By Diane Roberts
Republicans are scared. They’re scared of citizens voting, so they make it as difficult for us as possible. They’re scared of women taking charge of their own bodies, so they demand the right to track their movements and seize their medical records in case they go to another state for an abortion.
They’re scared of vaccines and drag queens and climate scientists and Brown people and Black people and gay people. They’re so scared of “the libs” they make up demented stories about Democrats drinking the blood of children. Trumpist fixer and convicted felon Roger Stone says he heard there might be a “demonic portal” churning in the air above the Biden White House.
You’ll be delighted to hear that PolitiFact checked out the hellmouth claim and rated it “False.”
Most of all, they’re scared of higher education. Colleges. Universities. Known hotbeds of wokery, Marxism, and foreign languages, they should instead focus on the one thing that matters to real Americans: training future cogs in the uber-capitalist machine and sports.
OK, that’s two things, but the only people who’ll care are woke math profs. The point is the mini-Mussolinis who run Florida see higher ed as a threat which must be neutralized. And what better way to control Florida universities than to install one of their own at the head of each one?
A Fine mess
Which brings us to Randy Fine.
Not that you want to be brought to Randy Fine, a Republican state representative from Brevard County: No one does. Fine has the personality of a fire ant and behaves like a hyena with a bad hangover. He bullies. He belittles. He is — and this is an impressive accomplishment — the most appalling person in the Florida Legislature.
In 2019, Fine wanted to shut down the University of Central Florida for up to 10 years. UCF was indeed guilty of using operating funds for new building, but such a douche move would have left 68,000 students without a degree program.
When the Brevard Zoo offended him by choosing to stop hosting political events, he pulled $2 million from them in the state budget. He has threatened money for the Special Olympics over a feud with a school board member he called a “whore.”
Yet the unlovely and untalented Randy Fine may well be the reason the chancellor of the state university system shut down the presidential search at Florida Atlantic.
Last spring, Fine informed the universe that Ron DeSantis had “approached” him about the job. The governor’s office said he’d be a “good candidate.”
Right. Like Ted Bundy would be a “good candidate” to administer a convent.
But when FAU announced their three finalists — the dean of FSU’s College of Business, the former chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and a vice admiral who’s superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy — somehow Randy Fine’s invitation had got lost in the mail. Or got eaten by a rabid iguana. Or something.
He was not invited to the dance.
‘Anomalies’
Well, the DeSantis junta wasn’t about to stand for that show of professional independence. University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues sent a letter to FAU’s search committee declaring the state is “investigating” FAU’s process, claiming “anomalies,” including a non-binding straw poll that asked members to rank their top six candidates and, even worse, a questionnaire offered (not required) by the search firm asking about sexual orientation, gender, and “preferred pronouns.”
As we all know, pronouns are for perverts.
Rodrigues’ accusations are as thin as a piece of cheap cellophane and far more transparent.
The search firm’s questionnaire is standard practice to gather demographic information. And as for criticizing the secrecy of the straw poll, give me a break. Thanks to the likes of Rodrigues and his gubernatorial master, the entire process is secret.
If you suspect the wholesale politicizing of higher education might be a bad idea, you’re not alone. Experts in university governance say the way Ron DeSantis demands trustees and college presidents be loyal foot soldiers in his power-grabbing army “streamlines corruption.”
University president searches used to take place in the sunshine — Floridians knew who the candidates were and could attend search committee meetings.
Now, thanks to a law antithetical to Florida’s once-proud tradition of open government, proceedings are closed. Only the names of finalists are made public.
The drawbacks are obvious: Former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Somewhere in The Midwest, and now president of the University of Florida, was the only finalist for that job.
Sasse is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of the governor and UF board chair Mori Hosseini, provider of private jet rides (plus that fancy golf simulator) to Ron DeSantis, a builder of ugly beige houses, and a ravager of Florida’s environment.
Rodeo cowboy
DeSantis’ other pet picks include Rep. Fred Hawkins, a one-time rodeo cowboy, now president of South Florida State College. He has no advanced degrees, no experience in education. In 2020, he was arrested for impersonating a police officer.
Like Sasse, Hawkins was the only finalist for the job.
Richard Corcoran, the allegedly “interim” president of New College of Florida “served” (if that is the right word) on the university system oversight board. An irascible former speaker of the Florida House as well as former Education Commissioner, he’s also a charter school zealot who seems actively hostile to academic freedom. Of course, he owes his job to the reactionaries Ron DeSantis hand-picked for the New College Board.
The trustees fired New College’s president and installed Corcoran at more than twice her salary.
