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One former Republican politician who now leads a Florida public university is criticizing a current GOP politician who was floated to lead another Florida public university—all over what a former faculty member allegedly said about Israel.
Politico reports that Randy Fine, a Jewish Florida state representative whom Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had wanted to lead Florida Atlantic University, posted Friday on X that a University of Florida professor was “teaching that Israel eradicating Hamas is like Germany eradicating Jews.” Fine’s post included a screenshot in which an account under the name Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons referenced the deaths in Gaza and said “Israel is a Nazi state.”
Fine’s post that Politico linked to had been taken down as of Tuesday afternoon, and Inside Higher Ed was unable to find Simmons’s alleged post. A “Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah” account posted Sunday on X that “Israel’s Evil Actions are so horrible that it takes your breath away! These people who were the victims of a Nazi Holocaust is [sic] now doing the same to the Palestinians!”
On Monday, former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, who now leads UF, posted an online statement titled “Education amid endless online screaming.” The statement is addressed to his cabinet and deans.
“Just wanted you to know that I’ve gotten many versions of this allegation all weekend: A tenured UF professor is supposedly forcing despicable antisemitic garbage on UF students in UF classrooms,” Sasse wrote. “This seems to have started from a member of the legislature in Tallahassee exaggerating on social media and sharing too-good-to-be-checked clickbait that he knows isn’t true. I won’t link here to the thirsty, attention-desperate post.”
While Sasse didn’t mention Fine or Simmons by name, a UF spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that Sasse was referencing them. The spokeswoman said Simmons retired from UF as a lecturer in 2019 “and has no active appointments with the university.”
Sasse wrote that “This was an instructor, not a tenured professor. The individual left UF in 2019, and hasn’t been paid here for four years.”
“The First Amendment gives everyone the right to make an abject idiot of themselves, and that seems to be what this former instructor is doing here,” Sasse wrote. “Speech is protected; violence and vandalism are not,” he wrote. “We’ll protect everyone’s speech rights here. But we’ll absolutely take action to suspend or fire anyone in the UF community who crosses the line with violence or vandalism.”
Fine didn’t return requests for comment late Tuesday afternoon, and Simmons didn’t respond to an email to her UF address.
