The Fall of Florida's Higher Education Under Far Right Republicans

As part of Ron DeSantis' ambitious agenda - for his insane presidential hopes - in 2023 to "fight Wokeness" in Florida's educational system, we witnessed the Sunshine State's schools fall under the merciless attentions of Far Right wingnuts eager to purge "diversity" and any genuine standards at every level. As I wrote back in February 2023:

 Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

This is essentially a hostile takeover, not just by DeSantis but also by Far Right Republicans obsessed with dismantling higher educational systems they fear are too liberal...

DeSantis is essentially saying that things like civil rights and Title IX protections won't be upheld at state universities. Segregation and racial discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile workplaces, hostile classrooms... all of this will become the norm in DeSantis' Florida.

This is all echoed in DeSantis' efforts to shut down ANY discussion of "Critical Race Theory" essentially meaning our state cannot teach one iota of Florida's history regarding racism, slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights marches, all because Republicans are terrified that White People's Feelings (tm) will be hurt if we teach the facts that Yes Goddammit racism happened and keeps happening. He's just making sure that college students will be kept ignorant as much as our K-12 students.

(Christopher) Rufo is, by the by, a wingnut conservative hack actively campaigning to shut down public education of any kind in an obsessive desire to privatize something for greed and racism. DeSantis, desperate to win over 2024 Republican primary voters, is giving Rufo the opportunity to wreak havoc on Florida's educational system...

So it's been two years since then, with DeSantis' presidential hopes all dashed while Florida's educational standards sank into the swamps. In the meanwhile, we had situations like political hack Ben Sasse - Far Right Republican dragged in from another state - causing massive administrative and financial damage to the flagship University of Florida. We keep witnessing Republican leadership at the state level fail our kids and families when it comes to high school success and getting prepared for colleges. The state's budget for education across the board is disappearing, forcing more cuts that shouldn't be happening.

And DeSantis' takeover of New College? How is that turning out? Let Nate Weisberg's report at Washington Monthly educate us:

As Chris Mullin wrote recently in the Washington Monthly, DeSantis exploited Florida’s unusually centralized system of higher-education governance to insert political control directly into the classroom—stacking boards, replacing presidents, and rewriting curricula. His boldest gamble has been a complete takeover and ideological makeover of ​​New College of Florida, a small public liberal-arts college on Sarasota Bay known for its experimental pedagogy and progressive-left campus culture. Charging poor performance and ideological bias, DeSantis announced plans in early 2023 to transform the school into a “Hillsdale of the South”—a reference to the small, selective, conservative-leaning Michigan college that eschews government funds and focuses on teaching the classics. The governor appointed six new conservative trustees to New College, including activist Christopher Rufo, ​who then ​fired its President, Patricia Okker, and replaced her with former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran ​at more than double Okker’s salary​. Within months, the new board abolished the gender​ studies program, dismissed faculty and administrators, created athletic teams, and secured tens of millions in state funding.

Two years later, the picture looks grim. New College’s four-year graduation rate has plummeted from 58.3 to 47.4 percent. The school’s U.S. News & World Report college ranking has fallen by nearly 60 spots, from 76th among national liberal-arts colleges in 2022 to 135th this year. Faculty and staff have fled, and students have followed them out the door. “It’s kind of like a Ponzi scheme,” one professor told Inside Higher Ed. “Students keep leaving, so they have to recruit bigger and bigger cohorts.” Spending​ at the college​, meanwhile, has exploded. ​In Tallahassee, there is now open talk of either privatizing New College or shutting it down completely. 

DeSantis’s justification for the takeover was that New College was an educational disaster—a failed experiment in left-wing academic culture. Though the school ​had its problems (it struggled​​, for instance,​​ to reach its enrollment goals, as do many small, less-selective colleges around the country) and ​was indeed ​​left leaning, it was far from a disaster. In fact, by most objective measures, it was a model of what a small public liberal-arts institution could achieve. As Aalia Thomas reported in the Washington Monthly in 2023, New College consistently ranked near the top of the magazine’s l​ist of l​iberal​ ​arts ​colleges ​​for upward mobility, research, and service. ​​Its graduates earned PhDs at rates higher than many of the nation’s most prestigious private liberal arts colleges. Its curriculum mixed ​​postcolonial theory with Aristotle and Voltaire. The college charged about $7,000 a year for low-to-medium-income students—a bargain compared to most similar liberal arts colleges. It enrolled a high share of Pell​ ​​Grant recipients and produced civically engaged graduates—​​92.6 percent of its students were registered to vote in 2020. Far from failing, New College embodied many of the qualities conservatives say they prize in public higher education: affordability, rigor, civic virtue, and upward mobility. 

​​The governor’s appointees arrived convinced they were rescuing a failing school. ​​They replaced New College’s narrative-evaluation system with traditional grades. They bragged about making the college more “selective” (instead, the percentage of new students with a 4.0 or above high school grade point average decreased from 55.1 percent in 2022 to 42.1 percent in 2024)​.​ They recruited athletes and ​​self-described “normal” students to reshape the culture, ​​many of whom quickly transferred out. ​The campus began to change in telling ways: the reopened campus café, operated by a vendor tied to Corcoran, now serves coffee in cups printed with Bible verses, and the college has commissioned a statue of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk to stand on campus in honor of “free speech​.​​​” ​All this change has been financed by ​​an ​​eye-watering ​​boost​​ in ​​spending​​. The college’s budget has grown from​​ ​$53,232,164​​​​ ​​​​the year before the overhaul ​​​​to​​​​ ​​​​$93,043,119​​​​ ​​​​today​​​​—a​​​​ 75 percent​​​​ increase​​​​.​​​​ ​

​​​​​​​​Even DeSantis allies are turning on the project. “There can be no question anymore about what the numbers really are,” said Eric Silagy, a​​ DeSantis-appointed​​ member of the state Board of Governors. Nathan Allen, ​​who served as ​​​​vice president of strategy​​ for New College ​​during the conservative takeover but has since resigned​​, ​suggested where the blame for those numbers should be placed​: “​​New College is not a House or Senate project … It’s a Ron DeSantis project.”​​ ​​​Corcoran himself has said, ​​if New College doesn’t produce something different, “then we should be closed down.”

That Corcoran - a political hack hire who didn't deserve the job in the first place - is looking for the exit is a telling sign of how screwed up New College under Rufo and the other wingnuts turned out. And as much as this is all on DeSantis - pushing a political agenda on our state's schools - all of the state-level Republicans who backed DeSantis' efforts on this need to answer for their own corruption and incompetence here.

Look at the waste in dollars at New College: almost doubling the spending with reduced results, arguably funneling that money into wingnut ideas that aren't working out, if not funneling that money into their own pockets. Remember what happened at UF under Sasse: He hired in 'consultants' and lackeys at double if not triple the pay for no-show jobs and no-show results. It was... it is a huge grift for these greedheads.

For the Republicans, this was never about improving the educational standards of Florida. This was about viewing public education as a cash cow, a means of filling their own pockets with state money while the system breaks down. It was about playing into the hypocrisy of accusing our schools and colleges of being 'broken' and 'corrupt', while being the ones in charge breaking it all and using their own corrupt urges to make it worse.

We've had almost 30 years of constant Republican (mis)rule in the state of Florida, a straight line of crooked behavior by our elected officials and their shady business allies. Why the hell should they be allowed to retain any office after these decades of deceit and destruction?

When the War on Woke Destroys Libraries, It Destroys People Too

Just seeing this now on social media, and as a librarian I AM LIVID AS HELL (via Steven Walker with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune): 

Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college's library collection.

Some discarded books included "Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate", "The War of the Worlds" and "When I Knew" — which is a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay.

New College spokesperson Nathan March acknowledged the Herald-Tribune's request for comment but had not provided the college's response as of 2 p.m...

Fuck Governor DeSantis. Fuck Chris Rufo. Damn their anti-Woke, racist sexist asses.

