Good morning, and welcome to Friday, August 16. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Nick Perez compiled Comings and Goings. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

Florida, man

You’re probably familiar with the “Florida man” trope, which reflects the perception that people in the state do the craziest things. It may not be accurate, but it might be the best way to sum up recent developments in Florida higher education.

Florida’s land-grant universities have had a wild summer, even by the Sunshine State’s standards.

The University of Florida was rocked by leadership turnover and financial questions, starting last month:

• Ben Sasse unexpectedly resigned in July after less than two years as president, as our Eric Kelderman reported. Sasse cited family needs as his wife’s health deteriorated. His predecessor, Kent Fuchs, returned to take over as interim president.
• Sasse more than tripled spending by the president’s office, from $5.6 million to $17.3 million, according to The Independent Florida Alligator, the university’s student newspaper. Big chunks of money went to consulting fees and to highly paid remote positions for Republican officials and former staff members from Sasse’s U.S. Senate office. Sasse left the Senate to serve as president. The state’s chief financial officer suggested investigating the “exorbitant spending.”
• The University of Florida rehired a provost who was a month into a new job. Joseph Glover had been provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Florida for 15 years before leaving last year as Sasse arrived. Then, in July, he started as provost at the University of Arizona — unusual timing, since that institution’s president was headed out amid a financial crisis. Sure enough, Glover headed back to Florida almost as soon as the University of Arizona hired a new president, our Amanda Friedman and Eric Kelderman reported.

Florida A&M University saw its own turnover at the top after a donation went wrong.

• President Larry Robinson resigned in July amid fallout from a botched $237-million donation, our Jasper Smith reported. Gregory Gerami presented a large cardboard check at the spring graduation ceremony. Investigators later called the gift fraudulent.
• Florida A&M administrators ignored warning signs about the pledge, according to a report released this month. The university-commissioned investigation found that Florida A&M had rushed to accept the gift from Gerami, a Texas-based hemp entrepreneur, while ignoring red flags about his finances, our J. Brian Charles reported.
• The interim president, Timothy Beard, asked senior leaders to resign this week, our Jasper Smith reported. At least four promptly did, according to the Tallahassee Democrat: the athletics director, communications director, vice president for legal affairs, and director of government relations. Beard said the university sought to change its “leadership, vision, and strategies.”

The bigger picture: Administrative churn and questionable management practices aren’t great for leading institutions in a state that has in recent years reduced the transparency of its presidential searches, picked fights with accreditors, and upset many professors by pushing conservative priorities in the culture wars.

Quick hits

• VCU will ask mask wearers for ID: Virginia Commonwealth University announced several new policies this week after the police arrested 13 people in a clash last spring with pro-Palestinian protesters. One policy requires people who cover their face on campus or at a VCU event to show identification. Other changes bar organizers from setting up large events without prior approval, update the student code of conduct, and say the university will consider issuing statements on current events only if they’re directly connected to its “core function and mission.” (WRIC)
• Saint Augustine’s delays fall term: The private North Carolina university has rescheduled the start of classes for September 3, two weeks later than planned, adding time to repair damage from a tropical storm, finish other maintenance, and line up funding to pay overdue student refunds and staff salaries. It’s the second term marred by delays this year, after the financially struggling university delayed student move-ins in January. (WRAL, Saint Augustine’s University, The Chronicle, WNCN)
• Challenge to “intellectual diversity” law jumped the gun: A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by four professors who sued to stop a new Republican-backed Indiana law. The law ties tenure to whether faculty members promote free inquiry and expose students to works from ideologically differing viewpoints. Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis didn’t rule on whether the law was constitutional, instead finding that the professors hadn’t demonstrated that they suffered any consequences because public colleges’ boards have yet to draw up policies to carry out the law. (U.S. District Court, The Chronicle)
• Political consultant sues community college for student info: Lansing Community College, in Michigan, faces a lawsuit after it rejected a public-records request seeking student-directory information. Mark Grebner, a Democrat who is a local politician and political consultant, sought the information to encourage student voting and for “candidate and issue communications.” College officials argued that providing the information would violate federal privacy law, but Grebner said other colleges had provided similar data. (Lansing State Journal)
• Texas State plans Mexico branch: The university’s governing board has approved plans to work with investors to set up an American-style satellite in an “education hub” near Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico, that has hosted an Arkansas State University branch since 2017. The venture, expected to open with 200 to 300 students in 2025, could bring in as much as $10 million in revenue over 20 years and help Texas State as it seeks to raise its international profile. (San Antonio Express-News)

Quote of the day

“The habit of critical thinking and humility that gives birth to tolerance of contrary points of view is the most essential lesson taught in Columbia’s classrooms.”

—Katrina A. Armstrong, Columbia University’s new interim president

Armstrong tried to reset the tone in a message posted after she took over for Nemat (Minouche) Shafik on Wednesday. Shafik stepped down, ending a brief presidency that was derailed by pro-Palestinian protests on campus and her response to them this past spring.

Weekend reads

• The Idea Fueling the Student Protest Movement (The Chronicle)
• An Anthropologist’s Reach Exceeds His Grasp (The Chronicle)
• Why We Should Normalize Open Disclosure of AI Use (The Chronicle)
• College Writing Centers Worry AI Could Replace Them (EdSurge)
• The Inside Story of the University of the Arts’s Stunning Collapse (Philadelphia Magazine)
• As a New Semester Looms, Students and Colleges Brace For More Protests (NPR)

Comings and goings

• Sandy A. Curko, general counsel at Iona University, in New York, has been named general counsel and vice president for legal affairs at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
• Caroline R. Paul, a general pediatrician and co-director of faculty development in pediatrics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health, has been named associate dean of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine’s satellite campus in Bowling Green.
• Mark Shafer, who is retiring as a special agent with the FBI, has been named chief of campus security at Lipscomb University, in Tennessee.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.

Footnote

This week I asked readers to submit photos of campus move-in days. The following comes from Carleton College, in Minnesota.

“I take photos like these in Carleton’s Great Hall every year during move-in day,” writes Erica Helgerud, the college’s news and social-media manager. “Since we have students coming from all over the country and the world, incoming first-years will send packages to the college ahead of time so they don’t have to haul extra luggage onto their planes, trains, and automobiles. It’s way too much for the main area of Carleton Mail Services to hold, so they sort everything in the Great Hall!”

Here is a standing invitation to the folks at Carleton: Come visit me when you’re finished. I could use some help organizing my basement.

🚚 Ship us move-in photos from your college. Whether you have a snapshot of students carrying stuff, parents pausing for a break, or staff members making the day hum, please share the excitement of returning to campus. Send your name, title, and a brief description of what the photo shows, and it could appear in a future Footnote: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.