UF’s search for whoever pleases Ron DeSantis

Not to say that football isn’t more important than whatever else might be happening in Gainesville. I’m not that naive.

Still, the process that narrowed the list of applicants for the University of Florida presidency to a single politician seemed downright lethargic compared to the school’s efforts to find a new head football coach last fall.

This observation comes with a hefty caveat, given that we ordinary peons are not privy to details of the presidential search. That’s secret stuff, thanks to legislation Gov. DeSantis signed in March that bars disclosing “any personal identifying information” of applicants seeking the presidency of state colleges or universities.

However, the law does require a search committee to divulge the names and particulars of finalists for the job at least 21 days before the new president is chosen. Except the UF panel concocted a sneaky way around the requirement.

On Oct. 6, the search committee disclosed its finalists. Or rather finalist. Just one. That would be Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse and only Ben Sasse.

Lest the public suspect that the secretive process had been fixed, the committee insisted that the search “was exhaustive.” UF’s exhaustive nationwide search for the best available academic leader just happened to come up with the very same fellow preferred by the governor. Small world.

“Ultimately, the Search Committee focused its attention on a dozen highly qualified diverse candidates.” Of those, the committee stated that nine were sitting presidents at major research universities.

Yet none of those nine major university presidents made the final cut. Apparently, the very conservative senator was that much better than the rest of those slackers. Which means the identities of the other candidates will remain a state secret. Which also means that the rest of us won’t be able to compare the losers’ resumes to the credentials of the committee’s choice.

Apparently, the search committee was utterly dazzled by Sasse, who’s two years into his second term in the U.S. Senate (representing a state with 1.1 million fewer residents than Miami-Dade County).

His previous career as an academic included a teaching gig at the University of Texas followed by a five-year stint as president of Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska. Midland has an enrollment of 1,700 students, about the same as Hollywood Hills High School.

U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Colleges” ratings ranks Midland (affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church) somewhere between 127th and 166th among “regional Midwest universities.” Which suggests Midland University is a middling institution compared to the University of Florida, with 53,000 students, ranked 29th among 443 “national universities” and 7th among strictly public universities.

The UF search committee must have worried that Sen. Sasse’s qualifications might seem similarly puny compared to those of the 11 other don’t-call-them-finalists. Perhaps the committee was wowed by the book Sasse published in 2018, “Them: Why We Hate Each Other — and How to Heal.” The New York Times described “Them” as “a generic, forgettable work: packed with big-think buzzwords rehashing old arguments, clichés and metaphors passing for analysis, thought-leader-ese masquerading as vision.”

Can’t wait for the sequel. Compared to UF’s opaque presidential hunt, the university’s talent search for a new football coach was conducted in the sunshine. The press and social media were abuzz with debate on which of the final eight would restore Florida’s gridiron glory. Should it be the guy from Penn State or Cincinnati or Ole Miss?

Finally, University of Louisiana Coach Billy Napier was picked to be the highest paid public employee in Florida ($7.1 million a year, two luxury cars and a stadium suite).

Of course, Napier’s hiring was based on objective criteria. He had won 10 games in each of the previous three years at Louisiana.

UF’s presidential search was based on even simpler data: Pick whoever DeSantis wants.

DeSantis had already bullied the university into circumventing the usual hiring procedure to create a tenured med school professorship for his anti-vaxxer surgeon general, Joseph Ladato.

Just last week, Lapapo was embarrassing his med school colleagues on national TV, exaggerating the health risks associated with COVID vaccines. He cited an “analysis” that didn’t identify the author, was unpublished, wasn’t peered reviewed and which was quickly debunked by actual medical experts.

To be fair, DeSantis’ pick for university president seems considerably less whacky than his surgeon general. But Sasse’s anti-abortion views and his previous opposition to gay marriage sparked a disruptive protest last week during his first official visit to the UF campus, with enough angry students to just about match Midland’s enrollment.

Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Nebraska anymore.