DeSantis Is Destroying Florida's Universities

In his quest to eliminate any legitimate discussion of race or the very existence of LGBT people in Florida's public schools and universities, Ron DeSantis has created both a climate of fear and smothered academic freedom.  This may please and excite DeSantis' base of support, but it is adversely impacting Florida's universities (and public schools) as professors opt to leave their positions at Florida colleges and universities, often tenured positions, and move to states that are less dystopian.  Meanwhile, desirable graduate students are increasingly avoiding Florida institutions in favor of those in blue states where they will not be censored or in fear of reprisals.  Every day Floridians ought to be concerned that DeSantis' political aspirations and desire to pander to  Florida's racists and Christofascists is eroding the educational opportunities of their children and grand children.  Sadly, DeSantis' base - much like many in Southwest Virginia - do not care that they are ultimately harming their state and themselves as long as their prejudices are being stoked.  A long column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Gov. Ron DeSantis had just taken office in 2019 when the University of Florida lured Neil H. Buchanan, a prominent economist and tax law scholar, from George Washington University.

Now, just four years after he started at the university, Dr. Buchanan has given up his tenured job and headed north to teach in Toronto. In a recent column on a legal commentary website, he accused Florida of “open hostility to professors and to higher education more generally.”

He is not the only liberal-leaning professor to leave one of Florida’s highly regarded public universities. Many are giving up coveted tenured positions and blaming their departures on Governor DeSantis and his effort to reshape the higher education system to fit his conservative principles.

The Times interviewed a dozen academics — in fields ranging from law to psychology to agronomy — who have left Florida public universities or given their notice, many headed to blue states. While emphasizing that hundreds of top academics remain in Florida, a state known for its solid and affordable public university system, they raised concerns that the governor’s policies have become increasingly untenable for scholars and students.

Governor DeSantis’s office did not respond to requests for comment. But Sarah D. Lynne, chair-elect of the University of Florida’s faculty senate, said that little has changed except that her campus has become the focus of national politics.

Data from several schools, however, show departure rates have ticked upward. At the University of Florida, overall turnover went from 7 percent in 2021 to 9.3 percent in 2023, according to figures released by the university.

A report by the faculty senate at the University of Florida found some departments hard hit. The school of arts — which includes art, music and dance — “struggles to hire or retain good faculty and graduate students in the current political climate,” said the report, issued in June.

In liberal arts, the report said: “Faculty of color have left.”

Danaya C. Wright, a law professor who currently chairs the faculty senate, said she sees job candidates avoiding the state. “We have seen more people pull their applications, or just say, ‘no, I’m not interested — it’s Florida,’” she said.

At Florida State University, the vice president for faculty development, Janet Kistner, commented during a faculty senate meeting in September that the “political climate in Florida” had contributed to an upswing in faculty turnover, with 37 professors leaving for reasons other than retirement in the past year compared to an average of 23 during the past five years.

Walter Boot, a tenured psychology professor who had secured millions of dollars in grants for Florida State, is headed to Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, where he will continue developing technology for the elderly.

Dr. Boot said he joined Florida State in 2008 and immediately felt at home on the Tallahassee campus: “This was the place I could see myself spending the rest of my career — great department, great university.”

Things began to change, he said, when the DeSantis administration started to push its education policies. Dr. Boot, who is gay, cited a 2022 law that limits what educators can say about gender and sexuality in elementary schools. It was not technically aimed at universities, but it fueled a frightening environment, he said.

“It’s been very difficult, from a day-to-day perspective, not feeling comfortable or even safe where I live,” Dr. Boot said in an interview.

Other gay professors cited recent state sanctions aimed at transgender employees and students who do not comply with a law, passed in May, restricting access to bathrooms, as well as state restrictions on transgender medical procedures.

Hope Wilson, who was a professor of education at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, had served as an adviser to the school’s Pride club and worked with the L.G.B.T.Q. center.

Dr. Wilson said that she particularly objected to what she regarded as intrusive requests from the state for information — to which her school responded — on everything from how many students had received transgender care to expenditures for D.E.I. initiatives.

“It just felt very dystopian all the way around,” she said. Her professional discomfort was matched by personal worries, because her child is transgender. “Florida isn’t a state where I can raise my family or do my job,” Dr. Wilson said. She landed at the Northern Illinois University.

The University of Florida’s law school has been particularly hard hit this year, with a 30 percent faculty turnover rate.  Some of those professors said political interference contributed to their departures, while other faculty said Florida’s reputation had deterred professors elsewhere from joining.

Maryam Jamshidi said that after a 2021 law permitted students to record professors in the classroom, liberal-leaning professors feared they would see videos of their lectures on Fox News.

Questions about gender and race are fundamental to an array of legal arguments, from constitutional law to criminal justice and workplace discrimination.

But in May, Governor DeSantis signed a bill that regulated what can be said in the classrooms and also barred university spending on diversity programs.

By that time, Kenneth B. Nunn had already decided to leave, one of several Black law professors who have recently departed.

In 2021, Mr. Nunn had been barred from signing a brief challenging state restrictions on voting by felons. Mr. Nunn said that signing such briefs is “something that is considered a matter of course for faculty to do anywhere else.” . . . He opted to retire from the law school, and is currently a visiting professor at Howard University.

“It’s not just that the laws are so vague and obviously designed to chill speech that DeSantis doesn’t like. It’s that they simultaneously took away the benefit of tenured faculty to stand up for what’s right,” he said. “It’s tenure in name only at this point.”

Since Dr. Buchanan writes on tax policy from a progressive perspective, he said that he felt he could become a target any time. “The Republicans who are running Florida,” he said, “are squandering one of the state’s most important assets by driving out professors who otherwise wouldn’t have wanted to leave.”