The faculty senate of the University of Florida voted to reject Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse as the new president. Sasse was the sole finalist. The decision will be made by the university’s board of trusteees.
The University of Florida’s Faculty Senate on Thursday voted to support a no-confidence resolution against Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse, who was the sole finalist to be the next UF president.
“The Senate held an emergency meeting on the resolution, which questioned Sasse’s qualifications and a search committee’s decision to name him as the only finalist for the job. Senators voted 67-15 to pass the measure, after some criticized the search process and past statements made by Sasse on issues such as LGBTQ rights,” The Gainsville Sun reported.
Students have also protested the highly controversial search process which resulted in Sasse being the only finalist.
“The UF board of trustees is scheduled to consider Sasse for the position Tuesday,” the newspaper reported. “The Nebraska Republican is currently serving his second term in the Senate and was previously president of Midland University, a 1,400-student Lutheran school in Nebraska.”
The University of Florida has over 50,000 students.
“Sasse was announced Oct. 6 as the sole finalist for the UF presidency, after a search process that was conducted largely in secret,” the newspaper reported. “UF stated that its search committee reached out to more than 700 people and focused on a dozen candidates, including nine sitting presidents at major research universities.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Tyrants value secrecy and they lie a lot, because what they do often is unpopular with most of the people.
exactly
I experienced the ‘results’ of hiring a political hack as the president of a state university. It’s not pretty.
This is just weird.
In Gainesville? Say it ain’t so!
They may seize hold of positions which have a mirage of influence and authority, but what do they do when folk do not accept their status?
DeSantis wants to hire Sasse, a like minded moralist dictator, to spy on The University of Florida and squelch academic freedom, and replace it with his version of freedumb.
They infiltrated Local school boards.
They diverted public funds to ideological privatized schools
They controlled teacher responses to children and what counselors can and can’t say to young women.
They banned books
Then they went after the professors.
yup
Given the politics of the state, I thought that Ben Sasse was about the best that could be expected. He does hold a doctorate in history from Yale and has had prior experience as president of Midland Lutheran College along with teaching experience at the University of Texas at Austin.
I suspect that the pool of applicants was a bit thin. The people I know who would have been competitive for the position were not interested in applying because of the political situation in the state.
If the faculty in Florida wanted to have sitting presidents/chancellors apply for the UF presidency, they will have to put up with closed searches like this one. No sitting leader of a university will apply to lead another university in an open search. It would be too damaging to their position if it is publicly known that they tried to leave their current university and failed to get the other position.
The u of Florida could do a lot better than Ben Sasse. Other state universities hire outstanding presidents, not political hacks.
Dr. Ravitch,
Other state universities are not in Florida.
Leaders are leaving public universities for privates to avoid the politics of public universities. Becky Blank left the University of Wisconsin for private Northwestern. When health issues did not allow her to take the job and Northwestern, Micheal Schill left the University of Oregon for Northwestern.
Why would anyone want to lead the University of Florida with the near impossible problems it faces when the Boston University, U Mass Amherst, and the University of British Colombia are all open?
Ben Sasse is important for the false flag operation of “religious freedom”. When he gets the new job, he will lobby the Fla. legislature to take state funds from public universities and give them to religious universities. A June 21, 2022, press release at his Senate site praises the SCOTUS Maine school decision. “Maine has been discriminating against religious parents for four decades.”
At the national and state levels, the attention of Democrats should first focus on how proposed GOP political appointments and anti-democracy, right wing plans, bolster conservative religion. It’s a subject that is ignored at the peril of our nation. Sasse is Lutheran.
Adding the evidently necessary caveat- not all Lutherans are conservative. When a politician or influencer (like Pat Robertson) is politically active for the right wing, when he/she promotes the idea of taxes going to religious institutions and when he/she uses the term, “religious freedom,” to take away the rights of the non-religious,
it should be called out.
American democracy’s fight for survival demands no less.