This may not be literal book-burning but it's as damn close as the Far Right wingnuts will get.

I guarantee you there's no practical reason they're clearing these books. It's not for shelf space, or for updating to current understanding. These bastards are dumping these books out of spite, out of their sadistic need to make intellectuals and researchers and readers suffer. They intentionally purged a Gender and Diversity Center, for God's sake.

This isn't about faith either. These bastards are purging books about religions that only they disagree with, in violation of the First Amendment and the Constitutional right that no religious test should ever be applied to anything.

Any other rational actor at the academic level would have made good-faith efforts to see books that are weeded from a collection have a chance of going to another college that may need those titles for research purposes. Do you realize how many rare or hard-to-find titles survive at universities exactly because of their research value? If New College had a rare book that DeSantis and Rufo just tossed into the dumpster, they have knowingly denied current and future generations of researchers any opportunity to learn from that book.

SONS OF BITCHES.

For the LOVE OF FREEDOM, and AN HONEST GOD that does NOT ban thought or the SIMPLE RIGHT TO EXIST that every gay and lesbian and trans person has as human beings, and OUR SOULS. Florida, Please. Please please PLEASE STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Stop giving these haters and anti-intellectual dickweeds any power over all of us.

SAVE THE BOOKS. SAVE OURSELVES.

The Grift in Gainesville

Update: Many thanks again to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for including this at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do your part to support Harris-Walz for the Presidential ticket this 2024, as well as voting out every goddamned Republican hack at the state level especially here in Florida. /rage

Someone pointed this article in the Independent Alligator to me this afternoon, and after reading the lede and the next three paragraphs as a U of Florida alum I am livid (via Garrett Shanley):

In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.

Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers...

Graft. Grift. Corruption. Paying off cronies and buddies in every direction. There's no other way to describe this.

I wrote back in 2023 how Governor Ron DeSantis was sacrificing Florida's higher education system to pander to the MAGA voters:

It's been noted before that Florida's current Governor Ron "Pander Away" DeSantis is waging a war against "Wokeness," the current catch-all phrase by Far Right wingnuts describing anything that exposes our nation's history of racism, sexism, and bad behavior by conservative elites.

DeSantis has escalated his efforts across every level of education our state can offer. Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

At the time, the big scandal revolved around DeSantis breaking the rules and hiring practices at New College, an experimental honors-level program that the Far Right anti-education forces wanted to convert into a Christianist Vo-Tech. But UF was getting the treatment as well:

If any of this feels the same as the situation leading to University of Florida - a flagship institution that had become one of the top universities in the nation - hiring an unqualified political hack like Ben Sasse earlier this school year, don't be shocked.

How was Sasse unqualified? Above all, he wasn't even from this state, carpetbagging his way here from Nebraska where he served as U.S. Senator. Where he did have qualifications, it was serving as president of a small college in that state that was facing financial shutdown. Sasse was able to bring in fundraising, and merging in students from a nearby college that did close in order to boost enrollment to a survivable level.

Thing was, University of Florida wasn't facing financial straits when DeSantis brought him on, only political targeting as a primary battleground over diversity hiring and enrollment that the Far Right Republicans like DeSantis wanted to stop. Sasse wasn't needed for any financial acumen: He was a party ally needed to push a political agenda.

And with that political agenda came a cash grab.

One of the things you'll notice about the modern Republican Party - at least from the 1990s, and arguably well back into the Nixon years - is how they view the public sector as a personal piggy bank to raid for their own pockets. Instead of managing revenues and spending for the public trust, the Republicans happily funnel taxpayer dollars to privatized businesses and contractors who happily overbill in order to get millions of money nobody keeps count of. Republicans in office will spend money on themselves and their vacation buddies without concern (or consequence).

Just look at the allegations leveled at Sasse: 

Amid protests over his conservative track record as a Nebraska Republican senator, Sasse promised during his ascension to the UF presidency in Fall 2022 that he would divorce himself from partisan politics under what he called a vow of “political celibacy.”

But the senator-turned-university president quietly broke that promise in his 17-month term at the university’s helm, hiring six ex-Senate staffers and two former Republican officials to high-paying, remote jobs at the university. 

Under Sasse’s administration, two of his former Senate staffers — Raymond Sass and James Wegmann — were among the highest-ranking and highest-paid officials at UF. Both worked remotely from the D.C. area, roughly 800 miles from UF’s main campus in Gainesville.

It's called "No-show jobs" and I doubt these guys even spent any actual minutes working for UF.

Sass, Sasse’s former Senate chief of staff, was UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships — a position which didn’t exist under previous administrations. His starting salary at UF was $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made on Capitol Hill. 

Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, is UF’s vice president of communications, a position he works remotely from his $725,000 home in Washington, D.C.

They invented new jobs - arguably without any defined duties and responsibilities - just to fill them with cronies.

Sasse appointed his former Senate press secretary, Taylor Sliva, as UF’s Assistant Vice President of Presidential Communications and Public Affairs, a new position. Sliva’s $232,000 salary made him the second-highest-paid employee in UF’s Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, trailing only Wegmann. 

The remaining three ex-Senate staffers — Raven Shirley, Kari Ridder and Kelicia Rice — served as presidential advisers to Sasse, though their specific duties remain unclear. Rice, Sasse’s Senate scheduler, is listed as a presidential adviser in UF’s salary directory but in practice remained as Sasse’s scheduler, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Sasse raised his former Senate staffs’ salaries at UF by an average of 44% compared to their Capitol Hill pay, contributing to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses over Fuchs’ last year in office.

Outside of his Senate staff, Sasse also tapped former Republican Tennessee Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice president of PK-12 and pre-bachelors programs. Schwinn, with a starting salary of $367,500, worked the newly-created position from her $1 million home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Additionally, Sasse hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), as Director of Presidential Relations and Major Events. Burns, salaried at $205,000, also worked for UF outside of Florida.

Jesus. I doubt any of them ever set foot on campus except for the occasional photo op with Sasse and to pick up their paychecks (oh wait, they probably used direct deposit). How the hell could any of them claim to know what they were doing when they were NEVER there to do it?

In Sasse’s first full fiscal year at the university’s helm, travel expenses for the president’s office soared to $633,000 — over 20 times higher than Fuchs’ annual average of $28,000. Sasse spent more on travel in his 17 months at UF than Fuchs’ entire eight-year tenure.

Notice how Republicans love to claim they're the party of fiscal responsibility? How can they be, when they're more wasteful with money than drunken teenagers ahold of their parents' credit cards (Gods, this is a phrase I've been using since 2010). In all seriousness, Republicans are fiscally responsible only when it's their money: They will waste other's people's money to their hearts' content.

Remember how I said earlier Sasse had some experience running a college? Well, UF is a university: Vastly larger, more complex, and requiring more skill than Sasse apparently brought with him... because he hired in private consultants at expensive rates to walk him through it:

His track record in higher education administration was limited to his five-year presidency at Midland University, a small, private liberal arts college in Fremont, Nebraska. At UF, which enrolls over 60,000 students and pulls in an annual $1 billion in research grants, Sasse faced a steep learning curve.

He turned to consultants for help.

During his presidency, Sasse spent $7.2 million in university funds to consultants for advice on his strategic planning and to fill leadership gaps — over 40 times more than Fuchs’ total consulting expenses over his eight-year term.

Sasse paid nearly two-thirds of the $7.2 million to McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser on an hourly contract. The firm carries prestige as one of the “big three” management consulting giants, but is notoriously secretive about its dealings and shielded its work from public view using records laws protecting trade secrets.

A critical “scope of work” attachment, which would outline McKinsey's responsibilities to UF, was redacted from a copy of the contract obtained from a public records request. The redaction, permissible under state public records laws, makes it virtually impossible for the public to know what the firm did to earn its fees...

For all we know, those fees were for covering their tee times and martini luncheons at whatever golf courses they visited. It'd be nice to prove me wrong, McKinsey & Co.