It is a sort of consolation prize when FSU refused to put him on their presidential short list.
Corcoran now presides over the destruction of the once highly rated liberal arts school, clamping down on subjects he deems “woke,” introducing athletic scholarships, and denying tenure to expert faculty.
How’s that going? To date, New College has lost around $30 million in donations, and more than one-third of New College’s faculty have resigned, retired early, or taken leave to look for other jobs. More will follow.
As top professors stampede toward the exits, Corcoran pouts: “The majority of faculty who have left have not given us any kind of consideration, or notice, or thought, or anything.”
Dang those selfish eggheads, bailing out of an institution run by a cabal of hacks and ideological harlots actively hostile to education and terrified of ideas. How could they!
Back at FAU
Meanwhile, back at FAU, faculty, students, and alumni are furious that the school’s leadership has been placed in limbo. Dick Schmidt, a Boca Raton financier and philanthropist, and member of the FAU search committee, says he feels “personally outraged and slandered” by Rodrigues’ letter questioning the integrity of the process.
Schmidt is one of FAU’s biggest donors.
As for Randy “Hissy Fit” Fine, we don’t know for sure that he applied for the FAU gig. It’s a secret. He’s filed to run for the state Senate in 2024, but odds are good that if he ends up leap-frogging the actually qualified finalists and offered the FAU job, he’ll take it.
DeSantis will insist his boy continue the work of alienating donors and wrecking intellectual freedom in Florida while drawing a fat salary.
One word of caution to the ruling junta: Florida’s college students are not idiots and they’re not ignorant. They’re not Moms for Liberty. Their feelings aren’t hurt by U.S. history and they’re aware not only that the climate crisis is real, they know Florida will go down first.
They don’t like being lied to. They’re also pretty pissed off.
New College trustee and Reichsjungendführer fan boy Christopher Rufo discovered that the youth aren’t just going to lie back and take it one day as he strolled the Sarasota campus with his security detail.
Protesting against his contempt for her school and her very existence, sophomore Catherine “Libby” Harrity allegedly, as he said, “broke the police line and spat on me.”
Rufo, clearly terrified of the several dozen middle-class kids, some of them with sinister rainbows on their shirts and hats, tweeted that he intended to press charges.
Don’t these radicals know that human spittle will melt a snowflake?
No consideration, no notice, no thought.
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
Pogo says
@Diane Roberts
Thank you.
This shit storm covered floriduh 25 years ago when jeb slithered into office. It hasn’t quit blowing since that time.
richard says
Diane Roberts is a master of satire, in the tradition of Jonathan Swift. I read her piece on Mommies For Liberty, and I was hooked. I bought a few of her books, and I recently finished reading her depiction of Collegiate Football, Inc., one of America’s biggest mega-corporate businesses and a great example of the subsuming of State into Religion — or is it the other way around? I forget.
One way for normal people to deflate the insidious ego-balloons of autocrats, plutocrats, and bred-in-the-bone-dyed-in-the-wool vile totalitarians is to expose them to the light of day –against the law nowadays in DeSantistan — heckle the daylights out of them, and show them to the public as at least as foolish as they really are. After all, “The King has no clothes” is an apt description of these petty tyrants-in-training.
Keep up the great work, Dr Roberts. Give ’em heck — or even the hotter place. They certainly have it coming and should be going — away, that is.
Lew says
Florida University system will implode soon
Wallingford says
They are stupid individuals who always want to be seen as the victim when a more educated person gets a job over them. Their discontent is what the Republican hierarchy continues to drive home. The can rule with an iron fist because their constituents think that since the were elected they must be special; smart. The average Trump voter was not college educated.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Is trashing the GOP the only thing this Mouth of the South can do? Can she not do a story about trash politics? Gods gift to the Democratic party of Fl. Maybe you can run for governer next time, seems she,s just a fountain of information. Im sure you can do better than Charlie Crist. A 2×4 could have done better. Tell me why there isnt a decent candidate on the jackass side? Im telling you Diane… RUN RUN RUN!!! Florida needs you….( like a man with a black tuxedo & brown shoes)
Wow says
Because ignorant people don’t ask questions. Data means nothing to them.
