Former Sen. Ben Sasse Takes Office as UF President and now announces he is retiring

So I guess free speech is out of fashion now, it’s now about what values rule?

 

As a life long smoker I am not 100% convinced that nicotine is all that addictive. I've been on the patch and other quit smoking aids and really felt no effect. At times I spent days in the hospital and felt no urge to smoke. I can lay around the house all day and have no urge to smoke. It is not like I have a physical addiction it is more like a mental addiction. Certain things trigger my brain to think, time for a cigarette. Driving, working on something, after eating and a few other things. I used to crave a cigarette when I was on the computer but when my wife had her open heart surgery I quit smoking in the house and no longer crave a smoke when on the computer......Like I said I am not so sure it is as much an addiction to nicotine as a psychological addiction.

 

Seems to me you either stand for free speech or “safe” speech. The problem with these universities is they jump back and forth based upon the issue.

I don’t know that these presidents should be fired. They were probably telling the truth. The problem is the execution of their policies.

I suspect the result will not be more but equal free speech but more censored speech on all sides.

 

The application of free speech is clearly “context dependent”.

 

For Sasse too it seems. He should be fixing football at his job not writing columns about his Alma mater.

 

Maybe he should schedule Harvard & Yale.

 

What team am I on? If the ruling class wants to be overtly reactionary instead of outwardly woke but still reactionary in spirit that’s not much of a different outcome. It’s simply aesthetics. The liberal colleges thing is tired as hell. Harvard is still capable of producing self important dipshits like sasse.

 

I'll take things that addicts say for $1230*.

* thanks Biden

 

Yeah, I'll pass on the musings from the empty suit who got his current job merely because he's a politician from the "right" party.

 

Here's the thing, Sasse isn't entirely wrong. There are a lot of things in there I agree with (obviously not the more polished version of "wokeness is a religion" bullshit). But Sasse is a spineless coward who has been MIA in the fight for academic freedom and free speech in Florida. He finally speaks up on this sort of issue, yet he says not a damn thing about what's happening in Florida.

It's easy to join in the Harvard-MIT-Penn pile on. It's a whole lot harder to tell off the people who fund your university. Sasse didn't have the courage to take a stand for his principles when it risked him losing something. That is why I have zero respect for his contributions to this conversation. I believe strongly in the values Sasse speaks of near the end of the essay, but those are the very things we're fighting to protect in Florida. Where the hell is Sasse?

 

You interested in disputing any of this, @OklahomaGator?

 

I agree that I’d prefer him to speak out on all side of free speech, but you have significant scorn for his lack of commentary from one angle and give him muted praise on the other. However I don’t see you throwing barbs at all of the university presidents who are conveniently silent from the other angle.

My take from the article wasn’t so much an advocacy for free speech, but more the equal application of it and calling out that the current heterodoxy has become so entrenched administrators can’t even differentiate basic right from wrong because they are so entangled trying to figure out where it fits on the new ideological construct.

 

Because I live in Florida and am directly involved in the fight he's sitting out, a fight he claimed to care deeply about in this editorial. I have significant scorn for a man whose "principles" only show up when it's convenient. He's an empty suit.

What right from wrong can they not differentiate? Claudine Gay explicitly said that she personally finds calls for genocide of Jews abhorrent. And the "ideological construct" ranting mostly comes from ignorance. Sasse's description of intersectionality was not remotely accurate.
The intersectionality wars

 

First, just so I understand, what things in FL do you want him to talk about. From my admittedly limited understanding people like Desantis are blowing up mostly non existent issues, but in a very limited extent they aren’t wrong. Bringing up topics of sexuality in elementary school really isn’t necessary and having school books describing gay sex acts is a bit over the top, nonetheless they are blowing these issues completely out of proportion - and it creates a hostile environment where people are always having to watch what they say, which ironically is the same issue experienced at universities ham handed implication of “woke” ideology.

Sasse is a politician as all university adminstrators are. He was chosen for a reason. He isn’t going to dive on his sword to speak out against something he personally probably agrees with but perhaps may have quibbles in it’s overstated execution.

 

Three obvious and easy examples: Stop WOKE Act, order to deactivate SJP chapters (including at UF), and Senate Bill 266. All three are attacks on free speech in higher education. Two of the three attack academic freedom.

These government actions are worse than anything Sasse rants about in his article. Yet, he couldn't find any space to make mention of these issues. I wonder why. (I actually don't wonder why. I know exactly why.)

 

The op-ed by Sasse was spot on IMO. Kudos.

 

No way. We need to schedule some games we can win.

 

if only his actions supported his writings

 

I can quit whenever I want, I simply chose not to quit.

 

quitting is easy, I've done it dozens of times