The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has issued a report from a special committee--
Political Interference and Academic Freedom in Florida’s Public Higher Education System--and it is both thorough and alarming.
The report comes in several sections, opening with an introduction that marks the rise of Ron DeSantis and his anti-woke agenda, which in turn led to the creation of this special committee back at the beginning of 2023. It issued a preliminary report back in May, with four main findings:
(1) the “hostile takeover” of New College is both a “test case” and a “blueprint for future encroachments on public colleges and universities across the country”; (2) academic administrators in Florida “not only have failed to contest” attacks on the system “but have too frequently been complicit in and, in some cases, explicitly supported them”; (3) legislation enacted by Governor DeSantis and the legislature, “taken collectively, constitutes a systematic effort to dictate and enforce conformity with a narrow and reactionary political and ideological agenda” and represents “a uniquely bold and dangerous program designed to reshape public higher education according to ideological and partisan political standards”; and (4) “the chilling effect on academic freedom of the governor’s and legislature’s efforts has already been felt by faculty and students.”
This final report says, "Yes, all that and more."
It's a long report, and I'm not going to dive deeply into all of it. But some lowlights are worth noting because, as always, Florida is in the front of the pack when it comes to repressive education policies.
The New College Saga
If you only sort of paid attention to this story as it unrolled, the report has it all collected into one coherent narrative. It matters because, as one resigning professor put it, "This is a test case for a conservative overhaul of higher education—and it isn’t going to stay isolated to New College or Florida."
DeSantis appointed new board members including Matthew Spalding (Hillsdale College), Charles Kesler (Claremont McKenna College), and Christopher Rufo (that guy). Chaos ensued. President was axed, tenure denied, DeSantis buddy Richard Corcoran installed as president. Faculty were fired, seemingly for being critical of the new board. More Faculty left, and Rufo et al chortled over the routing of "the old system of unfettered left-wing activism." Also, "New College will no longer be a jobs program for middling left-wing intellectuals."
One weird development-- New College began heavily recruiting athletes, even though it had never previously had intercollegiate athletics programs. Corcoran pushed a "classical" liberal arts focus, but also majors in finance, communications, and sports psychology. Course offerings became a messy hodgepodge fraught with gaps.
And if the college isn't a jobs program for middling left-wing intellectuals, it does seem to be a jobs program for DeSantis loyalists. Deam Rancourt, new dean of student affairs, has been a GOP operative, a lobbyist, state director of elections, and deputy secretary of state, but he has experience in higher ed. Sydney Gruters is director of the New College of Florida Foundation; she's a former GOP aid and wife of state senator Joe Gruters (Florida loves its power couples). The newly minted athletics program has hired coaches only from Christian schools. And hostility to LGBTQ persons seems to be college policy as well.
This section of the report concludes
It may seem cynical, but the faculty leader who told the committee that the real goals of the New College takeover were but three—to reward Corcoran, provide a platform for Rufo, and fuel the culture war against the “woke”—may not have been all that far from the truth.
Academic Governance in Florida Higher Education
The state university system is overseen by a seventeen member board of governors; the governor gets to pick fourteen of them; this board in turn operates over individual boards for the universities. The report finds cronyism and pay to play a big piece of this picture.
It is not simply that the entire board of governors (excluding the faculty and student representatives) and the great majority of trustees are now Republicans. What is most striking is that so many appointees are former political officeholders and professional political operatives. The board’s increasing tendency has been to follow the lead of the governor and his allies in the legislative supermajority. As one veteran faculty member at the University of Florida told the committee, previous board members, regardless of party, understood their role to be ensuring that the universities they led were thriving. Members of the current group, he continued, are concerned principally with their relationships with the governor.
Thern there's Senate Bill 520, signed into law by DeSantis in March of 2022, which creates sunshine law exemptions for candidates for state university presidencies. So that process, which has produced hires like Corcoran; and former senator Ben Sasse; and GOP legislator, DeSantis buddy and former rodeo clown Fred Hawkins
DeSantis doesn't much care for accrediting agencies ("The role that these accreditation agencies play, I don't even know where they come from.") He signed a bill requiring colleges to change accrediting agencies regularly. “Accreditation has become a target in red states and by right-wing politicians because they’ve learned that robust and well-regarded accreditation presents a barrier to their attempts to inject partisan politics into higher education,” AAUP president Irene Mulvey has stated. “They are dragging accreditors into this to dismantle that barrier.”
