Florida’s secretive new university presidential search law is a colossal failure, and a greater insult to the public than expected.
First at Florida International University and now at the University of Florida, search committees identified only one finalist. They said no top candidates were willing to be publicly identified except as a lone finalist.
The law passed in this year’s legislative session (SB 520) provides for only disclosing a “final group of applicants” — plural — but that didn’t anticipate the deviousness of academia. Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, author of this gross erosion of government in the sunshine, insists he didn’t mean for only one finalist.
