Ben Sasse: A Profile in Conviction

O n July 18, Ben Sasse announced that he would be stepping down as president of the University of Florida, effective today. It has been only about a year and a half since he officially took up the post. But his wife’s health had deteriorated such that he could no longer maintain his duties as both president and as husband and father.

The news shocked his fans, myself very much included, who were already impressed by his time in the job thus far and were looking forward to seeing what he would do next. And while his departure is saddening, if this is the end of Sasse’s time in public life, that time stands as a model for anyone in the arena.

I had mixed feelings when Ben Sasse initially arrived at the University of Florida in 2023. A stalwart conservative leaving the Senate in the age of Donald Trump is a sad affair. Said stalwart conservative arriving at my university, however, was cause to rejoice. Armed with a mountain of money, and backed by Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature, newly appointed President Sasse (doesn’t that title sound good?) arrived at UF promising reform and innovation. “I think you all know you have an incredibly special institution,” he declared at his student introductory press conference. “But sometimes it takes an outsider’s eyes to come and see fresh what’s incredibly special.”

It was a propitious moment for UF. U.S. News and World Report had just ranked the university as a top-five public research university in the nation. With Sasse’s arrival, it seemed primed to take further steps forward. Despite my misgivings about his leaving the Senate, I was excited to see where he would take my Florida Gators.

To reach his leadership position in the first place, however, was no mean feat. The hundreds of protesters who awaited Sasse during his introductory remarks in 2022 when he visited campus as part of the selection process were no joke. I watched firsthand as they occupied the room in which he was speaking, eventually forcing the senator to move his press conference to Zoom.

The protesters promised Sasse would not “live a day in peace” while he occupied the presidency. Confronted with the faux controversy of how he was offered the position and facing a seemingly hostile student body (and faculty), Sasse could have easily changed his mind and simply returned to Nebraska. Instead, he chose to press on. In the end, the promised torrent of protests never materialized.

We should be grateful that he did press on. His short time at UF was not without success. Under his leadership, the university made a number of moves to set itself up well for the long term. At his opening press conference, he announced that the university would make strides towards becoming an artificial-intelligence hub; his efforts are paying dividends. More important is the work UF has made towards becoming a leading university for the study of Western civilization. I wrote last summer about the importance of returning Western Civ studies to the center of the university as an institution. Under Sasse, UF’s Hamilton Center made great advances towards becoming an integral part of the Gator experience.

In addition, his handling of the campus aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was a model of moral clarity and calm forcefulness. He condemned the attack quickly and unequivocally, announced that Palestinian protesters who broke university rules would be punished, and then kept his word. It was a stark contrast to the behavior of other universities and their presidents.

He also also helped bring about the demise of DEI at UF, quickly and forcefully implementing legislation passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor DeSantis to defund such university administrations across the state.

For all this, the greatest act of Ben Sasse as a Florida Gator was the one that ended his time as our president. His choice to step down to spend more time with his ailing wife and aging children is as fine a testament to who he is as a man as anything he has done in his professional career. When faced with the choice of pursuing his ambitious plans for UF reform and spending more time with his family, Sasse chose the latter. If you asked him ten times whether he regrets that choice, I imagine he would give you eleven noes.

In this regard, the timing of Sasse’s departure may be shocking, but the dignified manner of his exit is not. In fact, it is consistent with his prior behavior. There was much said about Sasse’s time in the Senate when he announced his departure for UF: that he was under-accomplished as a legislator, that he was more talk than action. And it is true that he has few genuine legislative accomplishments to his name of the sort we associate with a productive politician.

Yet Sasse stood out on the Hill because his commitment to principle made him unwilling to play the games that had led to the Senate’s degradation. He sought to restore the body’s belief in itself, its interest in genuine legislation, not bureaucracy-aggregating delegation. That is, he sought to reinvigorate its role in our constitutional order, the defense of which was his paramount concern as a senator. Hence his greatest act as senator was also the death knell of his political career: his vote to convict Donald Trump in the aftermath of January 6. His refusal to compromise his principles in exchange for political power may have deprived him of legislative achievements. But it also revealed him to be a man of supreme character.

Sasse’s departure from both roles is all the more remarkable when one considers that the commanding heights of our national life are rife with people clinging bitterly to power, subordinating human concerns to personal ambition. Being president of a university is a taxing job, no doubt, but also a prestigious one. As we saw earlier this year in the Ivy League, it’s the sort of position that people often leave only when forced out. In stark contrast, Sasse left of his own accord, for honorable reasons.

Without Sasse in charge, it is now more uncertain where UF is headed next. No president could take away from how great it is to be a Florida Gator. But under Sasse’s leadership, the next decade for the university certainly seemed bright. And even if my alma mater’s future remains bright, some of us will always feel like it’s a little bit dimmer than it could have been. Even so, I cannot hold it against him for choosing to put his family above his career.

Ben Sasse doesn’t know me. After his initial press conference, I only saw him once more on campus, a brief brush-by in the 10:30 after-class rush of the Plaza of the Americas (if you’re a Gator, you know). At best, he might recognize me as the student who emailed his office a half dozen times, practically begging for an audience so I could fan-boy in person. It is quite possible he will never know me.

But I know him. His time in the Senate, his time at UF, and the circumstances under which he leaves the stage make Sasse a profile in conviction at a time when conviction is hard to find and harder to maintain. I know his time in the Senate could have been much more eventful had he been willing to sacrifice some principles in exchange for power. I know, had he stayed UF president, his name would have been written in brick on campus as one of our most transformative presidents ever.

Ben Sasse had every tool, and every opportunity, to be remembered as a great man. Instead, he has chosen to be a good one. If called to, we can only hope to make the same choice.