Say no to Thrasher
More is at stake than who will lead the institution; this also is about what kind of place Florida State will become.
All indications suggest the trustees are ready to select former House speaker and current state Sen. John Thrasher, one-time chair of the state Republican Party who also chairs Gov. Rick Scott's election campaign committee.
The search committee meets Monday to decide if any of the four finalists do not deserve to be forwarded to the trustees, which meets Tuesday to pick FSU's next president.
The real question before the trustees begin is not with who, but what. That is, what is FSU really?
Is it simply a political prize to be awarded as spoils by victors in political elections? Let's be honest: Who believes Sen. Thrasher would be considered a serious candidate were someone besides Rick Scott the governor?
Does FSU's leader truly not need to embrace scientific principles or empirical evidence?
Will it simply be an athletic powerhouse, content to ride the laurels of football national championships?
Will it just be a slave to the cash flowing from corporate givers?
Or can it ever reach its potential as a top public university, doing important work to benefit the nation and humanity?
Sen. Thrasher has had a long and proud political career.
We mean no disrespect to Sen. Thrasher, nor to diminish his accomplishments. He is simply the wrong person for this job.
We know we may be whistling into the wind, but we urge the trustees to put aside their loyalty to Sen. Thrasher, who doesn't seem to be qualified on the basis of the job description.
We are bothered that as a potential president of a top-tier research institution, Sen. Thrasher could not even bring himself to divorce his political philosophy from the job he covets.
Asked about evolution, Sen. Thrasher talked about his religious beliefs, saying: "I have a great faith in my life that has guided me in my life in a lot of things I believe in." The implication is that science and faith cannot co-exist.
Sen. Thrasher also declined to give a specific answer when asked about the science behind climate change, and then threatened to walk out of the room when two students giggled at his answers, a clear signal of the senator's intolerance for disagreement.
Later, the senator said he was trying to send a message to the students, the message being he is not to be heckled, he said. The message seems to be clear: disagreement is not to be tolerated, let alone embraced, as must occur in academic life.
We have no doubt that should Sen. Thrasher be selected, life will go on at Florida State University. We also have no doubt that it will do so without some current members of the faculty, that some top-flight researchers may look elsewhere for work, as may students seeking a university dedicated to top academic and scientific standards.
There is no question that the selection of Sen. Thrasher would hurt the reputation of the university he professes to love. The job will have been won through the exercise of pure power politics, not a true vetting of the most qualified for the presidency.
We urge the trustees to truly think through the implications of what they are about to do.”
Note to Thrasher: Be nice, students are FSU lifeblood
“I’m not a mathematician. But I believe algebra exists.
Theologians say you can believe in God and believe in evolution.
Yet, in his candidate forum interview for FSU president, Republican State Senator John Thrasher said he couldn’t comment on global warming because he needed to know more about the topic. And he sidestepped a question about evolution saying his faith guides him. Both answers show a distressing ambivalence about science by a man who wants to lead a major research university.
But you know what was really distressing about Thrasher’s interview last week? The imperious way he treated students at his interview.
Early in the proceedings, a couple of students started laughing when Thrasher did not answer the question about global warming. Thrasher immediately bowed up, said “I will not be heckled” and threatened to leave. Later, he responded condescendingly to several student questions.
You can forgive Thrasher’s anti-science response, if only because they were sort of unfair questions. A university president won’t be called upon very often to defend evolution or prove global warming (though his faculty certainly will).
But a president does serve students. And if Thrasher doesn’t respect students, Houston, we have a problem.
Who knows which of the four candidates will be chosen FSU president? Thrasher is the apparent front-runner, despite the outstanding academic background and credentials of the other three candidates.
But a university is a house of learning, not simply a business. Students are a university’s family, not simply its customers. Even when they misbehave or annoy, students have to be respected as the mission of a university: There is no university without the students.
So whoever is chosen as president cannot disdain students. He or she has to have respect – hopefully even affection – for students.
You can’t expect the next FSU president to be an Edward Conradi – but he’s got to be at least a Stanley Marshall.
Edward Conradi served Florida State College for Women from 1909 to 1941 — the longest presidential term in FSU history. Presiding over an all-women’s school at a different time in history, Conradi was beloved. He was famous for stopping students on campus just to talk and for encouraging the women to pursue “the finer things in life.”
Stanley Marshall, who died earlier this year, was president from 1969 to 1977, presiding over an era of student protest. A conservative Republican – like Thrasher – Marshall was not beloved. But he was cordial.
Marshall could exert a heavy hand when he believed student protest threatened violence, such as the night he called out the Leon County Sheriff’s Department to shut down a meeting of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), creating the infamous Night of the Bayonets.
But in verbal confrontations, Marshall was almost always tolerant and polite. Whether protesters were occupying his office in Westcott, marching on his home on West Tennessee Street or massing on Landis Green, Marshall let them talk.
Marshall, a former college professor, understood a university president had a duty to let all voices be heard. Even when they mocked him.
