![\"TUSCALOOSA,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1836183450-GI.JPG\" "\\"Former")
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Former University of Alabama President Stuart Bell has been selected to lead the University of Florida. But his record on diversity initiatives in Alabama is raising some of the same criticisms that tanked the last pick to be UF\u2019s president.<\/p>\n
Justin Sullivan<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
Tallahassee<\/p>\n
When University of Florida named Stuart Bell its lone presidential finalist Monday, culture warriors moved almost immediately to raise the same question that doomed UF\u2019s last pick: Is he too tied to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to lead a public university in the state where, as Gov. Ron DeSantis once declared, \u201cwoke goes to die?\u201d<\/p>\n
Within hours of Bell\u2019s selection<\/a>, higher-education conservatives had seized upon the former University of Alabama president\u2019s long record overseeing aggressive diversity recruitment and campus inclusion programs. And that\u2019s giving some Gators an uneasy sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an early sign that Bell could face the same rough-and-tumble confirmation fight that derailed former University of Michigan leader Santa Ono\u2019s bid for the UF presidency just last year.<\/p>\n Ono \u2014 backed by UF trustees, many of whom have deep ties to the state\u2019s Republican Party \u2014 was ultimately rejected by the State University System\u2019s Board of Governors after conservative activists attacked his support for diversity programs at Michigan, arguing he was too aligned with what Florida Republicans call \u201cwoke ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n Now Bell, a longtime engineering administrator who spent a decade leading Alabama, is entering a university system where DeSantis and Republican appointees have taken a sledgehammer to DEI programs, restricted how race and gender can be taught and pushed college presidents to align with the state\u2019s conservative political agenda.<\/p>\n The question looming over Bell\u2019s candidacy is whether Florida leaders will view him as a pragmatic and ideologically pure administrator, or as another left-wing academic in disguise seeking to unwind the state\u2019s conservative reforms.<\/p>\n READ MORE: University of Florida on the hook for $2M payout after snubbing interim president<\/a><\/p>\n That tension is especially striking given Bell\u2019s record in deep-red Alabama, once the epicenter of the nation\u2019s civil rights movement. Reached through a UF spokesperson, Bell declined to comment on his current attitudes toward diversity initiatives.<\/p>\n Bell v. Ono<\/p>\n If Santa Ono became a cautionary tale for ambitious university presidents seeking to lead Florida\u2019s flagship university, Bell may now be the next test case.<\/p>\n At Michigan, Ono championed what was once considered one of the most well-funded and expansive DEI apparatuses in higher education. A deeply reported New York Times investigation from 2024 found that the school had spent roughly $250 million<\/a> since 2016 to implement \u201cDEI 1.0\u201d and \u201cDEI 2.0\u201d plans across more than 50 campus departments.<\/p>\n By the time Ono emerged as UF\u2019s lone finalist last year, Michigan was already beginning to retreat from some of those initiatives amid mounting political pressure. Ono himself publicly distanced from DEI, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the movement had become \u201cmore about ideology, division and bureaucracy, not student success.\u201d<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t enough to salvage his candidacy.<\/p>\n But Bell\u2019s handling of DEI at Alabama stands in stark opposition was to Ono\u2019s \u2014 and arguably produced far more profound results.<\/p>\n Amid the nationwide reckoning over race following George Floyd\u2019s killing in 2020, Bell presided over one of the most consequential diversity overhauls at any Southern flagship university.<\/p>\n Rather than focusing primarily on symbolic gestures or campus programming, Bell\u2019s administration poured resources into recruiting students from within Alabama and, after several high-profile racial controversies, repairing the university\u2019s reputation among Black community leaders.<\/p>\n \u201cDiversity ambassadors\u201d fanned out across Alabama\u2019s historically Black counties, expanded outreach to underrepresented students, increased faculty diversity initiatives and launched antiracism workshops and training programs. The university also invested in scholarship and mentorship programs aimed at students of color.<\/p>\n Those strategies produced measurable demographic changes.<\/p>\n A Chronicle of Higher Education analysis<\/a> found that Black and Latino enrollment at Alabama surged during Bell\u2019s tenure, while the percentage of white students in the freshman class fell by nearly 10 percentage points. By last fall, Black students made up 14% of incoming freshmen \u2014 among the highest shares at flagship public universities nationwide.<\/p>\n Alabama\u2019s record Black student enrollment under Bell is a far cry from Michigan\u2019s, which, even with the expansive DEI initiatives, remained stagnant. Black students make up just 5.2% of UF\u2019s nearly 62,000 student body<\/a>, according to fall 2024 data.<\/p>\n Still, Bell\u2019s diversity initiatives began drawing fire from conservatives years before his UF candidacy.<\/p>\n At the same time, Bell\u2019s diversity initiatives increasingly attracted conservative backlash.<\/p>\n A 2023 report by Scott Yenor \u2014 a controversial conservative scholar at Boise State University who has advised DeSantis on higher-ed issues \u2014 released a scathing report on Alabama\u2019s diversity efforts.<\/p>\n