It’s been a rough month for Ron DeSantis’ right-wing rebranding of Florida’s higher education. Embarrassments at two prominent universities where the Republican governor is waging a culture war on “woke” have forced his administration to do some housecleaning.
Sarasota’s New College, a once-liberal arts school that fell victim to a “hostile takeover” by well-paid, ultraconservative allies of DeSantis, was exposed by the city’s Herald-Tribune for dumping thousands of library books, including a cleanup of its gender and diversity center.
Democratic politicians compared it to Nazi-era book burnings and a foretaste of the extremist Project 2025 agenda, which is linked to former Republican President Donald Trump’s campaign to reclaim the White House in November.
“These messages are coming from DeSantis’ appointed and approved leaders, and the governor should just admit that he wants to be the dictator that Trump wants to be, because that is what he is,” said Democratic Congresswoman Yvonne Hayes Hinson.
“This shameful book dump is just the latest chapter in this Republican regime’s war on books and ideas. How insecure do you have to be to ban books on gender and women’s studies. They’re just plain weird.”
Richard Corcoran, the university’s president and an outspoken supporter of DeSantis, admitted that “the sight of thousands of books in a Dumpster is far from ideal.”
He attempted to downplay the purge as a “routine removal” of old or damaged books, blamed the media for “misreading the situation” and insisted that dumped books on gender and diversity were not part of the university library anyway.
“It is important to understand that the removal of materials is a necessary process in libraries, ensuring that our collection remains relevant, up-to-date and in good condition for use by our community,” he said in a statement.
He acknowledged his “frustration and concern” over the incident and praised New College’s “dedicated library staff.” He then placed the dean of the library, Shannon Hausinger, on indefinite leave.
However, Corcoran’s efforts at damage control were quickly undermined by several people close to DeSantis.
Christopher Rufo, a far-right education activist and New College trustee appointed by DeSantis, tweeted: “We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re throwing out the trash.”
Bryan Griffin, the governor’s communications director, also appeared to contradict Corcoran’s message, tweeting that gender studies books had been dumped because they were considered propaganda.
“We are taking back higher education in Florida from the bigots,” he told Florida’s Voice, a right-wing online outlet.
Across the state, in Gainesville, an equally intriguing scandal is unfolding at the University of Florida (UF), where journalists from the student newspaper Independent Florida Alligator exposed the gluttony of Ben Sasse, the far-right Republican former senator from Nebraska. Sasse stepped down as president of the University of Florida in July after a turbulent 17-month tenure.
Sasse was DeSantis’ personal choice and ultimately the only finalist for the position in 2022 after the governor signed a law keeping the selection process secret.
His “provocative” appointment was greeted by student protests at the time. He also quickly adopted DeSantis’ “anti-woke” agenda, including dismantling the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion program and laying off staff.
Now the DeSantis administration is turning on its former campus champion, following revelations from student journalists.
They found that Sasse spent $17.3 million in his first year as president, three times as much as his predecessor, and invested millions in secret consulting gigs and lucrative jobs for his former congressional aides and Republican cronies, some of them long-distance.
DeSantis’ office said it was working with UF leadership to investigate Sasse’s “excessive spending” of university funds.
“[We] “We take sovereign wealth management very seriously,” Griffin told the Alligator.
Sasse denied any improper spending in a social media post that was longer than the original story, but students weren’t done with their former leader. A second Alligator exclusive claimed Sasse’s abrupt and unexpected resignation, which he insisted was due to his wife’s poor health, following a feud with another DeSantis appointee, Morteza Hosseini, chair of the board of trustees.
The working relationship between Sasse and Hosseini became untenable due to frequent clashes, the article said, citing several anonymous UF administrators and donors. A university spokesperson called the accusation “completely unfounded.”
“It’s important that people know how their tax dollars are being spent, not just by the president’s office, but by the entire university,” said Garrett Shanley, a fourth-year journalism student at UF who wrote the original story about Sasse.
He told the Guardian that the Alligator team produced the articles despite university officials blocking communications and delaying requests for public records, and with the help of knowledgeable sources eager to shed light on Sasse’s secret spending.
He said that now that Sasse is gone, students and staff are closely watching what influence DeSantis’s appointments would have on the nomination of his successor.
“People are concerned about the upcoming presidential search and what might happen there,” he said. “We know that the Board of Supervisors may have a larger role in the presidency than we previously thought, and it’s clearly a politically contentious role.”
Hinson, whose Gainesville school district also includes the University of Florida campus, said she had little confidence the state would investigate Sasse’s tenure.
“It’s the wolf guarding the hen house,” she said. “The Republican Party likes to claim that they’re financially responsible, but this is Marie Antoinette-style spending and it’s just horrible. Republicans in Florida only care about the rules if they don’t apply to them.
“They lined their pockets without any concern for the students, the staff or the professors. Morale is low. Imagine the programs we could have brought here with the kind of money he just literally threw at his buddies. We could have done some amazing things.”
