(Bloomberg) -- Ben Sasse, the former Republican senator from Nebraska who took over as president of the University of Florida last year, is stepping down.
Sasse, 52, is resigning to spend more time with his children and ailing wife, who’s been diagnosed with epilepsy, he said in a statement. He’s leaving July 31 and asked the board of trustees to start looking for a replacement.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has turned public education into a political battleground across the state, steering curriculums and thrusting Florida public colleges into the culture wars. While Sasse’s decision is unrelated, it will place added scrutiny over who succeeds him.
At UF, which has over 41,000 undergraduate students, Sasse shut down the diversity department in March, scrapped DEI jobs, and canceled contracts with outside vendors to comply with a Florida regulation that prohibits funding of such programs. DeSantis later praised the move.
Sasse also took a more hardline stance on campus protesters on the wake of anti-genocide protests that rocked elite schools across the US. After arresting protesters in April, UF issued a statement saying its campus “is not a daycare.”
--With assistance from Janet Lorin.
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