By Andrew Gothard
Tallahassee is at it again. They want to fix something that ain’t broke.
Once again, Florida’s politicians intend to cut the public out of decisions that affect the local economy and the learning conditions of their local state college or university without any evidence of a problem. In the process, they threaten to make a degree from the state of Florida worthless.
The University of Florida, our flagship institution, is already under scrutiny by accreditors for muzzling experts and applying pressure to destroy data in an attempt to keep certain politicians in Tallahassee happy.
Once again, certain legislators want to exert more control — not less — over the thoughts, actions and beliefs of local Floridians who are seeking higher education to improve their lives and the lives of their families.
Last year’s “Viewpoint Discrimination” law, HB 233, apparently wasn’t enough; it wasn’t enough to intimidate students, faculty and staff into avoiding beliefs that might offend some in power.
Once again, for the eighth year in a row, “secrecy in university and college presidential searches” bills (SB 520/HB 703) are moving rapidly through the Florida Legislature, and once again, the local stakeholders in the university and college systems are left wondering — why?
Supporters of these bills claim that allowing presidential searches to exist in the Sunshine (as they have for decades) stops highly qualified candidates at institutions outside the state from applying, out of fear that their current institution would discover the application and disapprove. But when asked to provide examples, they are never able to do so. Not one.
Instead, the examples we do have are of a Florida higher education system that is ranked as one of the best in the country and the world, one in which we are consistently able to place highly qualified applicants in university and college president positions (see the recent hire of a Harvard vice provost as president of Florida State University).
The juxtaposition of these ideas is nonsensical. Florida can’t be struggling to attract qualified candidates to run our higher education institutions and simultaneously be top ranked in the United States.
The real question at the heart of this bill is this: Why do the needs of a handful of unknown, unnamed out-of-state applicants overrule the right of Florida citizens to know, understand and oversee the use of public funds in our public higher education institutions? Sunshine is the best disinfectant, after all.
The answer lies in who legislators want to install in these positions.
As written, the bill only requires that a final list of candidates, or even simply the single final candidate, be revealed to the public. This means that friends of the governor and well-connected politicians without higher education experience could apply for jobs where the hiring committees are stacked with mega donors, and when the final candidate is revealed, it will appear as if only unqualified politicians applied for these jobs.
There will not be time to unearth allegations of wrongdoing or incompetence, to assess conflicts of interest, and it certainly won’t be enough time to understand whether these candidates could be a good, successful fit for the institution.
Their hiring will be clouded in secrecy, undermining their legitimacy before day one. No one would be any wiser that dozens of extremely qualified applicants were passed over, while our university and college president jobs become pits of corruption, nepotism, cronyism, and are reduced to mere exchanges of political favors.
How does this help students of all ages and backgrounds, from the Keys to Pensacola, who are looking to become their best selves? How does this serve Floridians’ need for developing a workforce with the skills and talent for a healthy functioning society? Short answer: It doesn’t. It won’t. It can’t.
In terms of the Florida Legislature, this becomes a “you scratch our back, we give you a half-a-million-dollar job” set up, and quite frankly, the people of Florida deserve much better than this level of naked corruption mongering. Public funds exist to support the public good, not curry political favors. Period.
According to Gov. Ron DeSantis and his political allies, Florida is an emblem of freedom and individual rights. What SB 520/HB 703 show is that this belief apparently applies to everyone but the alumnae, students, faculty and staff of our higher education system, who would have no knowledge or say in the hiring process of their presidents until it is a done deal.
It’s time to vote NO on this bill and ensure that the oversight of public dollars remains in the Florida Sunshine, and that a degree from a Florida college or university grows in value rather than diminishes.
Andrew Gothard teaches English at Florida Atlantic University and is president of the United Faculty of Florida, representing faculty at all 12 public universities, 16 colleges and the private Saint Leo University, along with graduate assistants at four public universities.
Jimbo99 says
Anyone actually not think that isn’t what already goes on ? However is it we get 2 Bushes as POTUS and Jeb wanted to be the 3rd. With the Clinton, HRC wants to be the 2nd Clinton POTUS. So how is becoming a University President any different ?
E, ROBOT says
This is beyond parody. LOL
Michael Cocchiola says
This is what you get under Republican-dominated state legislatures. Far too many people just don’t care so long as no one tries to build low-income housing in their neighborhood. That’s what’s important.
Ray W. says
Not for the first time and not for the last time, proposed legislation raises the specter of a political party’s perceived need for secrecy in yet another facet of how our educational system is to be remade, with its inevitable impact on how public opinion is to be guided, shaped, contorted, exposed, and on and on. This state of affairs infers the question of what importance is it that a citizenry be informed? In the modern tradition, reporters have often shared a role in shaping the importance of an informed public.