“I know he was politically conservative and we had philosophical disagreements,” said famous student protester ‘Radical’ Jack Lieberman, upon Marshall’s death in June. “But on a personal level, he was always a gentleman. And I appreciated that.”
Certainly, college students can try one’s patience and sometimes require discipline. The repeated missteps of FSU football quarterback Jameis Winston are a case in point. To some, the students protesting Thrasher’s candidacy were annoying and deserved rebuke.
Students have held forums and marches and written angry letters. Several brought protest signs to the Thrasher interview at the Turnbull Center. They are not trying to be polite.
But Thrasher is a 70-year-old man with a long record of political actions. The students are young people just learning to judge the impacts of political actions. He wants to be president, they will be his constituents.
He’s got to be able to take a little heckling — especially simple laughter. If he thinks being a university president means never being ridiculed by students, he’s in for a surprise if hired.
Students shouldn’t run the university. Students shouldn’t pick the president. But they deserved to be on the selection committee, which had three students among its 27 members. The constituency should always be heard.
A Zinger last week snidely wrote: “I’m not sure why there are students on a university president search committee in the first place. Whose idea was that?”
It was the idea of fairness.
It was the idea of logic.
It was the idea of why universities exist.
They exist to be marketplaces of ideas and homes to many voices – from students to faculty to administrators.
If you’re not willing to hear those voices, you shouldn’t be president”
Power, influence and FSU
“We’ve been watching this discussion of Florida State University’s presidency as a clash of politics and academia, but maybe it’s really a physics thing.
Never mind John Thrasher’s political power or academic credentials. Never mind those highbrow elitists who think college presidents ought to have “Ph.D.” after their names.
Remember the example of what happens when an irresistible force meets and immovable object? Take your pick which is which – Thrasher as an unstoppable force tilting at a solid ivory tower, or the education establishment as the juggernaut rolling over the unyielding object.
The St. Augustine state senator widely considered to have had a lock on the FSU presidency is not accustomed to hearing “no.” As a House member, Thrasher was speaker. As a senator, he rules the Rules Committee, which controls oxygen in the Senate chamber. He’s not just a Republican insider, he chaired the party, is a certified friend of Jeb Bush and heads Gov. Rick Scott’s re-election campaign.
The students and faculty members are not accustomed to being abruptly dismissed, either. They have shown up at meetings of the presidential search committee, and at Thrasher’s on-campus appearances, to protest that a bachelor’s degree and a law degree – even if they’re both from FSU – are not presidential timber.
Some alumni have even started a Facebook petition, threatening to withhold contributions if Thrasher gets the job. The students and faculty have soldiered on, although they believe the fix was in the day Eric Barron decamped for Penn State.
The search committee initially wanted to interview only Thrasher. There are now three other finalists, but many faculty and students remain convinced he could still get hired if, during his interview, he had jumped up on the table and shouted something quarterbacks find witty.
The protestors urged the committee to reconstitute itself, with one-third student membership, one-third faculty and one-third “outside” interests. However sincere their motives, the ill-fated motion showed a fairly naïve notion of how this thing works.
In their world, the contemplative life, the pursuit of academic excellence, scientific inquiry and learning itself are what matters. In Thrasher’s milieu, it’s about winning. Athough they’d never be so crass as to say it, the governor and legislators are the management of the State University System, faculty and staff are the employees and students are the customers.
To survive, every business must listen to its employees and customers, but not to the extent of giving up control of production.
In the Legislature, Thrasher’s party controls about 60 percent of the seats. That does not mean the Democrats get to pass 40 percent of the bills. It means the Republicans get to do whatever they want, which may or may not coincide with things the minority party supports.
The governor whose re-election campaign Thrasher is chairing is the man who championed $10,000 degrees at state colleges. He once said we don’t need to keep producing anthropologists, when the community colleges and universities could be preparing students to do something besides teaching what they just learned.
Get ‘em out, get ‘em jobs, and do it as economically as possible – that’s the Republican approach to education. It’s all right to have a couple oboes, some poetry and busts of funny-looking philosophers lying around, for those who like that sort of stuff, but you don’t let them slow down the assembly line.
Thrasher obviously has his supporters on campus and, if he gets the job, his detractors will get over it. He has already said he wants to improve faculty salaries – it’s hard to stay mad at a guy who can get the Legislature to do that – and even the most vociferous of his student critics will move on in a few years.
We’ve had politicians as university presidents before. Two of them, T.K. Wetherell and Sandy D’Alemberte, were at FSU. Two others, Frank Brogan at FAU and Betty Castor at USF, were elected education commissioners. John Delaney at North Florida was a former Jacksonville mayor.
All had more academic credentials than Thrasher, as protestors have frequently pointed out, but that’s not why they got the jobs. Everyone competing with them for those university presidencies had impressive sheepskins, too.
They won because, like Thrasher, they had the power and persuasiveness to win over a majority of the people making the decisions.
“Education is not a commodity” says the banner adopted by some of the student activists. Perhaps not on campus, but once you venture beyond Westcott Gate….”
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