UF’s Ben Sasse era is ending. Here are 5 ways it’ll be remembered.

University of Florida president Ben Sasse announced late Thursday that he will step down from his position after 19 months. The former Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska said the decision came after his wife, who has long suffered from health problems, was diagnosed with epilepsy.

After a high-profile search, Sasse emerged as the school’s only real candidate in 2022. The choice drew immediate backlash from a large swath of alumni, students and faculty over the school’s secretive selection process and Sasse’s onetime opposition to same-sex marriage. His compensation package — worth an estimated $10 million over five years — became a recurring target of critique.

Sasse responded to criticism by reflexively pivoting to the central thesis of his presidency: the need to enact high-level reform in higher education. Sasse had long advocated for flexible classes and greater focus on continuing education.

His presidency at UF was, in theory, a chance to put these principles into action. And while his short tenure featured a string of unique events, it saw few signature accomplishments.

Here are five key moments from Sasse’s presidency.

An opaque search yields an unconventional pick

UF’s search for outgoing president Ken Fuchs’ replacement was the first conducted under a 2022 Florida law that kept the early stages of the presidential selection process out of the public eye.

The school’s search committee winnowed a list of 700 names down to “a dozen highly qualified diverse candidates,” but would not identify who made the short list, citing the new law that only required them to disclose “a final group of applicants.”

But the list released by the school in October 2022 contained a single name: Ben Sasse.

The law was intended to attract top-tier candidates who don’t want to jeopardize their current jobs. But the school’s move to release a sole finalist skirted the intention of the law, said bill sponsor state Sen. Jeff Brandes.

The school’s faculty overwhelmingly objected, approving a vote of no confidence in the search process.

Sasse, who was then in his second term in the Senate, was an unusual choice to lead one of the nation’s premier public research universities. At the time, he was perhaps best known as one of the few elected Republicans willing to publicly criticize former President Donald Trump.

Sasse has a doctorate in history from Yale and had briefly taught at the University of Texas at Austin. He also served as president of Midland University for five years, but the 1,500-student private college in rural Nebraska was a far cry from UF’s nearly 60,000-student campus.

Teachers were heartened by Sasse’s support for campus free speech, faculty leader Paul Ortiz said at the time, but the president would need to prove himself on campus.

“We don’t know him because the search lacked transparency,” Ortiz said.

“Have you seen this man?”

Two months into Sasse’s presidency, flyers began appearing around campus asking where he was.

“MISSING,” said the caption alongside his photo. “Have you seen this man?”

Despite promises to “listen, listen, listen and listen some more,” Sasse at first made few public appearances on campus and hadn’t met with key student and faculty stakeholders, including LGBTQ+ groups that had raised concerns about his selection.

Instead, his on-campus appearances were typically limited to hoisting heavy objects at freshman move-in day and athletic events.

Soon after arriving, Sasse explained to faculty that he’d need time to focus on the “$100 million decisions” as the school figures out how to serve a dramatically altered work world.

“Most of that will require me probably going a little bit slow at the beginning,” Sasse said, “but then accelerating pretty rapidly.”

A voice against pro-Palestine protests

Sasse’s early avoidance of political controversy ended in October when campuses across the county erupted in protests over the war in Gaza.

In a statement that garnered national attention, Sasse criticized those who would justify Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians and promised, “We will protect our students and we will protect speech.”

He added, “Our Constitution protects the rights of people to make abject idiots of themselves.”

Sasse followed the comments with a Wall Street Journal op-ed aimed at university leaders who had taken a softer line against campus protesters.

“Parents are rightly furious at the asinine entitlement of these activists and the embarrassing timidity of many college administrators,” he wrote.

At UF, which has among the highest populations of Jewish students in the nation, protesters would be held accountable for any infraction of school speech codes, Sasse wrote.

Gov. Ron DeSantis praised the school’s handling of student protests. But pro-Palestine organizations on campus pushed back against Sasse’s depiction, and the statement sparked a second wave of campus protests.

Holding true to Sasse’s promise, school officials recently announced that UF protesters arrested in April face suspensions of up to four years.

Big ideas, few concrete accomplishments

“American higher education is the envy of the world, and it’s also failing our students on a massive scale,” Sasse wrote in a 2022 article for The Atlantic.

Changing that meant revisiting fundamental questions about the “purpose, duty, and opportunities in front of an institution like ours,” Sasse wrote in an open letter to faculty and staff on his first day.

The letter listed the questions he hoped to tackle, from how to maintain viewpoint diversity on campus to the role of AI in the classroom. He hoped to bolster career services, expand UF Health and “help Gator athletics win more.”

The school has seen success: UF topped The Wall Street Journal’s ranking of public universities and made Forbes’ list of “new Ivy” schools. But near the end of his short tenure, those big questions appear to be unanswered.

Most of the successes his tenure has seen were laid in place before he arrived. Plans to expand to Jacksonville and the establishment of the school’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civil Education were formulated under his predecessor.

Sasse’s critical assessment of the school’s low tuition and expansive academic departments had little immediate impact but has spurred conversations at the Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system.

From Gator hater to superfan

Sasse, who once derisively characterized UF’s football program as “the best team money can buy,” became a quick convert to Gator Nation.

Sasse’s social media is overwhelmingly devoted to celebrating the school’s athletic accomplishments — with the occasional detour into Florida-man memes.

The school has not been short of accomplishments to share — including six national titles in track and field and golf since 2022. More than 30 student-athletes will compete in this summer’s Olympic games, representing more than a dozen counties.

In a June podcast interview, Sasse interrupted a question about whether he’d consider returning to office with the joking exclamation: “I came on here wanting to talk about the College World Series.”

The annual event, held in his home state, “is the greatest amateur sporting event in America,” he added, “outside every college football game that exists.”

Times staff writer Divya Kumar contributed to this story.

Ian Hodgson is an education data reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, working in partnership with Open Campus.