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Retired Professor Marvin Dunn says he doesn’t think the public land should be given to a politician
Donald Trump’s presidential library seems to have found a home on a piece of land currently belonging to Miami Dade College in Florida. However, a historian and Florida resident is contesting the public college’s decision to give away the land in a lawsuit.
The case involves the college Board of Trustees’ vote Sept. 23 to give a piece of its land, currently used as an employee parking lot for its Wolfson Campus, to be used for the Trump presidential library.
Marvin Dunn, a psychologist, historian, and retired professor of Florida International University, filed the suit. He alleges the meeting violated the Florida Sunshine Act, which requires specific transparency measures of government institutions, including advanced notice of meetings and public minutes.
The lawsuit claims the trustees were not transparent when they gave the meeting’s location and time a week prior, stating the purpose was to “discuss potential real estate transactions.”
Allegedly, the college failed to provide “reasonable notice” to the public that its Sept. 23 meeting was specifically to consider giving the land to Trump, a resident of Florida, for his presidential library, according to the lawsuit, the Miami Herald reports.
On Nov. 3, a judge temporarily “halted the effort by the Miami Dade College Board of Trustees to deed the land to the state of Florida,” Dunn told The College Fix in a phone interview last week.
“I’m very pleased that that halts everything that was about to happen so the college is still in possession of that land,” he told The Fix.
However, the college appealed the ruling, and the next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 24, Fox 29 reports.
The Fix reached out to the college’s media relations office twice over the past two weeks, asking about the lawsuit, but it did not respond.
Regarding his decision to sue the college, Dunn told The Fix, “I felt personally injured and insulted when I read that that land worth at least $67 million was being given to a politician. I couldn’t even understand that—I still don’t understand why and how that could happen.”
“I don’t know that it’s even legal for the state of Florida to give land to a politician, so my outrage was that this was happening, apparently out of the … light of day and that must surely have been a violation of the Sunshine Act in Florida,” he said.
“The significance of it is that that land could be used for any purpose that the college decided to use it and if it is taken away from them, then that’s an injury to the students,” Dunn said.
“I don’t care if they want to put a basketball court there. I don’t care if it stays a parking lot for a hundred years. That land belongs to Miami Dade county children unborn for whatever purposes the college Board of Trustees decides in the future to make use of it, including positive green space which wouldn’t be exactly a bad idea in downtown Miami,” he said.
Dunn, a civil rights activist and Democrat who once ran for Congress, has spoken out against Trump’s politics, but he said his lawsuit is not “anti-Trump.”
“This is not really about Trump. Frankly, this is about anybody who would take this land from Miami Dade College. I don’t want this to turn into an anti-Trump movement,” he told The Fix.
In September, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed the 2.63-acre plot on the Miami Dade campus as the location of Trump’s presidential library, The Fix reported at the time.
The location is right next to the Freedom Tower in Miami, a site that state Attorney General James Uthmeier described as “a symbol of freedom, a beacon of liberty for the rest of the country.” Uthmeier said he has been working on the project with the Trump Library Foundation.
The Fix also contacted the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library for comment last week, and received an automated email that referred to the government shutdown.
“The National Archives and Records Administration is closed to normal operations due to a lack of appropriations. We will be out of the office until authorized to return,” the email stated.
Currently, the U.S. has 16 presidential libraries overseen by the National Archives. A few others operate independently.
Several are housed at universities. The Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library is located at Mississippi State University. Lyndon Johnson’s is on the University of Texas at Austin campus, and Gerald Ford’s library is at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
MORE: Miami Dade College land likely will be location of Trump presidential library