Everything about this situation screams corruption, intentional wasteful spending of public dollars for private use and straight-up greed.

There is no way the crooks at the top of this chain - DeSantis and the state Republican leadership - will do anything to investigate these allegations (and will likely replace Sasse with one of their own corrupt colleagues).

Goddammit. Call in the feds. Get the Department of Education down here, get the Justice Department, bring the U.S. Marshals, whatever it takes. Find out how bad the rot is before it eats at everything else in the Sunshine State that hasn't been broken yet.

And for the love of GOD, Floridians: Vote these corrupt Republican SOBs out of office.

Anniversary of Four Dead In Ohio

While today was a Star Wars holiday and also a Free Comic Book Day for those who geek out, this was also an anniversary for one of the darker days of the civil rights/antiwar protest movements in our nation's history: the Kent State shootings.

By 1970, the Vietnam War had become an obvious quagmire that more Americans - especially the younger generations who were getting drafted to serve - wanted to exit. While Richard Nixon got elected in 1968 with a promise for "a secret plan" to get out of Vietnam "with honor," nothing had changed much. 

On May 1st, Nixon gave a speech that he was escalating matters in Southeast Asia by sending troops into neighboring Cambodia (trying to cut into North Vietnam's supply lines and trying to stop "the Domino Effect" of communism spreading).

For the college-attending Americans growing up through the early half of Vietnam's escalation, it seemed like they - or their younger siblings - were going to become fodder - once they graduated and were eligible for the draft - for a perpetual war. Protests erupted across college campuses across the United States.

In Ohio, the governor James Rhodes agreed by May 2nd to send in 1000 National Guard troops to pacify the Kent State campus after the ROTC building got hit with a firebomb. Accusing the protestors of "being the worst type of people we harbor in America" - even though he's talking about our families' own sons and daughters at the time - Rhodes declared martial law and that no further gatherings or protests be held.

The students refused to stop.

May 4th, the escalation and anger and frustration led to this:

Defying the ban, people begin gathering on the Commons around 11 a.m. on Monday. By noon, some 3,000 people are there, including a core group of some 500 demonstrators around the Victory Bell, and many more onlookers. The target of their protests shifts from Nixon, Cambodia and the Vietnam War, to the National Guard and its occupation of Kent State.

After the demonstrators refuse to disperse, some 100 of the National Guardsmen begin to march across the Commons. They push the crowd up a slope known as Blanket Hill and down the other side into a parking lot.

Following the crowd into a nearby practice football field, the Guardsmen find themselves blocked in by a fence. They throw tear gas canisters and point their guns at the demonstrators, who yell and throw rocks and other debris at them. After about 10 minutes of this, the Guardsmen begin to move back up Blanket Hill. The crowd cheers their retreat and continues throwing things at them.

At 12:24 p.m., just after reaching the top of the hill, the Guardsmen turn back and fire their M1 rifles and pistols, some of them aiming directly into the crowd. In 13 seconds of shooting, they fire between 61 and 67 shots. Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheur are killed, and nine other students are injured, including Dean Kahler, who is shot in the back and left permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

There had been numerous protests from the early 1960s onward that had ended in violence. The Civil Rights marches tended to end with police - and angry white mobs - pummeling marchers, unleashing dogs, or knocking them over with high-powered water hoses. The antiwar riots from 1967 onward tended to go the same way, culminating in the "police riot" violence that engulfed the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

But never before had the police - or the National Guard - just opened fire like that. Nobody expected it. Eyewitnesses would later note how they and the other students present - even the ones not protesting - didn't think the Guard would fire with real bullets. The reports included how even some of the Guardsmen were stunned by what happened.

The chaos and confusion of that moment - the only emotions everyone seemed to have between student and soldier alike were fear and rage - led to tragedy. Scheur and Schroeder weren't part of the protest, they were separately walking between classes. Krause and Miller may have been protesting, but they didn't deserve to get killed like that. No one should have gotten shot.

Kent State essentially shut down right after the shooting and wouldn't reopen for months. Across the nation, outrage was immediate. Over 650 universities and high schools saw protests and walkouts by students, not only raging against the war but now raging against a nation's military willing to shoot their own citizens.

The counterculture scene - filled with antiwar activists especially the musicians - produced artwork decrying the shootings and memorializing the dead. The act Crosby Stills Nash and Young crafted a protest song "Ohio" within weeks of the incident. The song attacked Nixon by name - who had directly created both the Cambodian crisis and the authoritarian environment of state/federal agencies being brutal towards protestors - and is considered to this day one of the more impactful protest songs of that era.

In the short term, the outrage over the Kent State deaths led to little change. Nixon and his allies arranged counter-protests in favor of the war to continue harassing the antiwar crowds. Most college students - even the ones not from Kent State - returned home over the summer to find family members and neighbors arguing that the protestors were at fault. The investigations into the shooting led to arrests for around 25 student and faculty protestors, but only a few pled to lesser charges, one was acquitted, and the charges dropped for the rest for lack of evidence. For the Guardsmen, five of them faced murder charges and two more on misdemeanors, but they argued for "self-defense" as they feared for their lives. The judge agreed on that point, dismissing the charges but admonishing the National Guard that their actions that day were "deplorable."

Nixon won re-election in 1972. He resigned two years later due to his mishandling of the Watergate scandals, and it was only years later we learned how callous he got towards the antiwar students. 

The war the students originally protested didn't end well, either. Nixon's efforts to control Cambodia - honestly, to bomb it into rubble - only served to destabilize it more to where the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975. While Nixon was able to secure a "peace with honor" treaty with North Vietnam by 1972, all it did was delay the inevitable of South Vietnam falling to the Viet Cong by 1975 as well.

Nobody won anything at Kent State. Just four dead students, and a nation that still hasn't come to terms with how we should handle student protestors more than 54 years later. 

We're seeing police and National Guard getting called in again across dozens of universities and colleges trying to contain - and brutalize - the antiwar protestors rising up against the violence in Gaza towards Palestinian civilians. We have campus administrators overreacting to where escalation towards the students is creating the same kind of confused, fearful environment that built up at Kent State. Instead of using Soft Power tactics - of placating and isolating the protestors to minimize conflicts - we have heavy-handed tactics by the cops, and demonization of the Arab/Palestinian protestors as "terrorists" with a New York deputy commissioner holding up a single textbook (which is about the History of it, not a How-To like the Turner Diaries you morons) as evidence.

It's ironic how a history book underscores how our law enforcement and national leaders keep forgetting the lessons of history.

One Sentence Thought About The College Campus Protests Over Israel's Overkill in Gaza

While there are a number of pro-Hamas agitators screaming about killing Israelis and a number of counter-agitators screaming about killing Palestinians, the heavy-handed tactics by the city/county/state police towards the protests are going to escalate the anger and increase the risk of police brutality/bloodshed on our campuses to a level we haven't seen since the Vietnam-era, and which didn't do ANY of the sides - the protesters on one side, law enforcement on the other - any good.

Where the hell are the efforts at Soft Power de-escalation of hostilities: Assurances of open protest as long as there are no calls for violence, containing protest areas to ensure civility, separating agitating groups to prevent tempers flaring up and fights starting? Okay, that's two sentences, but one had to follow the other...

While Biden is talking to the media about trying to de-escalate, what is he ACTUALLY doing? Where's the hard efforts to rein in Netanyahu as the corrupt Israeli PM is openly planning a genocide in Rafah? Why is Biden focusing on the "violent protests" of occupying campus buildings instead of recognizing that a majority of the student protesters are peacefully marching out there asking for the violence to stop? Okay, that's three more sentences in forms of questions, but yeah these questions need asking, and answering. Okay, that's one mo... Okay I'll stop.

