The vicious GOP persecution of almost-but-never-was UF President Santa Ono served to remind me of a conversation I had, many years ago, with one of my favorite University of Florida heroes.
This was, of course, in more innocent times. When scholarship was respected rather than feared and demonized.
Before opportunistic politicians realized that they could prostitute Florida public higher education in order to reward their cronies with lucrative jobs and satisfy their own crass ambitions.
And, yes, I’m looking at you, The Great DeSanitizer. Destroyer of academic integrity.
My favorite UF hero was Bob Bryant, merchant marine officer turned army counter intelligence agent turned scholar of English literature. For many years he was Vice President for Academic Affairs. Later becoming Provost and, for a time, UF Interim President.
Bob and I, both Pennsylvania natives, talked frequently when I was The Sun’s higher education reporter and, later, editorial page editor. I suppose what I liked most about Bryan was that that he could quote Chaucer or talk like a truck driver as the occasion demanded.
He also possessed a razor-sharp sense of humor that he employed to great effect to deflate one campus sacred cow or another.
Bob once called me up and asked me to locate, and destroy, the mug shot The Sun kept using whenever he appeared in a story. “It makes me look like I just had a proctology exam,” he scowled.
Bryant was what you might call a university pro. A man of the Academy. He was so good at what he did that, at the tail end of his career, he kept getting tapped as interim president for this university or that university.
But back to that memorable conversation.
Bryan told me about the time he started hearing from Hispanic South Florida legislators who were furious because a UF faculty member was traveling to…
…Gasp!…Cuba.
There to “consort with a communist dictator.”
The faculty member in question was Mike Gannon. One-time Catholic priest turned UF’s most respected scholar of Spanish colonial era Florida.
Gannon went to Cuba for the simple reason that, when the Spanish finally left Florida, they took most of their records with them. Said records ending up archived in Havana.
Indeed, Mike, an amateur pilot, flew to Cuba in his own plane. And he once told me a harrowing story about being buzzed by Soviet MIGs as he was trying to land.
Anyway, Bryan went to Tallahassee to try to calm the outraged lawmakers, assuring them that Mike Gannon was the furthest thing from a radical libtard (dare I say ‘woke’?) prof seeking solidarity with Cuban Marxist-Leninists.
“Look, Gannon lives in the 17th century,” Bryan said. “He doesn’t care anything about politics.”
And that was that.
Nobody got fired. No legislative inquisition. Somebody complained. Somebody explained…calmly and professionally. Life in the Academy went on.
Now imagine what would happen today if our Great DeSanitizer got wind of a UF professor consorting with communists.
Probably the same thing that happened when Santa Ono – distinguished scholar and scientist by way of the University of Michigan and a host of other reputable institutions – came to GNV clueless of the shark tank he had just waded into.
But as I said, those were more innocent times.
Listen, I’m sure we’re all better off now that the anti-Ron’s Woke Police are keeping a tight lid on subversive scholarship and suspect inquiry in the Free State Of Floriduh.
It’s a blessing, I suppose, that Bob Bryan and Mike Gannon aren’t still alive to witness the denigration of their beloved university.
FreeGNV 