Gainesville community reacts to Ben Sasse being secretly tapped to be UF's next president

The University of Florida’s surprising announcement of a single finalist for UF president has drawn criticism from some faculty and students, due to secrecy in the process and the selection of a conservative politician.

But participants in the search defend the process, lauding U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., as a “transformational leader” for UF.

UF kept candidates for its presidency secret from the public under new state law, before announcing Thursday that a search committee had named Sasse as the only finalist for the job.

Sasse, 50, is in his second term in the Senate and, if approved by UF's board of trustees, would become the 13th president in the university's history.

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UF history professor Paul Ortiz said the optics of Sasse's selection are going to complicate his presidency because he is going to be seen as a "quasi-political" choice.

"If they had said, 'Hey we have three finalists, Ben Sasse is one of them' and he won that competition, we'd be having a different conversation right now," Ortiz said. “But because of the fact that they essentially say they reached out to about 700 people and come back with one person ... it creates a perception of unfairness and that's what Sen. Sasse is going to have to address.”

Sasse is scheduled to meet with faculty, students and staff on Monday, while UF’s board of trustees is scheduled to formally consider his candidacy at its Nov. 1 meeting. He said in a written statement released Thursday that UF “is the most interesting university in America right now” and that he is "thrilled about the opportunity to work alongside one of the nation’s most outstanding faculties.  

"The caliber of teaching and research at UF is unmistakable, carried out through the core principles of shared governance and academic freedom," Sasse said.

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New law allows secrecy

UF reported that a national search of more than 700 candidates was conducted, but its search committee focused attention on a dozen candidates that included nine sitting presidents at major research universities.

Sasse was the committee's unanimous choice, according to UF.

A new state law blocks the public from knowing exactly who else was considered and other details about the process. SB 520 allowed UF to conduct much of the presidential search outside of the requirements of Florida’s open meetings and public records laws.

Under the measure, the university was allowed to keep the names of candidates secret and only publicly announce the names of any finalists.

State Rep. Chuck Clemons, a Newberry Republican who voted in support of the measure, said the law is meant to shield earlier applicants in the process from public disclosure that might hurt their standings at their current jobs.

Clemons said he didn’t expect that just one finalist would be named and was open to tweaking the law to require more finalists to be announced before a final choice was made. Ultimately, he said, UF’s search committee is responsible for making a final recommendation.

“The only people that had a vote are the ones on the selection committee,” he said.

Ortiz, who is president of the UF chapter of the United Faculty of Florida union, said that there was more transparency when current President Kent Fuchs was hired. Fuchs met with many members of the UF community and worked to build trust, Ortiz said.

Bryn Taylor, co-president of the Graduate Assistants United union, said UF promised students and faculty there would be a transparent process and that hasn’t been the case.

“Nobody understands this choice at all. It is an extremely political pick at a time when UF is making extremely political rules,” Taylor said. "I don’t understand why they would do something like this. His track record in office is awful. He is vehemently anti-abortion, ant-LGBTQ rights and anti-student loan forgiveness."

Sasse's controversial positions

Sasse’s votes and political positions taken as U.S. senator also have other students questioning his selection. A petition has been started on Change.org to protest the choice of Sasse, which had garnered more than 300 signatures as of Friday afternoon.

“This decision is met with indignation from the student body as Ben Sasse has political views that do not align with the values that the students at the University of Florida hold,” the petition reads. “They are discriminatory and non-representative of our student population."

Sasse has opposed abortion, same-sex marriage and the forgiveness of student debt during his time as a senator. After Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, he issued a statement that the ruling was “a disappointment to Nebraskans who understand that marriage brings a wife and husband together so their children can have a mom and dad.”

Sasse spent five years as the president of Midland University in Nebraska, and previously was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. before being elected to the Senate. In August, he spoke out against President Joe Biden's plan to forgive $10,000 in student loans.

"This deeply regressive action — which fails even to acknowledge that most debt is held by folks with graduate degrees — will do nothing to jumpstart the reform higher education desperately needs,” he said.

Allan Frasheri, co-president of Young Democratic Socialists of America, said his group is among those organizing protests against Sasse's hiring outside public meetings with him Monday at Emerson Hall. UF College Democrats, Planned Parenthood Generation Action and the Alachua County Labor Coalition are also part of the effort.

Frasheri said if Sasse is chosen for the role, he's going to have to establish trust among the UF community.  

"The only way he can do that is by showing that he is committed to academic freedom and show that he cares about LGBTQ students, the bodily autonomy of our students, our tuition and the burden that students have to go through," Frasheri said.

Sasse also faces skepticism from the other side of the political aisle, due to his criticism of former president Donald Trump. Sasse was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial.

Trump posted Thursday on his social media platform, Truth Social, that Sasse's expected resignation from the Senate was "great news” but that the “University of Florida will soon regret their decision to hire him as their President.”

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A 'transformational leader'

But other Republicans praised the selection. Rep. Clemons said he was “surprised” but “pleased” with the choice of Sasse, saying that the senator’s political experience would benefit the university

UF needs a president “who can navigate the political waters” in the state and nationally, Clemons said.

Clemons has experience in politics and higher education himself, working as vice president of Santa Fe College's Office for Advancement and as executive director of the Santa Fe Foundation. He said Sasse’s academic background — which includes five degrees, four from Ivy League institutions — should allow him to go toe-to-toe intellectually with university professors.

Clemons said he met Sasse six years ago in Washington, D.C., at a conference for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s education foundation. Clemons said he came away “impressed with (Sasse’s) understanding of higher education in America.”

But Sasse would come into a university that has been dogged with questions of political interference since it was revealed last fall that faculty were barred from testifying in court against policies backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature. UF also fast-tracked the hiring of COVID-19 skeptic Joseph Ladapo as a professor, paving the way for DeSantis to appoint him as Florida's surgeon general.

Rahul Patel, a UF trustee and chair of the UF Presidential Search Committee told The Sun there was no political influence when it came to the committee unanimously choosing Sasse as the sole finalist. Patel said when the committee held listening sessions with faculty, staff, alumni and students, they expressed the desire for someone who would take the university to new heights.

"We would need as our next leader a visionary, an innovator, a big thinker and someone who will differentiate us from others, a leader who is truly transformational. Ben Sasse is our transformational leader," Patel said.  

Laura Rosenbury, dean of UF’s Levin College of Law and a search committee member, said in a prepared statement that Sasse “embodies academic freedom" due to his commitment to engaging with different people. Sasse told the Tampa Bay Times that he is “an academic freedom and free speech guy” and that it was “incredibly important that speech and dissent and debate flourish at an institution of higher learning.”

Ortiz said UF has “been under siege in terms of academic freedom” and faculty members “have made it clear we're not retreating one inch" no matter who is the next president.

“We're going to defend the integrity of the University of Florida regardless of who's on the board of trustees, who's the president and who's the governor," he said.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: UF community, activists react to Sasse being picked for next president