The Racism That SCOTUS Just Allowed

Knew this day was coming ever since Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat away from Barack Obama. One of the driving missions of the Far Right lawyers and judges of the last 30 years has been to overturn the use of Affirmative Action in college applications, and today the heavily Far Right Supreme Court pretty much nuked that system from orbit. Via Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog: 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that college admissions programs can consider race merely to allow an applicant to explain how their race influenced their character in a way that would have a concrete effect on the university. But a student “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote. The majority effectively, though not explicitly, overruled its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s consideration of race “as one factor among many, in an effort to assemble a student body that is diverse in ways broader than race.” Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the Roberts opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor – a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School who once called herself “the perfect affirmative action baby” – dissented, in an opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor emphasized that the majority’s decision had rolled “back decades of precedent and momentous progress” and “cement[ed] a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society.”

The reason race-based college admission practices existed in the first place was to confront the near century-long period of segregation in the American workplace, something determined by our educational backgrounds. Young people getting hired to the best jobs tend to graduate from the better-ranked universities. Having Harvard or Yale on your resume - or depending on your region, the University of Texas in that state or University of Florida in that one - opens doors that having Florida Poly or Middle Tennessee VoTech couldn't.

Even well-established Black colleges like Howard, Florida A&M, or Morehouse can't compete if someone with a Juris Doctorate from Stanford or a medical degree from Duke stepped through the door looking for a job.

It's also a question of diversity, of getting the demographics of the nation - if not the state that university was in - to reflect the communities these college students were going to join as adults. Given how the state of Mississippi is roughly 37 percent Black, would it make sense that Ole Miss or Southern Miss or Mississippi State be so segregated that the White students never meet a single Black student? That sort of segregation before the 1960s in our schools made it easier to maintain that segregation in our societies since the post-Reconstruction Era.

And yet, here comes Roberts' conservative court, declaring "race-neutral" should be in effect when deciding who gets to enter our higher education. Like as though other factors like gender, income, and family connections aren't as problematic. Hell, the worst thing in college enrollments are the Legacy applicants: Students who get in not because they're at the top of the class but because their parents or grandparents are alumni, especially the alums who donate million-dollar building projects as a quid pro quo.

When I got into the University of Florida back in 1988, I wasn't a Legacy (my mom was Auburn, and was sore disappoint none of her sons went War Eagle), nor was I disadvantaged. Affirmative Action had no discernable affect on me. I was White, yes, but I graduated in the top two percent of my high school and scored in the top five percent of the SATs that year and I had sufficient AP and dual enrollment credits to appease the registrar's office.

The thing for Affirmation Action was that it gave disadvantaged students - often poor, and in this systemic racist nation often ethnic minority - an equal opportunity that I had to apply and enroll at what was - and hopefully still is in spite of DeSantis' recent sabotage - the top university in the state, as well as one of the top universities when it came to business, education, medicine (major pharmacy program if I recall), and journalism (the reason I applied). As a result, I attended classes with several Black students, socially interacted with them on occasion - I was to my personal shame something of an introvert, which haunts me to this day - and had no negative experiences sharing the campus with them. The biggest negative experience I got was from a white graduate student who yelled at me for biking on the wrong side of the road.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court isn't exactly banning colleges from considering race when reviewing their applicants, but they can sure as hell ignore race when rejecting those disadvantaged kids in favor of more Legacy (read: White and Wealthy) students whose parents can pay into school endowment coffers more readily. 

Elie Mystal at the Nation has a more thorough and bitter debunking of the Supreme Court's moves today (paywalled):

It has been a long goodbye. The Supreme Court declared race consciousness in college admissions, also known as affirmative action, unconstitutional today. The vote was predictable, 6-3, with all the justices appointed by Republican presidents standing together to revoke the policy. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts himself, who ruled that affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was, of course, written explicitly to revoke the racism practiced by whites against Blacks through their slaver’s Constitution, but Roberts doesn’t care about all that. His opinion attempts to capture the 14th Amendment and redeploy it to justify a white version of “color blindness” that just so happens to lock in a status quo that benefits whites...

But the death of affirmative action was not achieved merely through the machinations of Republican lawyers. While conservatives on the Supreme Court delivered the fatal blow, the policy has long been made vulnerable by the soft bigotry of parents, whose commitment to integration and equality turns cold the moment their little cherubs fail to get into their first choice of college or university. If you want to see a white liberal drop the pretense that they care about systemic racism and injustice, just tell them that their privately tutored kid didn’t get into whatever “elite” school they were hoping for... Some of the most horribly racist claptrap folks have felt comfortable saying to my face has been said in the context of people telling me why they don’t like affirmative action, or why my credentials are somehow “unearned” because they were “given” to me by affirmative action.

That last bit is in some ways the most devastating: Black people are attacked and shamed simply because the policy exists, regardless of whether it benefited them or not. I’ve had white folks whom I could standardize-test into a goddamn coma tell me that I got into school only because of affirmative action. I once talked to a white guy—whose parents’ name was on one of the buildings on campus—who asked me how it felt to know I got “extra help” to get in. The sheer nerve of white folks is sometimes jaw-dropping...

The actual cases decided today involve lawsuits brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a group of AAPI (Asian American/Pacific Islander) students organized by white conservative legal gadfly Ed Blum. Blum has made it his life’s work to destroy affirmative action, and in this case, he found plaintiffs eager to argue that affirmative action policies discriminate against AAPI students who don’t get into elite schools despite competitive grades and standardized test scores.

On the facts, Blum and SFFA are simply wrong. The district court (the finder of fact in our federal system) found that the universities do not intentionally discriminate against AAPI students—and, more specifically, that there is no evidence that affirmative action is hurting them. (I have written that I think Harvard does discriminate against AAPI applicants, but that discrimination has nothing to do with affirmative action.) What this means is the entire argument against affirmative action is based on the feelings of some students (and their parents) that they would have gotten into these schools if the schools admitted fewer Black people, but that too is a thin argument. Getting rid of affirmative action will neither require schools to admit more AAPI students nor force them to weigh so-called “merit-based” factors more heavily. In California, which ended its affirmative action policies over 25 years ago, the studies show that, without affirmative action, Black enrollment plummets, Latino enrollment plummets, AAPI enrollment goes up a little bit, and whites flood the remaining opportunities...

Policies like affirmative action, as I mentioned above, were first enacted in this country during Reconstruction. Any good-faith “originalist” argument would have to acknowledge that the authors of the 14th Amendment contemplated the use of affirmative action, and we know that because affirmative action was used in their own lifetimes, after the ratification of the amendment.

But the conservatives did not adopt originalism for its good-faith arguments. They’re not ending affirmative action to help Asian American students get into Harvard or UNC. The conservative majority is ending affirmative action because college admissions are maybe the only place in American life where being white isn’t an automatic benefit to the possessor of precious white skin...

To wit, historically, the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women. Women held only 35 percent of bachelor degrees before affirmative action policies were reintroduced; now, women’s enrollment in college outpaces men, and has for some time. Now, elite colleges and universities are giving men a boost in admissions considerations, because their grades and scores are not keeping pace with women’s.

Yet you’ll note that the Supreme Court did not ban gender consciousness in college admissions. Nor did it ban legacy consciousness, wealth consciousness, geographic consciousness, or athletic consciousness. Race, and only race, is the thing the conservatives don’t want colleges and universities to look at. Because race is the card white people use that never gets declined. It is their most powerful characteristic, the one through which all else is possible.

Even with what Mystal says, the response to today's end of Affirmative Action won't make it easier for White kids to enroll in the colleges of their choice. It's going to make it easier for mediocre RICH White kids who didn't earn the privilege to enroll in the top universities and force everyone else - even poor Whites with great grades - into lesser-valued schools.

The elitism is going to get worse.

Fuck Harvard and Yale. Fuck the Ivies. Fuck my alma mater UF if they dare decide to segregate again.

Start hiring more college grads from the universities that still push for student diversity in spite of the conservative outrage against them.

There has to be other ways to ensure diversity and merit in our educational system, if only to work towards ensuring that diversity and merit in our whole society. Access to higher education is one of the few equalizers we have in American society to undo the damage of centuries of racism, and this Supreme Court just took that away. There is nothing neutral or color-blind in the United States, conservative judges, stop pretending there is.