As a foundation statement, and as the core of one of my most common themes, I repeat my assertion that our founding fathers hoped that our liberal democratic Constitutional republic would produce men (and women) of virtue, though they greatly feared mob rule, which is why they included checks and balances for every power delegated to government by the people when the ratifiers adopted the Constitution.
As another foundation statement, I wish to point out once again that several years ago, during a Financial Times interview, Putin deemed liberalism “obsolete”, claiming it had “outlived its purpose.” Then-EU President Tusk countered, asserting: “Whoever claims that liberal democracy is obsolete also claims that freedoms are obsolete, that the rule of law is obsolete and that human rights are obsolete.”
Putin also characterized liberalism as conflicting with “the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.” He equated the issue of civil rights and the LBGTQ community as one of happiness, without mention of it also being one of law, stating that happiness “must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making the core population.”
I now wish to turn to the controversial and gifted reporter, I. F. Stone, who wrote:
Aristotle says that a cityless man is like “a solitary piece in checkers.” A solitary checker piece standing alone has no function. It has meaning only when associated with other pieces in a game. The vivid metaphor implies that men fulfill themselves only in a polis (political entity, such as a city-state, i.e., Athens). The individual can find the good life only when associated with others in a community. This conception did not originate with Aristotle. It was the general Greek view. To become “cityless” — apolis — already denoted a tragic fate in Herodotus and Sophocles a century before Aristotle. And this brings us to the third fundamental philosophical point on which Socrates differed from his fellow Athenians.
Socrates preached and practiced withdrawal from the political life of the city. In Plato’s Apology he defended this abstention as necessary for “the perfection” of the soul. The Athenians and the Greeks generally believed that the citizen was educated and perfected by participating fully in the life and affairs of the city.
“Man,” Aristotle wrote, “when perfected, is the best of animals; but if he be isolated from law and justice he is the worst of all … if he be without virtue, he is a most unholy and savage being.” The sense of justice that alone can lift him above his own savage impulses, Aristotle said, “belongs to the polis; for instance, which is the determination of what is just, is an ordering of the political association.”
A solitary man lives in a world where the very word justice has no meaning. Where there are no “others,” no conflicts arise that call for a “just” solution. The problem of justice appears only in a community. The polis was a continuous school molding its people by its laws, its festivals, its culture, its religious rites, its traditions, the example of its leading citizens, its theater and by participation in the government of the city, particularly the debates of the assembly and the jury-courts, where questions of justice were argued and decided.
The Athenians lived in a city so beautiful we are still awed by its ruins. Its tragic and comic poets still enchant us. We are still inspired by its political orators. We still learn from them lessons for our time, as other men have done for centuries. If ever a city deserved the full energy and devotion of its citizens, that city was Athens. Participation in “politics” — managing the city – – was a right, a duty, and an education. But all Socratics, from Antisthenes to Plato, preached withdrawal from it.
Early in the sixth century B.C., the Athenian social reformer and lawgiver Solon, who first opened membership in the assembly and the jury-courts to the poorer classes, enacted a law that any citizen who remained neutral and took no position on either side in a time of stasis or severe political contention and class struggle should be punished by loss of citizenship. Plutarch in his Life of Solon explains that the great lawgiver believed “a man should not be insensible or indifferent to the common weal, arranging his private affairs securely and glorying in the fact that he has no share in the distempers and distresses of his country.” The same attitude is reflected in the funeral speech of Pericles, perhaps the most eloquent exposition ever of the democratic ideal. After asserting that the councils of Athens were open to all, rich and poor alike, Pericles added that the Athenians “regard the man who takes no part in public affairs, not as one who minds his own business, but as good for nothing.” The city’s business — as Athenians saw it — was every citizen’s business.
The Trial of Socrates, Little, Brown and Company (1988) (pgs. 98-99)
Thank you, Mr. Tristam, for providing your FlaglerLive forum to all commenters, through whom we all can act as good citizens of a polis.
Joan says
Exasperating! There is no end to the lengths this state administration and legislature are willing to go to scratch the backs of their cronies and puppeteers. Evil is hard at work. Sunshine is necessary as is freedom of speech and freedom of the press in order to keep the constant efforts at corruption from becoming law and the norm. These people must be voted out of office and decent, honest people who care about truth and the citizens of this state need to be elected. Are all of these people more interested in power than what is right?
Steve says
Because this Practice allegedly goes on any way makes it OK ?
Steve says
Nice Job Ray W. Lets not forget The Iroquois Confederacy Americas First Democracy.