Students and faculty at the University of Florida garnered national attention when 300 protesters took over a campus auditorium where officials were introducing Sen.
Ben Sasse
(R-NE) as the sole finalist to be the
next president of the school
. The demonstrators marched inside the academic theater as Sasse was set to speak, chanting, “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Ben Sasse has got to go.” They banged their fists on windows, walls, and furniture. The protest grew so disruptive that audience members struggled to hear Sasse.
Students weren’t alone in their protest. The faculty Senate
passed
a no-confidence resolution against Sasse and the trustees who selected him. The vote was 72-16.
Sasse’s only fault, the only reason so many faculty and students found him objectionable, is that he’s a conservative.
“I just think that his voting history, anti-Affordable Care Act, anti-LGBTQ, climate denial in the state of Florida is kind of ridiculous,” student Jade Jackson, 20, a public health major, told a local
public broadcasting news station.
“He doesn’t support the values of students or even just students in general at UF.”
This is the problem with American higher education in a nutshell. Activists demand ideological purity on campus. Both students and faculty members willingly conform and bully everyone else around them into doing the same. Hence, why so many at the University of Florida are frustrated that the school would dare hire someone with a record that does not comport with their worldview.
The faculty Senate couched its no-confidence resolution behind Sasse’s lack of experience. They said they don’t want someone who will have to “learn on the job.” But that’s just posturing. Sasse is an accomplished academic and higher education leader. He trained at Harvard University, Oxford University, and Yale University, earning a Ph.D. in history. He served as the president of Midland Lutheran College (now Midland University), where he turned around the nearly bankrupt school thanks to prodigious fundraising. Fundraising, glad-handing, and developing political connections are some of the most important skills of any university president.
The resistance to Sasse has nothing to do with his qualifications. Rather, it stems from his refusal to conform to the cancel culture that now dominates the University of Florida and most other campuses.
What Sasse understands that many at the University of Florida don’t is that the purpose of a university or college education is to engage the intellect and stretch the mind to prepare young adults to face future challenges. Freedom of expression provides the framework for both scholars and students to pursue the truth. When universities and colleges encourage intellectual rigor and diverse viewpoints, they create an academic community that recognizes good ideas and discards superficial nonsense.
Most American colleges and universities have abandoned such high-minded aspirations in favor of safe spaces and cancel culture. Safe spaces protect students from words and ideas they find offensive. Heaven forbid they have to engage with someone who doesn’t see the world in exactly the same liberal way.
Cancel culture
has affected higher education like a malignant tumor inside a patient. It is aggressive and unrelenting. If someone (anyone) says something deemed unacceptable, the community cancels them. There is no opportunity for due process or any form of defense.
Students and faculty must remain free to criticize views expressed on campus in classrooms and by invited speakers. But schools must not hinder the freedom of others to express views they despise.
Higher education should encourage students to think, not make them feel comfortable and shield them from ideas they find objectionable. Without free speech, the academic world will cease to fulfill a vital role in society.
Colleges and universities train future leaders and intellectuals. If they learn now that the proper response to unpopular views is to silence them, the polarization that affects both higher education and national affairs will continue. This will hinder American society from flourishing in the 21st century.
Sasse might not fit the ideological dreams of students and faculty, but he does understand the importance of intellectual rigor and free speech. The University of Florida would benefit greatly from his leadership.
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Donavan Wilson is a writer based in Washington, D.C. You can follow him on
Twitter.