DeSantis Can't Read the Snowflakes

Posted on social media over the weekend, we have proof that Republicans are idiots and that Ron DeSantis is a moron (via Ellen E Clarke at Tampa Bay Times (paywalled)):

In Iowa on Friday to promote his new book, Gov. Ron DeSantis posed with a gift from a supposed supporter.

The gift, a framed cutout of an intricate snowflake, features the word “fascist.” Steven Goffman, whose profile says that he works for the Washington Post, tweeted that Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, also a Republican, posed with a copy of the gift, too.

DeSantis was visiting Iowa, introducing himself to expectant audiences of Republicans ahead of a likely 2024 presidential bid...

Lemme get a copy of the photo:

 

pulled from Twitter

The second I saw the photo of the snowflake, I spotted the "asci" part of the word immediately. It quickly became a puzzle-solving matter of figuring out the rest of the word (The "F" is done with a cursive flourish in order to tie the mirror shape of the snowflake together). Considering DeSantis' public behavior - of bullying and censoring his critics, his hostile takeover of Florida politics, and eager willingness to use these methods to move upward in politics to the Presidency - the only word it could have been is "Fascist".

The symbolism of the snowflake - as a political insult - can't be overlooked.

That Ron DeSantis - he with the Ivy League education going to both Harvard and Yale - failed to notice the hidden word in the snowflake, and that he failed to recognize the deliberate insult given to him, tells me that DeSantis is unaware, that he's unthinking, that he can't perceive words or symbolic images that any intelligent person can. In short, he can't read.

I went to both Universities of Florida (which was a top-flight institution until DeSantis showed up to ruin the state's higher education) and South Florida (commuter college, but not shabby), but I could see it where he couldn't.

This makes some sense for all of DeSantis' recent attempts to raze Florida's public university system to turn them into broken-down partisan cesspools. For all the prestige he got from attending the top universities in the nation, DeSantis does not respect education at all because he personally remains uneducated and ignorant. And he desires to drag the rest of our state - our children and future generations - down into the cesspool with him and his fellow wingnut hacks. 

I seriously call on Yale and Harvard to rescind his college degrees and release his transcripts for public transparency. DeSantis' current disdain for higher education - and his clear lack of comprehension skills - proves he didn't learn a goddamn thing from your institutions.

This is what the Republican punditry and leadership wants as their standard bearer going into 2024.

Gods help us.

The Hostile Destruction of Florida Education

Update: Thank you Batocchio for including this article on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this morning! 

It's been noted before that Florida's current Governor Ron "Pander Away" DeSantis is waging a war against "Wokeness," the current catch-all phrase by Far Right wingnuts describing anything that exposes our nation's history of racism, sexism, and bad behavior by conservative elites.

DeSantis has escalated his efforts across every level of education our state can offer. Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university (via Ian Hodgson, Divya Kumar, and Lane DeGregory at the Tampa Bay Times (paywall)):

Carrying signs and wearing stickers and buttons Tuesday, hundreds of students, faculty and alumni filled the courtyard outside the building where the six new trustees appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to New College’s board of trustees were to meet for the first time.

“Jesus would not have wanted this,” one sign said. Others declared: “Stop the Steal,” “Queer Lives are Welcome Here,” and “Are we too woke or do you need to wake up?”

They rallied to save their school from what New College President Patricia Okker later called a “hostile takeover” by the new conservative appointees. They didn’t know that a key decision had already been made.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, told protestors she was “damn proud to stand with them,” and led a chant to “reject fascism and protect freedom.” Then she dropped a bomb: Okker was to be replaced by Richard Corcoran, the former education commissioner and Florida House speaker, who would serve as interim president...

It should be noted that Corcoran was rejected as a candidate for the Florida State University President opening a few years back, because the hiring committee considered him a straight-up political hack whose own educational background is dubious at best. This time around, DeSantis rigged the New College's board of directors first, and then got them to fire Okker to make room for Corcoran.

If any of this feels the same as the situation leading to University of Florida - a flagship institution that had become one of the top universities in the nation - hiring an unqualified political hack like Ben Sasse earlier this school year, don't be shocked.

This is essentially a hostile takeover, not just by DeSantis but also by Far Right Republicans obsessed with dismantling higher educational systems they fear are too liberal.

The six DeSantis-appointed trustees asserted their presence early, proposing to rid the school of its diversity office and talking about the “crisis” that needed to be solved. But confusion over procedural matters and their unfamiliarity with some issues took up more than an hour...

Earlier in the day, (Christopher) Rufo accompanied DeSantis at a news conference in Bradenton, just north of the New College campus. The governor pledged an infusion of $15 million at New College to be spent on hiring new faculty and scholarships for students, with an extra $10 million every year thereafter. As a part of a larger plan to reform higher education, he also denounced diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at state colleges and universities, saying they would no longer be funded...

DeSantis is essentially saying that things like civil rights and Title IX protections won't be upheld at state universities. Segregation and racial discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile workplaces, hostile classrooms... all of this will become the norm in DeSantis' Florida.

This is all echoed in DeSantis' efforts to shut down ANY discussion of "Critical Race Theory" essentially meaning our state cannot teach one iota of Florida's history regarding racism, slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights marches, all because Republicans are terrified that White People's Feelings (tm) will be hurt if we teach the facts that Yes Goddammit racism happened and keeps happening. He's just making sure that college students will be kept ignorant as much as our K-12 students.

Rufo is, by the by, a wingnut conservative hack actively campaigning to shut down public education of any kind in an obsessive desire to privatize something for greed and racism. DeSantis, desperate to win over 2024 Republican primary voters, is giving Rufo the opportunity to wreak havoc on Florida's educational system.

Goddamn Rufo. Goddamn DeSantis. Goddamn this wingnut Culture War that's committing serious acts of censorship against our children's' collective right to a fair and informed education, and an assault on our state's ability to promote higher education at all.

If I were a student today, at University of Florida (Alum 1992) or University of South Florida (Alum 1994), I would be walking the fuck out. I do not want the value of my college degree to turn into shit, all because a partisan hack of a Governor is weakening the quality of my university so he can score cheap political points for a 2024 Presidential run.

I am calling on all Florida college students: Just walk the fuck away. Yes, many of you have college loans to pay off, but you can start GoFundMe campaigns to help pay those down. Apply to out-of-state universities that won't go Red-State apeshit on you. Empty out the classrooms across Florida so that DeSantis has to live with the embarrassment of having our state's high-quality institutions void of any students. I know in some respects DeSantis would revel in the images of empty classrooms - "Look," he will say to his rabid anti-education voting base, "They would rather quit than learn a Godly conservative education!" - but he is going to have to live with the reality that he oversaw the dismantling of a statewide university system, something that has never happened to any other governor before him.

At some point, the shame of killing off Florida's educational system from kindergarten to doctorate ought to slap DeSantis in the goddamn face.

DeSantis vs. The Right To Think

It's been awhile since I've discussed how bad things are here in Florida so let's check in on what damage Ron DeSantis is dropping on our citizenry lately. 

Let's look at DeSantis' push of an "intellectual freedom survey" that doesn't really do a thing for freedom (via USA Today/Tallahassee Democrat (paywall)):

The questionnaire to survey students and faculty was required by a bill (HB 233) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last June. 

The bill was promoted as a way to safeguard open inquiry and intellectual diversity on state campuses. Opponents of the survey filed a federal suit in Tallahassee over it...

The email that went out reads as follows:

Dear Employee: 

You are invited to participate in a survey on Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity. This survey is designed to assess the extent to which you feel free to express your beliefs and viewpoints on campus. This survey is being conducted by the Florida Board of Governors as part of implementation of House Bill 233, which passed during the 2021 legislative session.  

