Yeah you’re right maybe only people aligned with UF care. My point is that they shouldn’t have (basically) announced him if they didn’t know it was going thru with approval. it’s not like this was a last minute change of heart by a few people. I think the vote was 10-6 against. He shouldn’t have been announced as “the guy” if this was going to happen.
He most certainly would have been a pariah in Florida. As I said, the trustees tried to railroad this guy through the approval process, and the Board of Governors said No. thank goodness.
Just for context, I believe that the board of governors has never once in denied a UF presidential choice. They have mostly acted a rubber stamp approving the choice of the more direct stakeholders. This is new territory where this group acts as the final stage of a hiring committee.
A pariah is someone outcast by an entire society. Ono clearly had the backing of many people associated with the University of Florida. He was not liked by some people in Tallahassee who believe they better know how to run UF than the people in Gainesville. Ironically, this board of trustees who you believe to be “railroading” this guy into the position was mostly appointed by DeSantis himself. I don’t care about this left/right stuff. It’s a tiny part of the job of the UF president. My concern is about interests. There are those that believe we need a centralized government committee to make decisions for all local matters. I am not among this group and believe the more that Tallahassee runs the affairs of Gainesville the less functional these places will be. You know, skink, USF in Tampa also needs a new president and wasn’t even permitted to search because UF was simultaneously searching. Now that UF has been knocked back to square one, USF is probably back to square zero. Leaving both of these schools leaderless for years is not likely to be a positive development for them.
Still glad Jojo isn’t our new pres. Dude’s background, and subsequent waffling when it came to addressing it says a lot about the bullet we dodged. DeSantis board did their jobs. Now I’m wondering about the backgrounds of all these “trustees” who had him as the sole candidate for the job.
Skink, I linked to the bios of the board of trustees above. Here it is again. They are mostly business people from around the state. Current Trustees - Board of Trustees - University of FloridaCurrent Trustees - Board of Trustees - University of Florida But they aren’t even the ones that produced Ono. That was the UF search committee that is made up of people more closely related to UF. Announcement of University of Florida Presidential Search CommitteeAnnouncement of University of Florida Presidential Search Committee News | University of Florida The ultimate question isn’t about left or right, as these are always relative terms. It is about who decides. When you see the UF search committee and UF board of trustees disagree with the state board of governors, you assume the UF people must be wrong. But why? Because you believe universities are left leaning? The state government is clearly not without partisan leanings either. At this point, the state is controlling this process to such a degree that it is likely that from now on university presidents will be political appointees. Perhaps this pleases you in this moment, because you share the politics of the state, but this agreement is just arbitrary. Today many other people do not share their worldview, and it is certain that in the future, neither will you. Will you still desire political control of UF’s hiring when the state government is dominated by Democrats? If not, then you don’t truly think the government should decide.
There was a Board of Governors member on that search committee. Either He didn't do his job of taking the pulse of the Board of Governors and advising the Committee that they had selected a candidate that would not pass muster, or the committee ignored him. If so, he should have made sure the Chairman of the BOT was aware. I somehow doubt Hosseini would have pushed a candidate he knew would fail and leave him with egg on his face. It seems to me that this committee was committed to hiring a true academic from what they perceived to be a "better" University than UF almost as a knee -jerk reaction away from the last President. If true, they did a great disservice to the institution.
I am disappointed that he was not confirmed(?). I am disappointed with his expressed views and the idea of a Hamas encampment. Really ugly. But I believe he made some mistakes and learned. Better he reform before than during his would-have-been time at UF.
Motives of people often surprise me. Things like this, sometimes they already know the outcome before they do it
