\n<\/p>\n
The Florida Board of Governors unanimously approved Donald Landry on Thursday as interim president of the University of Florida, three months after it rejected Santa Ono for the job in a split vote.<\/p>\n
Landry, who has a lengthy academic r\u00e9sum\u00e9 but has never been a college president, will now be among the top-paid campus leaders in the country, with a base salary of $2\u00a0million and the potential to earn an additional $500,000 in bonuses. But the one-year contract also includes an unusual caveat: Landry will earn $2\u00a0million in severance pay if he is not selected for the permanent job.<\/p>\n
Such a guarantee is an anomaly for an interim president, one expert said.<\/p>\n
Landry\u2019s interview with the Board of Governors Thursday was much less contentious than Ono\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The board grilled Ono, who resigned as president of the University of Michigan to pursue the top job at UF, for almost three hours, mostly over his past support of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which he sought to distance himself from ahead of the interview.<\/p>\n
But on Thursday, it was clear from the outset that board members liked what they saw in Landry.<\/p>\n
Prior to the vote, University of Florida Board of Trustees chair Mori Hosseini ticked off Landry\u2019s accomplishments, noting he is a celebrated physician and academic. Hosseini also highlighted his various roles, such as chair emeritus of the Department of Medicine at Columbia University and president of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, as well as his prior experience on the President\u2019s Council on Bioethics during the George W. Bush administration, among other achievements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are excited to see what UF can accomplish under his leadership,\u201d Hosseini told the board.<\/p>\n
The statewide Board of Governors also seemed excited about the candidate, approving his hire after an interview of around 30 minutes, which included more complimentary remarks from members praising Landry for his leadership in the health field and for filing an amicus brief supporting Florida and Texas officials in a Supreme Court case last year. In that brief, Landry argued against content moderation efforts on social media platforms, which he cast as censoring alternative perspectives and \u201csuppressing dissent on a host of scientific questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Renner, a former Republican lawmaker and current gubernatorial candidate, told Landry, \u201cIn addition to your remarkable academic record, it strikes me as unique that I don\u2019t know anyone else in academia that\u2019s filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in defense of free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
Renner also asked how Landry would defend free speech at UF.<\/p>\n
Landry answered that beyond academic freedom and free speech, there \u201cis a right to teach and a right to learn.\u201d He said he would prevent disruptions to \u201cthe teaching functions of the university\u201d by emphasizing time, place and manner restrictions \u201cas significant as necessary but as small as possible\u201d to balance free speech with UF\u2019s mission. Landry also emphasized the importance of inculcating a culture of civility and the need for UF students and faculty to buy in.<\/p>\n
At another point in the interview, Landry expressed concerns about \u201cideological pressure\u201d to \u201cnot speak to certain topics,\u201d specifically referring to climate change. He argued that climate activism has suppressed the free discussion of science, which Landry said \u201cis not settled in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n
One expert noted that several parts of Landry\u2019s contract stand out as unusual\u2014starting with severance pay if he\u2019s denied the permanent job in a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a guarantee of any type given to an interim,\u201d said Judith Wilde, a research professor at George Mason University who studies presidential searches and contracts.<\/p>\n
The salary itself is also quite substantial, especially for an interim president, she said. Ono was set to make around $3\u00a0million a year, which Wilde suspects the next permanent president will also get.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the way that Santo Ono was treated in Florida, they may have been fearful that it would be difficult to get anybody to come. So they\u2019ve advertised, in a sense, that they are still willing to give a big salary,\u201d Wilde said. \u201cWhoever steps into that job will probably get at least $3\u00a0million.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilde also said that the key duties and responsibilities listed in Landry\u2019s contract are highly prescriptive compared to other contracts, which don\u2019t spell out specifics to the same level of detail. Among other duties, Landry is directed to appoint a permanent provost, fill interim dean positions and other vacant leadership roles, and \u201caccelerate efforts\u201d to encourage \u201cJewish students who feel threatened or harassed at other institutions to apply for admission.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is also instructed to \u201cwork with Florida and Federal [Department of Government Efficiency] to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse\u201d\u2014a provision that has appeared in other presidential contracts. (While Ono\u2019s contract also included that provision, it was less prescriptive over all.) <\/p>\n
Several of the key duties and responsibilities, including certain hiring decisions, require the approval of UF\u2019s board chair, which Wilde said would grant significant power to Hosseini.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn essence, it makes him a co-president,\u201d Wilde said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Florida Board of Governors unanimously approved Donald Landry on Thursday as interim president of the University of Florida, three months after it rejected Santa Ono for the job in a split vote. Landry, who has a lengthy academic r\u00e9sum\u00e9 but has never been a college president, will now be among the top-paid campus leaders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[11542,3649,9091,3548,1059],"class_list":{"0":"post-21120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-finalizes","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-hire","11":"tag-interim","12":"tag-president"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}