Please follow this link (or copy and paste the link into your web browser) to complete the brief survey, which should take 5-10 minutes: [The link to the survey was here]

Your participation in this survey is completely voluntary. You are free to not answer any question or withdraw from the survey at any time. No personally identifiable information will be associated with your responses. This survey is anonymous, and responses will only be reported at the group level, not at the individual level.  

Should you have any questions, please contact the Florida Board of Governors.    

Thank you for your time and consideration...

So why are people opposed to this seemingly harmless survey (from another USA Today/Tallahassee Democrat article by James Call in October 2021)?

The United Faculty of Florida, the labor union representing faculty and graduate assistants at the state's public and private colleges and universities, argues in federal court that the measure will gather those facts and data in an unconstitutional manner.

In papers filed Aug. 4 (2021) in Tallahassee, UFF lists numerous violations of free speech protections and rights of assembly in just the law’s anti-shielding provision. A student who finds they have been shielded from what they perceived is speech that is offensive to others may file suit to “vindicate” their rights.

“We cannot imagine a scenario where the survey will go well,” said J. Andrew Gothard, the UFF president. The state has submitted a motion to dismiss the suit, and UFF has filed a rebuttal...

This survey and the bill supporting it raises more conflict over "offensive" speech than it claims to prevent. For example a Proud Boy / Oath Keeper student on a college campus could claim his "speech" about Replacement Theory was wrongly suppressed, and file suit to have his racist Anti-Semitic hate speech shoved down the throats of everyone offended by it.

DeSantis' office may claim the survey is "voluntary" and unenforceable, and the Governor's office already has the ability to cut funding to any universities giving DeSantis the power to punish those schools he feels are not performing how he sees fit: 

The survey provisions neither explain nor put any limitations on how the governor, Florida Legislature or boards might use the results of the survey... Remarks by Gov. DeSantis in support of HB 233 indicate that results will be used to cut funding from public colleges and universities if survey results suggest that a given school has not done enough to foster "intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity..."

If anybody lived through the era of Loyalty Oaths and political witch hunts (called the Johns Committee) here in Florida, welcome to the sequel.

I know a number of academic librarians at the state universities, and I sent out a message this week inquiring if they'd received those surveys as they are faculty (I also asked if I could see one, but no one shared). Some replied back that they got the 2021 survey which they agreed was meager but filled with "leading questions" (questions phrased in such a way that a biased response in the positive was the only way to answer it and still feel clean). They haven't gotten this year's survey but they've heard it's going to be more detailed. My fellow librarians are being told by the teachers' unions not to answer the surveys at all, but you know political pressure will come down if no one does fill them.

And that's what DeSantis is doing to higher education. Wanna see what he's doing to our K-12 schools? (via Ana Ceballos and Sommer Brugal at the Tampa Bay Times (paywall)):

Several South Florida high school educators are alarmed that a new state civics initiative designed to prepare students to be “virtuous citizens” is infused with a Christian and conservative ideology after a three-day training session in Broward County last week.

Teachers who spoke to the Times/Herald said they don’t object to the state’s new standards for civics, but they do take issue with how the state wants them to be taught.

“It was very skewed,” said Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade government teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School. “There was a very strong Christian fundamentalist way toward analyzing different quotes and different documents. That was concerning.”

The civics training, which is part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, underscores the tension that has been building around education, making classrooms into battlegrounds for politically contentious issues. In Florida, DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature have pushed policies that limit what schools can teach about race, gender identity and certain aspects of history...

Those dynamics came into full view last week, when trainers told Broward teachers the nation’s founders did not desire a strict separation of state and church, downplayed the role the colonies and later the United States had in the history of slavery in America and pushed a judicial theory, favored by legal conservatives like DeSantis, that requires people to interpret the Constitution as the framers intended it, not as a living, evolving document, according to three educators who attended the training...

Just to point out how wrong DeSantis' trainers are: They are ignoring the Founders' "No Religious Test" provision written into the Constitution itself; they are ignoring how slavery dominated our political debates in the 1800s to where we had a freaking CIVIL WAR about it; and they are pushing an "Originalist" interpretation of the Constitution that ignores the reality it can be amended and evolve under the guidance of current and future generations. Back to the article:

The civics training is the latest effort in a long line of education policies that aims to fight what DeSantis and conservative education reformers say are “woke ideologies” in public schools.

It also provides a snapshot of how national groups, including Hillsdale College, a politically influential private Christian college in southern Michigan, are working with the DeSantis administration to reshape education in the state. The goal is to put a greater emphasis on civics than on socially divisive issues such as race and gender identity, which DeSantis has said is an effort to reorient teaching away from “indoctrination and back towards education.” But to several educators who went through the state’s training, it felt like a broader effort to impose a conservative view on historical events...

This is essentially the next stage in DeSantis' and the Far Right Conservatives ongoing war on Facts. It doesn't help that their main source of "historical facts" happens to be a Hillsdale College accused of racism and religious extremism (via at Kathryn Joyce at Salon.com):

In an era of book bans, crusades against teaching about racism, and ever-widening proposals to punish teachers and librarians, Hillsdale is not just a central player, but a ready-made solution for conservatives who seek to reclaim an educational system they believe was ceded decades ago to liberal interests. The college has become a leading force in promoting a conservative and overtly Christian reading of American history and the U.S. Constitution. It opposes progressive education reforms in general and contemporary scholarship on inequality in particular. It has featured lectures describing the Jan. 6 insurrection as a hoax and Vladimir Putin as a "hero to populist conservatives around the world."

Quick interruption: THIS COLLEGE IS PROMOTING A WARMONGERING, SEXIST/RACIST SON OF A BITCH IN PUTIN. They are on the side of an Imperialist Russia monster responsible for war, famine, rape, and death.

And as Republicans move into a new phase of their long-game efforts to privatize public education, Hillsdale has become a key resource. Across the nation, conservative officials from state leaders to insurgent school board members are clamoring to implement Hillsdale's proudly anti-woke lesson plans, including the "patriotic education" premises of its recently released 1776 Curriculum, or add to its growing network of affiliated classical charter schools...

These linked trends amount to a vision of things to come if Republicans win their current war on public education. And war is how they see it. As one Republican leader promised at Hillsdale last spring, if conservatives can "get education right," they'll "win" the country "back." Or as Hillsdale's president himself likes to say, "Teaching is our trade; also, I confess, it's our weapon." 

This isn't about education, this isn't about the facts, this isn't about civics or accuracy in history. This is about war that the Far Right are waging against the rest of the world that doesn't believe the same bullshit they believe. It's about promoting a mythology of "racial harmony" where things would be so much better if Whites kept their privilege, (White) Men were allowed to be manly, the feminists stayed in the kitchen, everyone knew their place and it would all be 1850 again.

DeSantis has been screaming about "Critical Race Theory" and "Wokeism" but he's using that as an excuse to indoctrinate the next generation into religious/racist ignorant extremism.

Our schools are now battlegrounds, and the Republicans want scorched earth to be our national legacy.

Don't let them win.

The Shame of Tigert Hall (w/ Update)

I am with fellow University of Florida alum Betty Cracker here, I am ashamed of being a Florida Gator this weekend. (Balloon Juice linked to Washington Post article (paywall)): 

The University of Florida barred three faculty members from testifying for plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging a voting-restrictions law enthusiastically embraced by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), which activists say makes it harder for racial minorities to vote. The university’s action raises sharp concerns about academic freedom and free speech in the state.

The public university said the three faculty members — political scientists Daniel A. Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Wright Austin — could pose “a conflict of interest to the executive branch” and harm the school’s interests if they testified against the law signed by DeSantis in May.

“As UF is a state actor, litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests,” school officials said, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post...

The only conflict of interest here is with the university's administration, which is cowering at the thought of DeSantis retaliating against UF if they allowed these professors to testify. There is no conflict with regards to the freedom of information, there is no conflict with regards to research and academia, there is no conflict as those professors were going to be under oath and testifying to the facts as they knew them.

