Ron Disantis’ Culture War On Books Is Mired In Scandal

It has been a rough month for Ron DeSantis’s rightwing rebranding of higher education in Florida. Embarrassments at two high-profile universities where the Republican governor has been waging his culture war against “woke” have forced his administration into something of a cleanup.

Sarasota’s New College, the once liberal arts school subjected to a “hostile takeover” by well-rewarded, ultra-conservative DeSantis allies, was exposed by the city’s Herald-Tribune for dumping thousands of library books, including a clear-out of its gender and diversity center.

Democratic politicians likened it to Nazi-era book burning, and a preview of the extremist Project 2025 agenda linked to the Republican former president Donald Trump’s campaign to win back the White House in November.

“These messages are coming from DeSantis’s appointed and approved leaders, and the governor should just go ahead and admit he wants to be the dictator that Trump wants to be, because that’s what this is,” said the Democratic state 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 a vocal DeSantis supporter, conceded “the optics of seeing thousands of books in a dumpster are far from ideal”.

He tried to downplay the purge as a “routine weeding out” of old or damaged books, blamed the media for “misconstruing the situation”, and insisted dumped books about gender and diversity were not part of the college’s library anyway.

“It is important to understand that the disposition of materials is a necessary process in libraries, and ensures that our collection remains relevant, up-to-date, and in good condition for our community’s use,” he said in a statement.

Acknowledging “frustration and concern” over the incident, he praised New College’s “dedicated library staff”, then placed the dean of the library, Shannon Hausinger, on indefinite leave.

Corcoran’s damage limitation efforts, however, were quickly undercut by several in DeSantis’s inner circle.

Christopher Rufo, a far-right education activist and New College board member appointed by DeSantis, tweeted: “We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re throwing out the trash.”

The governor’s communications director, Bryan Griffin, also appeared to contradict Corcoran’s messaging, tweeting that gender studies books were dumped because they were considered propaganda.

“We’re reclaiming higher education in Florida from the zealots,” he told Florida’s Voice, a rightwing online outlet.

Across the state in Gainesville, an equally intriguing scandal is playing out at the University of Florida (UF), where journalists on the student newspaper the Independent Florida Alligator exposed the free-spending habits of Ben Sasse, the Republican hard-right former Nebraska senator who resigned in July as UF president following a turbulent 17-month tenure.

Sasse was DeSantis’s hand-picked choice, and ultimately the only finalist for the job in 2022 after the governor signed a law throwing a blanket of secrecy over the selection process.

His “provocative” appointment was greeted by student protests at the time. He also quickly adopted the DeSantis “anti-woke” agenda including abolishing the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion program and firing staff.

Now, the DeSantis administration has turned on its former campus champion following revelations by the student journalists.

They found that Sasse blew through $17.3m in his first year of office, three times more than his predecessor, and channeled millions into secret consulting contracts and lucrative jobs for his former congressional staff and Republican cronies, some of the positions remote.

DeSantis’s office said it was investigating Sasse’s “exorbitant spending” of university money in partnership with UF leadership.

“[We] take the stewardship of state funds very seriously,” Griffin told the Alligator.

Sasse denied any inappropriate spending in a social media post longer than the original story about it, but the students were not yet done with their former leader. A second Alligator exclusive claimed Sasse’s abrupt and unexpected resignation, which he insisted was related to the ill health of his wife, followed a falling out with another DeSantis appointee, Morteza Hosseini, chair of the board of trustees.

The working relationship between Sasse and Hosseini became untenable through frequent clashes, the article said, citing multiple anonymous UF administrators and donors. A university spokesperson called the allegation “completely unfounded”.

“It’s important for people to know how their tax dollars are being spent, not just the president’s office but across the entire university,” said Garrett Shanley, a fourth-year journalism major at UF who wrote the original Sasse story.

He told the Guardian that the Alligator team produced its articles despite university officials shutting down communication and stalling public records requests, and with the assistance of knowledgable inside sources keen to shine a light on Sasse’s secretive spending.

He said with Sasse gone, students and staff were watching to see what influence DeSantis’s appointees to the board might have on the appointment of his successor.

“People are concerned about the forthcoming presidential search and what may happen there,” he said. “We know the board of trustees might have a bigger hand in the presidency than we previously thought, and it’s obviously a politically contentious role.”

Hinson, whose Gainesville district includes the UF campus, said she had little faith in any state investigation of Sasse’s tenure.

“It’s the wolf guarding the henhouse,” she said. “The Republican party loves to claim fiscal responsibility but this is a Marie Antoinette style of spending and it’s just appalling. Florida Republicans only care about the rules when they don’t apply to them.

“They just lined their pockets without any care for the students, staff or professors. Morale is down. Imagine the programs we could have brought here with the kind of money he has just literally thrown to his cronies. We could have done some wonderful things.”