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The short answer is that the University of Florida, and American Universities in general, are not accountable to YOU OR ME, but rather a handful of bureaucrats

The short answer is that the University of Florida, and American Universities in general, are not accountable to YOU OR ME, but rather a handful of bureaucrats in the federal government, and in this case specifically the NIH, which air drops the most cash on the institution. Funding for NIH comes primarily from annual Labor, HHS, and Education (LHHS) Appropriations Acts, with an additional smaller amount for the Superfund Research Program from the Interior/Environment Appropriations Act.6 Those two bills provide NIH discretionary budget authority. The NIH then presumably has the US Federal Reserve electronically wire it a few billion $ from an internal account they electronically added a few zeros to beforehand. > UF received about $602 million in research funding from the federal government, including a record $250 million from the National Institutes of Health, the university’s largest research funding source. https://news.ufl.edu/2021/08/research-awards-/ https://news.ufl.edu/2021/08/research-awards-/

duxup 5y ago
Are they really accountable to those folks in the sense that they're running the universities / telling people they can't testify like this law? I think there is a big difference.
jonathanwallace 5y ago
The second half of this claim is a demonstrably weak generalization as to the source of power. The counter example is Georgia, where the Board of Regents is beholden to the politics of the Governor. See recently the fiasco with the pandemic i.e., mandated vaccines and mandated masks. Proof? The companies run by the members of the Board of Regents implemented different policies than the members themselves voted for the universities in the state of Georgia.
Frondo 5y ago
I would have said that public universities in the US are accountable to their boards of regents far moreso than the sinister "bureaucrats in the federal government." I didn't think much about this until the recent news that the University System of Georgia was effectively ending tenure for its professors, and the drivers of that policy were the USG Board of Regents. > To many professors, the most alarming proposal is that a faculty member may not only be separated from the university for clear cause, but also reasons “other than for cause," pursuant to other board policies. “Such other policies shall not be governed by or subject to the following policies on Grounds for Removal and Procedures for Dismissal,” the proposed change also says. From: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/04/tenure-under-threat-georgia https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/04/tenure-under-... So I looked up the USG Board of Regents: https://www.usg.edu/regents/members https://www.usg.edu/regents/members And it turns out that most of them are CEOs or work in finance -- the people who represent "capital" more than any others I can think of. For these people to decide that it should be easier to fire "tenured" professors makes sense to me, in that these are the people who would benefit most from being able to silence, for example, expert witnesses, far more than federal bureaucrats meddling in academic freedom.

duxup 5y ago

Are they really accountable to those folks in the sense that they're running the universities / telling people they can't testify like this law? I think there is a big difference.

jonathanwallace 5y ago

The second half of this claim is a demonstrably weak generalization as to the source of power. The counter example is Georgia, where the Board of Regents is beholden to the politics of the Governor. See recently the fiasco with the pandemic i.e., mandated vaccines and mandated masks. Proof? The companies run by the members of the Board of Regents implemented different policies than the members themselves voted for the universities in the state of Georgia.

Frondo 5y ago

I would have said that public universities in the US are accountable to their boards of regents far moreso than the sinister "bureaucrats in the federal government." I didn't think much about this until the recent news that the University System of Georgia was effectively ending tenure for its professors, and the drivers of that policy were the USG Board of Regents. > To many professors, the most alarming proposal is that a faculty member may not only be separated from the university for clear cause, but also reasons “other than for cause," pursuant to other board policies. “Such other policies shall not be governed by or subject to the following policies on Grounds for Removal and Procedures for Dismissal,” the proposed change also says. From: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/04/tenure-under-threat-georgia https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/04/tenure-under-... So I looked up the USG Board of Regents: https://www.usg.edu/regents/members https://www.usg.edu/regents/members And it turns out that most of them are CEOs or work in finance -- the people who represent "capital" more than any others I can think of. For these people to decide that it should be easier to fire "tenured" professors makes sense to me, in that these are the people who would benefit most from being able to silence, for example, expert witnesses, far more than federal bureaucrats meddling in academic freedom.