How many other cases have UF professors, or any other academic in the state of Florida, testified? How many times were they denied because of "conflict of interest"? Did this ever come up before? I've yet to hear of one during my lifetime ever since I was a student there in the late 1980s.

The leadership at the University of Florida did this out of fear. No press release or explanation will excuse this.

These professors were set to testify to the damage caused by the repressive voting law the state Republicans passed in the wake of the 2020 elections to make it harder to vote by mail, to vote early, to vote at all in certain cases. It's a law that doubles down on more IDs required to vote (as though that kind of voter fraud is rampant: IT'S NOT).

As much as these professors' rights to speech were blocked, the rights of the Florida citizenry - including the young UF students just turned 18 and able to vote - were denied from hearing any expert evaluation of this law, of any other laws that could deny them their constitutional right (under the 13th, 19th, and 26th Amendments) to vote in local, state, and federal elections.

As I said on Betty Cracker's article:

As a fellow Florida alum, I am horrified and sickened by my university’s cowardice. In the face of watching DeSantis and the state Republicans suppress our constitutional voting rights, they would rather roll over and play dead than fight for the civil rights of their own students and faculty.

What do they think they’re doing, saving their payroll, their budget, their jobs? The Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated their anti-education anti-intellectual bias, and would likely close down most of the colleges (or worse, turn them into for-profit boondoggles) for shits and giggles.

The independence and reputation of our state’s higher educational institutions are at risk from political censorship and suppression. The students at Gainesville and every other college campus in Florida should rise up and protest this enforced silence.

You better use your voice now, Florida students, before DeSantis and his craven lackeys silence them for you. You know where Tigert Hall is. You know where the corner of University Avenue and 13th Street is. You know where the spots are outside of Turlington and the Century Tower. Hey, nice big open spot in that Plaza of the Americas outside the main libraries. Why let the suspendered Bible-thumpers always out there railing against you claim that open field? It's your spot to protest.

Protest now. Speak out now. Keep speaking until the UF President and his handlers realize they answer to YOU and not the corrupt powers in Tallahassee.

Update 11/5: As Doug mentioned in the comments below, NPR is reporting that the university has changed its tune (via Deepa Shivaram): 

...The university's earlier decision, which was revealed last week through documents filed in federal court, was widely criticized as an infringement of the professors' First Amendment rights.

The case was particularly under scrutiny because the lawsuit targeted legislation, supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis, that inhibited access to the ballot — and the school has strong ties to the governor.

University of Florida President Kent Fuchs said in a letter released Friday that he had asked the university's conflict of interest office to reverse the decision and "approve the requests regardless of personal compensation, assuming the activity is on their own time without using university resources..."

You can kind of see where Fuchs is trying to redirect the focus as though this whole thing was "using university resources," when at issue was the university's argument that their professors and faculty could not contest "the state" as an absolute authority.

The fact that UF had never withheld their faculty from testifying against Florida's government until Fuchs showed up should not be ignored. Back to Shivaram:

...After the school's original decision was reported, the university's accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, said it was investigating the school. The story was originally reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education and confirmed to NPR.

UF professors Daniel Smith, Sharon Austin and Michael McDonald were originally denied the opportunity to testify; they are all experts on voting rights and elections. Their lawyers say that since the university's original decision to bar them from testifying is still a violation of their First Amendment rights, the professors are still considering their legal options...

This whole embarrassment should lead to people in Florida's college administration to resign on whatever honor they have left, with new people hired with no ties to DeSantis and no obligation to suppress either their professors' or their students' First Amendment rights to academic freedom.

And shame on DeSantis for creating this environment of intellectual suppression in the first place.

DeSantis Bringing Back the Thought Police to Florida

Jesus, the news this day from my crazy-ass state of Florida. As Betty Cracker mentions at Balloon Juice, Gov. DeSantis is cracking down on librul Thoughtcrime at our public universities: 

After whining non-stop about tech company “censorship” when private businesses enforced their terms of service on Agent Orange (AKA trump), Florida Governor Ron DeSantis showed us what honest-to-dog censorship looks like when he signed a bill banning the 1619 Project and discussions of critical race theory in Florida’s public schools. Now he’s out to identify thought-crimes at state universities...

Betty refers to the Miami Herald article from Ana Ceballos covering this:

In his continued push against the “indoctrination” of students, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed legislation that will require public universities and colleges to survey students, faculty and staff about their beliefs and viewpoints to support “intellectual diversity.”

The survey will discern “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” in public universities and colleges, and seeks to find whether students, faculty and staff “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,” according to the bill.

The measure, which goes into effect July 1, does not specify what will be done with the survey results. But DeSantis and Sen. Ray Rodrigues, the sponsor of the bill, suggested on Tuesday that budget cuts could be looming if universities and colleges are found to be “indoctrinating” students...

And as Betty notes, the goddamn governor can't even define what the hell it is he's looking for:

When asked, DeSantis didn’t name any instances of indoctrination — he says he hears “worries” from parents. But lack of evidence that legislation is needed to address a problem is no obstacle to DeSantis, who follows the Trump-GOP model of government by trolling. DeSantis couldn’t identify a single example of critical race theory being taught in K-12 public schools, or trans girls dominating girls’ sports teams, or widespread voter fraud. Yet he championed and signed legislation addressing all these fictional problems...

So under threat of slashed budgets to universities already under tightened restraints, this survey will be forced onto professors, faculty, and students all in the great name of purging "indoctrination" of unwanted thoughts. Arguably this is against the Republicans' hate for Critical Race Theory but in truth it's a potential purge of ANY liberal or progressive belief as punishment for refusing to toe the Far Right Wingnut line.

And if any of this sounds familiar to you, it's because we as a nation have been through this shit before: the Red Scare of the post-World War II era, commonly known as the McCarthyist Era named for the bullying Senator who oversaw a major purging of public and private citizens.

But that's not all. Florida went through its' own purge against "indoctrination" at the state level, officially called the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee but better remembered as the Johns Committee for the SOB who oversaw that shit-show. Openly formed as a response to the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling desegregating public schools (a clear act of racism by the by, Gov. DeSantis), state senator Charley Eugene Johns led that committee against any civil rights activism and then expanded it to hunt down suspected homosexuals especially at the major state university of the time, U of Florida in Gainesville. Basically, giving themselves the power to ruin any lives they wanted to hurt. Students got expelled, faculty and librarians were fired, and everyone else failed to defend their due process rights because they feared retaliation if they even did that.

From the Independent Alligator newspaper covering things at UF, article by Meghan McGlone, here are some of the sins that the Johns Committee inflicted on people: 

The year was 1958, and while other students were worrying about class and their lives off campus, UF sophomore Art Copleston was in the University Police’s basement.

A single lightbulb hung by a string over a wooden, four-legged table with a tape recorder placed in the middle. Blinds covered the windows, and two UPD officers sat with Copleston.

A UPD officer said he knew Copleston was gay. Then, he ordered the student to tell him the names of everyone that he knew on campus who was gay.

Copleston said he sat there for hours that day, and was brought back to that room four or five more times. If the officers could prove that he was gay, they told him, they could kick him off campus...

In many cases, UPD forcibly removed students and faculty from class and interrogated them without a legal representative present. Interrogators threatened to expose their sexual orientation during a time when “exposure would mean social death,” (UF Lecturer Steven) Noll said.

At the time the committee was at UF, (college President) Reitz did not stop the committee’s acts. He needed money from the state to develop the university, Noll said, and the Johns Committee was a state committee. He also believed that being gay was a major problem in American society.

In a 1988 interview, Reitz called anyone who was gay “a complete aberration.” He also communicated with Johns through letters, thanking the committee for its work...

Organizations on campus have addressed the Johns Committee’s history at UF, including LGBTQ Affairs. Its history recognizes the committee leading to the dismissal or resignation of faculty and students. It also recognizes that Reitz cooperated with the committee.

