Incoming trustee (appointed by the Florida Board of Governors) |
Their job |
|---|---|
| Rebecca Matthews | VP @ Automated Health Systems, a national health management services company |
| Rachel Moya | Chief Revenue Officer @ The Amos Group, an education data and technology company. |
| Ashley Ross | President @ Ross Consulting LLC and a political consultant with a specialty in campaign finance. |
…and here are DeSantis’ appointees:
| Incoming trustee (Appointed by Ron DeSantis) |
Their job |
|---|---|
| Paul Bailey | Attorney @ Welton Law Firm.
Also an adjunct professor at Pensacola Christian College and is a registered instructor with the National Rifle Association. |
| Gates Garcia | President and CEO at Pinehill Capital Partners.
Also serves on the Catholic University of America Busch School of Business Board of Visitors. He was the recipient of the 2024 Richard and Jacqueline Lincoln Fellow for The Claremont Institute. |
| Adam Kissel | Chair of the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board and is a member of the Civics, History, & America’s Future Advisory Council for America250.
Also a visiting fellow on Higher Education Reform for The Heritage Foundation, a senior fellow for the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, and a visiting scholar for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. |
| Scott Yenor | Chairperson of The Ambrose School Board, a professor of political science at Boise State University, an honored visiting graduate Faculty at Ashland University, and a Washington Fellow at The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.
His research focuses on feminism, sexual liberation, and on dismantling the rule of social justice in America’s universities. He previously served as a visiting fellow on American Political Thought for The Heritage Foundation and a Fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. |
| Chris Young | Founder and senior partner @ Perry & Young Law Firm, COO @ Adcock Bros, Inc, owner and President @ Adock Transport and Adcock Direct. |
Most notably, the Board of Governors’ choices are all women who are high-level business executives. DeSantis’ choices are all men, with two out of five of them having the kind of bullshit jobs that people who never really left student council take (namely Adam Kissel and Scott Yenor). It’s also notable that each of the mens’ descriptions in the announcement are longer than the women’s, with an additional sentence or two that establish their conservative bona fides.
Ironically enough, the previous article on the UWF site was about a financial gift to create scholarships for electrical and computer engineering students that included a photo that Yenor would absolutely hate:
We have a lot of challenges coming up here in Florida as well as the rest of the U.S. (and most definitely the tech industry), and if you care about its future, we’re going to need to counter guys like Yenor and his regressive rhetoric.
Recommended reading
- The Palm Beach Post, January 15, 2025: How dare women go to college? DeSantis’ new university trustee pick will fix it.
- Pensacola News Journal, January 13, 2025: UWF Board of Trustees appointments take hard shift to right
- University of West Florida, January 10, 2025: University of West Florida Board of Trustees welcomes eight new trustees
- Florida Phoenix, January 10, 2025: DeSantis defends UWF board nominee who criticizes women prioritizing their careers
- WPTV, January 9, 2025: DeSantis nominee for UWF board says women shouldn’t delay motherhood for higher ed, career
- US News & World Report, January 9, 2025: DeSantis Nominee for UWF Board Says Women Shouldn’t Delay Motherhood for Higher Ed, Career
- WUWF: University of West Florida braces for leadership changes
- National Review, January 6, 2025: Governor DeSantis Overhauls Another Left-Wing Florida College, Appointing Conservative Board Members
- Middlebury Institute of International Studies, May 13, 2024: “Secure a future for Christian families:” the Gender Ideology and Accelerationism of the Society for American Civic Renewal
- Idaho Statesman, March 31, 2024: It’s time for Boise State to kick professor Yenor off Idaho taxpayer rolls
- The Guardian, March 29, 2024: Revealed: US professor was behind extremist site that spread conspiracies
- Talking Points Memo, March 9, 2024: Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’