T says
Because they need the voter’s cause they all are for corporate and themselves traitors
Higher Ed Advocate says
What is happening to higher education is tragic. For 20 years, I worked in Washington, DC with the Florida delegation on higher education issues. Of all of the members of the delegation, the only one I couldn’t get along with was Ron DeSantis. The contempt that he had for higher education – especially public higher education – was quite apparent when he was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus. That he has transformed his contempt for higher education into a quest to conquer it is but one reason why the regional accreditation body (SACS) put Florida on notice for violating principles of shared governance. The Governor’s response? Getting the Legislature to pass a new law that requires Florida colleges and universities to review who they want to be their accreditor – a heavy-handed attempt to escape accountability from SACS. Installing sycophants like Randy Fine – who claimed that he put the former president of the University of Central Florida’s head on his mantle when that president was forced to resign – tells you what kind of a leader he would be.
Jane says
Love your articles Diane Roberts! Keep telling it like it REALLY is!
Had it says
The king has no clothes is a fantastic reference!
Michael Cocchiola says
Because smart people don’t vote for Republicans.
Voter suppression isn’t enough for Republicans so they’re trying brain suppression. Best way to bring fascism to America.
Pancho Rodreguez says
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation SOCIALIST Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State SOCIALIST University and Oxford SOCIALIST University in England.
There, I fixed it.
richard says
Pancho, you punch with panache. But you are still wrong. The Republicans are playing you and your buddies for fools. They have been throwing the socialist scare at you guys ever since the 1870s and the Paris Commune of 1871 scared the daylights out of the Western World. GOP does the best job of manufacturing enemies to tilt at like Quixotic windmills. It is all baloney — and I don’t mean Oscar Mayer, either.
Deborah Coffey says
Spot on.
Mona says
Trashing the GOP? It doesn’t need to be trashed. It is trash.
Mona says
Oxford is ranked first in Best Global Univerities in Europe, fifth in Best in Global Universities, by US News, and second ,by the QS World University Ranking. And what is your education, Pancho?
Sherry says
Bottom Line: The “Uneducated” are so much easier to Dupe and Control!
Laurel says
Michael and Deborah: To call all Republicans not smart, is not smart. I married a Republican who cannot stomach the way these MAGA nuts are behaving. He feels like his party betrayed him. Not all Republicans are buying this nonsense, and it was Republican Flake who tried to warn the country about Trump early on. It was Republicans Cheney and Kizinger who were a part of the January 6th Committee, which brought Republican staff members forward to testify against Trump. It was Republican McCain who voted down the attempt to rid us of the ACA. My husband’s mother was a lifelong Republican, and when Roe v Wade was decided, she stated “Thank goodness that’s over with, now we can move on.”
Clearly, Trump and DeSantis are dangerous authoritarian wannabes, and they are often financially backed by “conservative” PACs and think tanks, however, people should learn that this is not true conservatism. These behaviors are cult initiated, and people need to learn what true conservatism is. That’s why I keep pushing Ray W. to write about how conservatism came about.
Republicans need to take their party back.
Laurel says
Richard: Norway is a Democratic, Socialist country that has more millionaires per capita than any other country.
Of course, my family somehow managed to miss this.
JimBob says
GED classes at Our Lady of Perpetual Hypocrisy Charter School.
My Take says
Yea…okay. This sums up the last 2.5 years…
War, recession, inflation, out of control spending, crime explosion, open boarders, growing poverty, hate and division, loss of respect in the world, corruption, and now a credit downgrade. But go ahead and vote yourselves into more poverty and higher crime. Maybe we can get involved in a war between China and Taiwan.
and you all talk about uneducated? look in the mirror.
richard says
My my, My Take, indeed you have lit the gaslight. It burns brightly in your post. All I an add is “non sequitur.”
Richard says
Hi Laurel. We meet again on Flagler Live. Good evening.
I don’t really understand the connection of your response to mine. Norway’s millionaires per capita and Norway’s Democratic-Socialism, which is fairly common among European nations which have not succumbed to autocracy and oligarchy, do not have anything to do with the Paris Commune of 1871 in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War and French ignominious defeat therein. That the GOP has painted ANY social program advanced since that time in our country as Radical Socialism is a scare tactic which has been a battle cry of that party since the 1870s. It’s time to stop finding bogeymen and reach across the aisles (if not the isles) and party lines to find common ground in America. It’s what we had in the US Congress and government in the aftermath of WWII, what historians call the Liberal Consensus. Eisenhower called it Modern Conservatism. It wasn’t socialism then, and it isn’t socialism now. Ever since Goldwater’s presidential campaign, the GOP has pushed itself out of that modern conservatism to embrace the Reagan-Goldwater vision of division for America, realized most effectively in the Gingrich Contract For America. I could go on, but just let me say that Dad is correct; the GOP has lost its way and needs to find its way back into the mainstream in order to reform our more perfect Union.
Oh, and BTW, as an old history professor, I, too, have missed the gravy train to the Millionaire’s Club. :-)