UF Presidential Finalist - Ben Sasse

UF presidential hopeful, football fan Ben Sasse once made dig at Gators

 

Whoopi, is that you??

“I’m hoping Dr. Jill becomes the surgeon general, his wife. Joe Biden’s wife. She would never do it, but, yeah, she’s a hell of a doctor. She’s an amazing doctor,” proclaimed actress and loony co-host of The View Whoopi Goldberg last March.”

 

What a hoot! That dog won’t hunt.

 

Whelp...I guess the masses have spoken. A fairly humane interaction so far. Thank God it wasn't midway through game day cocktailing hour:

"Jane, you ignorant slut!"

Let's hope this guy does his job and does it well. We are at an interesting place in rankings for this great university. I've never known what political affiliations Presidents held in the past. I guess this guys political leanings are somewhat obvious because he's a Senator. But I hope he caters equally to the diverse sea of folks that make this university so great.

I think the Gator vision has already been established, he's really just taking the baton and moving the University upward and onward from here.

Hopefully he can muster up some real folding money for the University ASAP. Maintaining our current academic reputation is actually falling behind, we need to keep the momentum going. Onward and upward.

"To infinity and beyond!"

Go Gators.

 

The irony of the dig is that Osborne's Nebraska Cornhuskers were surely the best team money (or bent/broken rules) could buy.

I am sure he was aware of that.

 

... or Salt Lake City.

 

Thank you and perhaps I missed some context in Fred's post. The notion that EDD's are not doctoral degrees, though, is nonsense.

 

I actually wasn’t sure which direction Davis was taking that. When he said “good friends over here” if he meant this board then I’m inclined to agree with him

 

I find a lot of people don't know the history of that degree in general, nor that a physician's degree is a bachelors-level credential still in much of the world, such as the UK. It's just a quirk we adopted the Scottish-system early on and granted a flavor of doctorate.

I generally find MDs to be very respectful of PhDs and vice versa. Very different jobs and training, and both necessary in any educated society. It's more the laity that seem all too eager to demonstrate how little they understand of any of this. Basically, praxis ain't epistemology and vice versa. If you want to assiduously discover new knowledge you think to be closer to the truth than previously believed, you need one. If you want to apply that as a skill to heal, you need the other.

And while there probably does need to be a serious look at the EdD credential because they are all over the place in rigor from program to program, unfortunately all this bad faith character assassination of Jill Biden has pretty much guaranteed that serious look will be another 10 years down the road. Some EdDs create dissertations as good as anyone's, and I see some that get out of a program writing little more than a masters-level research proposal as the culmination of that degree. That's a massive problem in my opinion, but thanks to everyone who used it as an excuse to crap on Jill Biden, not really giving a damn about the inside baseball because that wasn't actually the point (her dissertation is fine btw), nobody is touching that discussion with a 10-foot poll anytime soon.

 

Kent Fuchs is a computer engineer by trade (like me), so it probably took him a year to get used to talking to people.

 

As a UF grad, an academic (at another university), and someone who has generally liked Sasse, I have a weird combo of mixed feelings on his selection to be UF president. Sasse is exceptionally smart and has written some really thoughtful things on American politics and life. I could easily see him being someone that would be a really good public face for the university, which is important. What I worry about, however, is that (1) running one of the top public research universities in the country is an entirely different animal than being president of a private university with 1500 students and (2) Sasse has had a habit of saying all of the right things, but not necessarily backing them up with action. This is a critical juncture for UF and it needs a president that is going to be willing to stand up for the university when pushback comes from the Board of Regents or the legislature. I hope that Sasse could be that guy, but I'm not so sure. Simultaneously navigating the uniqueness of Florida politics and learning to run a research university on the fly is a tall order.

 

I can’t offer much to this conversation, but I do remember having a political science professor by the name of Ernest Bartley in 1966 and I loved his classes because on Monday morning we spent the first 10 minutes or so going over the Gator football game from Saturday. But as much as he loved the Gators it was obvious he also loved his Cornhuskers.
He was from Nebraska and did just fine at UF.

 

Well, people that think k they are intelligent can be a problem.

 

Amen Hoyt

 

With all the secrecy around selecting a Univ. President now, how can we be certain he was the best candidate

 

HA! Nebraska is losing to Rutgers right now 10-0. Maybe they need to spend more $$$$

 

Excellent post - thanks Sulla. To your point about EdDs being differently rigorous, Columbia University offers only an EdD in my discipline, not a PhD. And it's a killer program. My wife earned her Master's there and had many friends in the EdD program. They were busting their tails and very few finished in four years.

 

@ETGator-Please flush some of these posts.

 

I had already edited my post.

 

Stop uzing big werds. We lehmans don’t understand whatchatalkinboutwillis.