Governor Ron DeSantis is filling every empty college presidency available with political cronies who have no experience or qualifications.
Fred Hawkins, a state legislator, was named as the president of South Florida State College, where he was the sole finalist in the search.
Hawkins served from 2008 to 2020 on the Osceola County Commission. But Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended him in July 2020 after Hawkins was charged with impersonating a law-enforcement officer. Hawkins went on to get elected to the House in November 2020.
During a special legislative session this year, Hawkins sponsored a high-profile bill that was a priority of DeSantis. The bill gave DeSantis authority to appoint the board of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District, which also was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The change came amid a festering feud between DeSantis and The Walt Disney Co., which had long benefited from the Reedy Creek district.
Hawkins earned a BS in political science at the University of Akron. He has no experience in higher education.
After DeSantis took control of the board of New College, his board fired the president and replaced her with DeSantis crony Richard Corcoran, a hard-right ideologue who had served as state commissioner of education but had no experience in higher education.
Taking control of the state’s higher education is integral to DeSantis’s war on academic freedom. With politicians in charge who are loyal to him, DeSantis can oust anyone who dares to teach about racism or gender.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is what freedom of thought looks like in Flor-uh-duh.
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DeSantis does not care about qualifications for a position. He appoints those that are loyal to him. He wants to control education in the state without opposition.
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In other news: Master of the Universe and Decider for Lowly Persons like Teachers Bill Gates has decided that not only are AIs like ChatGPT going to replace reading teachers, but they are also going to disrupt ecommerce businesses (goodbye, Amazon) by substituting Ai-driven personal assistants.
You know, The Return of Clippy the Paperclip. Your revolutionary personal assistant! Because you have been waiting for AIs to tell you what to do and think and buy.
Another billiant idea, Charming Billy. Just keep ’em coming.
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billiant. adj. Post human, smarter than human, in the manner of Bill Gates, the Borg, Skynet, and Colossus from the 1970 film The Forbin Project
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The fact that OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT) is now effectively owned and run by Microsoft should scare the bejebus out of people.
There is nothing “open” about it , except maybe in the sense of the open maw of a black hole sucking in every dollar in the solar system.
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OpenA-hole
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And sucking in every piece of intellectual property as well.
People should not be fooled by Sam Altman ‘s recent “performance” before Congress in which he assured everyone that he wants to see that writers, visual artists and others get compensated for their copyrighted works.
When asked whether any lawsuits had been brought against OpenAI (which specifically deal with intellectual property piracy) Altman characterized the suits as “frivolous”.
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OpenAI and Microsoft are currently being sued for “ software piracy on a massive scale”, which Altman (speaking as Microsoft’s flunky) characterizes as “frivolous”.
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Note to Altman for future Congressional appearances: if you are trying to convince people of something, don’t let slip that you actually believe the opposite.
For Microsoft’s sake, next time, they should probably let ChatGPT do the talking.
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They could have GPT4 produce a deep fake hologram of Sam Altman to provide testimony before Congress.
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Open A-hologram
OpenA-hole, vacuums up
Every artwork, all the stuff
Every thing that folks create
Only to regurgitate
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It should really be called ChatRPT
Regurgerative Property Transformer
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ChatRPT (Regurgerative Property Transformer)
RPT
regurgitate$
Property
for Billy Gates
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RPT: The most efficient tool for Grand larceny and wealth reapportionment (to the rich) that the world has ever seen and will likely ever see.
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NewtagRPT
The world’s biggest washing machine for laundering intellectual property, effectively removing the original ownership tag and replacing it with its own
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Thanks for the info., Poet
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It actually amazes me that Microsoft allows Altman to continue to be the spokesman for OpenAI because, despite superficial appearances, he does them no real favors whenever he opens his mouth.
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Microsoft stealing from others? Surely you jest! It couldn’t possibly have bought its initial operating system from another developer and stolen word processing from Wordperfect; spreadsheets from Lotus 1, 2 3; the graphical user interface from Apple.
The image of the Great Suck is right on. Will the government allow them to get away with this kind of behavior AGAIN? Well, we shall see.
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Of course Congress will allow OpenAI and Microsoft to get away with it again.
For billion$ of rea$ons.
They put on a good show, but it always comes down to the campaign contribution$.
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ofc
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Apple/Jobs actually stole their GUI and mouse from Xerox PARC.
These folks are all thieves.
They have zero ideas of their own so they have to steal to get ahead.
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The funny thing about Jobs and the thing that sets him apart is that he openly admitted it.
Was unapologetic about it.
Even bragged about it
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Republican politicians don’t believe in public education. The Education Commissioner of Florida, Manny Diaz, attended 3 private universities, St. Thomas (conservative Catholic), Nova Southeastern and Harvard.
The goal is to fill top leadership positions in the public sector with private school grads.
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In 2020, there were about 14 mil. students attending public universities and 5 mil. attending private colleges. Why don’t more public education leadership positions go to public university grads? Stop the Harvard pipeline.
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“DeSantis suspended him in July 2020 after Hawkins was charged with impersonating a law-enforcement officer.”
Well, at least he didn’t impersonate a Top Gun Pilot
Or a competent governor.
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haaaaaa!
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He will make a terrific college president as long as everyone has low expectations.
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I’d say the chance of his being a terrific president is about as good as the chance of his being a terrific precedent.
We are entering unprecedented terrortory.
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Unpresidented too
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Not incidentally, there should be a very severe penalty for impersonating Tom Cruz.
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Can’t get much worse than that — even worse than impersonating a president.
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Of course, only someone as short as Ron DeSantis would have even a snowballs chance in hell of impersonating Tom Cruise (sorry for the misspelling) who is 5 foot 7
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Of course, Tom Cruise would have to subject his face to a meat tenderizer in order for DeSantis to have any real chance of looking like him.
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Constitutional violations disqualify DeSantis from office and the practice of law. https://link.medium.com/NOA6ahR7aAb
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With justice, the 65 Project will expand from the current targeted 100+election denial lawyers. The 65 Project aims to, “protect democracy from the abuse of the legal system by holding accountable lawyers who engage in fraudulent and malicious attempts to subvert democracy.”
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Diane Ravitch, good for Ron Desantis.
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I don’t like fascists. They trample democracy, liberty, and freedom. But if he’s your kind of guy, so be it.
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https://reidfriedsonphd.medium.com/constitutional-violations-disqualify-desantis-from-office-and-the-practice-of-law-2bcbb93ebc9d
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