Director of LGBTQ Affairs Tiffany Richards declined to comment on LGBTQ Affairs’ history, or the fact that its office is held in the Reitz Union, a building whose namesake supported the committee. Graduate assistant of LGBTQ Affairs Logan Neser did not respond to The Alligator’s emails or calls.

Florida State Senator Lauren Book wrote a resolution late last year asking state legislators to acknowledge the injustices the Johns Committee caused and apologize to the victims of the committee. The bill failed March 14 in the Senate’s Committee on Governmental Oversight and Accountability...

Instead, it seems the Florida Legislature along with DeSantis decided to go the other way and bring that intimidating bullshit back. And bringing back the same hammer - the threat of cutting funds - to ensure the colleges comply.

DeSantis and his lackeys are not railing against "Critical Race Theory," they're railing against any study of racism at all, and opposed to any effort to confront racism as the problem it is. In the process, they're setting up the weapons they and the Far Right can use to attack anyone they view as deviants, not just transgenders and gays/lesbians, but also feminists and women who stand for pro-choice, anyone they deem "socialist" or worse if you happen to speak against income inequality. Just how far you think this slippery slope is when this kind of "investigation" goes after anyone "anti-religious" or non-Christian (which you're bound to find at a large university with active Muslim AND Jewish groups).

We've seen this movie before, Florida. And goddammit, it wasn't that great the first time.

This remake of the Real Witch Hunts of the 1950s is going to be directed by an even worse artist in DeSantis who has no vision and is working from a lousy rehashed script, pandering to a viewing audience of raging angry White folk who view anyone educated as "elitist" and evil.

What the Florida Republicans are attempting here are direct violations of everyone's First Amendment rights to Peaceably Assemble and the Freedom of Speech. They're going after the academic ideals of open debate and honest discourse, seeking to intimidate enough people to go silent and avoid punishment at the hands of the State of Florida.

This shit shouldn't stand. Every student and every teacher need to fight back. Your rights, your very lives are at stake even if you roll over and let DeSantis and his bullies win.

They want to impose silence, and they will want your scalps. Don't let them do either to you.

The Republicans Train Their Crooks Young: Just Look to the UF Student Getting Impeached Already

Oh man, trump's only been in the Sunshine State as an official resident for less than two months and already his crooked family is f-cking over my alma mater (Journalism 1992). To wit, there's an impeachment process underway in Gainesville (via Megan Reeves at the Tampa Bay Times):

Last month’s visit to the University of Florida by President Donald Trump’s oldest son is still reverberating through campus, with some student leaders pushing to oust the student body president who invited him.

For only the second time in the school’s 115-year history, a student president faces impeachment — and this time it’s happening with a U.S. president under the same threat...

Michael C. Murphy received a formal resolution for his impeachment Tuesday afternoon, which was signed by more than 100 students and alumni. It was delivered to his on-campus office and sent to his UF email. Student senate president Emily Dunson, received a copy, too, in accordance with student government rules...

Those behind the effort say Murphy conspired with an official for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign to bring Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle to campus for speeches on Oct. 10.

Questions have been raised about the legality of the visit, as Murphy agreed to pay the pair $50,000 in publicly funded student activity fees and the law says public funds cannot be used to support political campaigns...

I saw this event announced awhile back, and I was horrified that UF was inviting Fredo donnie junior for what seemed to be a partisan speaking tour. Granted, political figures have been invited to the campus - to many campuses across the U.S. - all the time, but those were usually over established debate issues in a public forum. Junior's visit - which came across as a fete instead of a forum - didn't seem to fit that mold. Back to the report:

Then an email surfaced, as first reported by UF’s independent student newspaper, The Alligator (disclosure: I did stringer work for the Alligator back in 1990, just one article about the then-built Harn Museum), showing Murphy worked to set up the event with Caroline Wren, national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a fundraising committee for the president’s campaign...

At the same time, Murphy has come under fire for his apparent ties to the Trump family. Photos on social media show him and Emily Dunson, who leads UF’s Gator Party, together at Trump events in Washington, D.C. Campaign finance records show the student president’s father, Dan Murphy, donated $5,600 to Trump’s campaign this year.

Michael Murphy and Dunson did not respond to calls seeking comment.

“Public records show that Michael Murphy colluded with a member of the Donald Trump campaign,” student senator Ben Lima said during a student government meeting last week. Lima is leading the impeachment charge.

“If this was not a campaign event, then why was the student body president in communication with the Trump campaign to bring these speakers to campus?” he asked.

The whole thing reeks of a campaign rally / fundraiser type event, using student funds to cover the costs, and reaching far past the level of action that the student President should be working. If you read the rest of Reeves' article, you'll notice the parts where Murphy seems more interested in cultivating a future career in politics rather than focus on his job serving the students' on-campus needs.

This is how corrupt conservatives have gotten, all the way down to their college-level rank and file. Wasting other people's money for partisan gains, lining their own pockets and setting up deals to serve themselves further down the road.

By the looks of things, Murphy's not going to last long as student President. But I guarantee you he's going to find fleeting fame among the Fox Not-News crowd as "another martyr" of campus political correction gone amok. Even though Murphy was honestly caught breaking the rules, even though by all rights Murphy is no damn martyr.

Here's hoping UF kicks the bum out. And Go Gators.

P.S. I hope the bum doesn't transfer to South Florida, my other alma mater (MLIS, 1993). Go Bulls.

If They Boo trump a Third Time, We Call That a MAGA Hat Trick

Oh dear Gods. trump really wants to keep trying this (via Sports Illustrated which apparently can't stick to sports like SOME compromised websites mutter grumble):

BamaCentral has learned that the University of Alabama is making preparations for President Donald Trump to attend the LSU game at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday.
Numerous sources have confirmed his expected visit.

The potential No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, depending on the initial rankings by the College Football Playoff committee Tuesday night, will be shown on CBS at 2:30p.m. CT. 

trump has already gotten boo'ed at a game he thought he'd be cheered at with baseball, then got boo'ed at a fight night with a crowd he - and a lot of other people - assumed would cheer him.

Now he's going for what he and his peeps HAVE to think is the safest spot for him to show up: Fritters Alabama, uh Tuscaloosa Alabama. The key point is, it's in a safely Redneck Conservative State playing a safely Redneck sporting event for a safely Redneck college conference.

He's shown up for this type of sporting event before, attending the College National Championship game back in 2017 between Alabama and Georgia. So by some level of logic this might be a safe game for him to show up for the cheers he's been desperate to hear. Given it's a game between the TOP TWO programs in the nation with guaranteed viewership, and trump is hoping to get big cheers and adulation to please that toxic ego of his.

Except, well... it might not be that safe.

The crowd for that championship game he attended was a little different than this game's. The big games tend to be stuffed with boosters and alums who are older and richer: This is a regular college game albeit - one with national viewership - but the crowds will have more college-age attendees. And trump is not polling well with college-level voters and especially that age bracket.

And times have changed. In 2017 trump was barely into his office, reactions to his actions still underway. It's been two-three years now and people know what trump represents. There's also the impeachment factor, where the public exposure of trump's scandals are hurting his approval numbers (which have NEVER gotten above 50 percent). Even a "safe" state like Alabama outside of his fanbase rallies may not approve of the man.

Throw in the mood most game attendees will be in. This WAS going to be a major college game to determine who owns the SEC West (and top dibs on the championship game in January). But now it's a political event, where everybody knows that trump attending ONLY so trump can get his damn cheers in front of national television. trump is hijacking a Big Game for his own damn self. And some fans may not take kindly to that and boo him out of spite.

My two cents on the matter is: To the Bama fans and to the LSU fans planning to attend, just don't go in. Keep tailgating in the parking lots. Listen to the game on your radios and watch on portable TVs. Don't let trump hijack YOUR game for HIS ego. Give him an empty stadium and root for your teams in other ways.

You don't have to boo him and you don't have to cheer him. Just let him sit in silence. Right now, that's the punishment trump deserves.