Academic Freedom
You can guess where this is headed. You may recall the flap in 2021 when University of Florida administration tried to block faculty members from providing expert testimony against the proposed voter suppression law. The administration ultimately lost that one, though the judge noted that "preemptive subservience" was in play--maybe the state didn't directly order them to do it, but in Florida, everyone now understands that their job is to keep DeSantis happy.
The report does note that Florida has a long history of this kind of trouble.
In a move familiar to those of us in the K-12 world, DeSantis and the GOP have worked hard to erode tenure, with DeSantis calling “unproductive” tenured professors the “most significant deadweight costs” at Florida universities. To that end, Florida's legislature has keep working on "post-tenure review" aka "ending tenure entirely." Various versions of such policies have included scary ideas like challenging tenure of someone who gets too many complaints from students.
And of course they've tried their best to weaken the unions.
Bias and Discrimination
The report opens this section with some historical background on Florida's treatment of minority and LGBTQ persons. It has not been good. Segregated community colleges weren't integrated until 1966. Courts found that Florida was not meeting its requirement to desegregate higher ed as recently as 1977.
Much has been written about the Stop WOKE Act and other attempts to suppress teaching about racism or tolerance in Florida; this report offers some of the details from higher ed. The complaint is the same old one, sincere or opportunistic-- diversity, equity and inclusion are used “as cover words for transforming institutions of higher education into activist arms of the American left.”
At New College, gender neutral signage is banned. There are bathroom rules, and-- well, yikes. The State Board approved a new rule in August requiring disciplinary action for employees who do not use the bathroom corresponding to the sex they were assigned at birth.
Colleges can under the rule “utilize a progressive discipline process” for first offenders, including “verbal warnings, written reprimands, suspension without pay, and termination.” However, “a second documented offense must result in a termination.”
The Human Toll
No job is worth selling out everyone below you.
—Dawn Rothe, professor of criminology and UFF-FAU president, Florida Atlantic University
My responsibilities to my students far outweigh Governor DeSantis’s presidential ambitions.
—Jeffrey Adler, professor of history and criminology, University of Florida
These governmental attacks from the State of Florida have made us unsafe.
—Carolyne Ali-Khan, associate professor of education, University of North FloridaThe brain drain, both from red states in general and Florida in particular, is already the subject of news stories. This report captures more of that. New College lost 40% of its faculty, and other institutions are anticipating higher than usual turnover. An AAUP survey found that 95% of responding profs call Florida's political atmosphere "poor" or "very poor." 85% said they would not encourage grad students or professors in other states to come to Florida.
For the folks pushing these policies, of course, the brain drain is a feature, not a bug. They are chasing away exactly the people they want to chase away.
Whether more restrictive bills can be passed or not is beside the point, as faculty members said that "the damage is done" and "they are already witnessing a culture of fear, censorship, and surveillance in their workplaces." And that carries over to students, too, especially LGBTQ students and students of color. Florida's universities have become a place where it hard for some people to live their lives, let alone pursue an education.
The Wrap-Up
The report wants to stress--really stress--that this is not just a Florida problem, but a soon-to-be-everyone-else's problem. It's worth noting that most of the new board members for New College are from out of state.
The narrative that is driving this reactionary movement is not a local one. Rufo and others have articulated it before: the long-haired marxist radicals of the sixties decided they'd spend the seventies capturing universities and other institutions, thereby indoctrinating a generation of Americans in their evil socialist ways. That narrative dovetails with the one about how if young people are LGBTQ or voting against conservative policies, it must be because someone Got To Them, and we need to recapture those tools of indoctrination and have them indoctrinate youths the right way teach youths the true truth. Which also unfortunately dovetails well with the Dominionist cause.
I won't lie-- I don't always relate to the concerns of college professors, who seem to enjoy a lot more power and prestige in their institutions than folks working in the K-12 world. But it would be foolish to pretend that this attempt to gut higher ed and restuff it with conservative fluff isn't directly related to the K-12 world. What the hell does "college and career ready" even mean in a country where The New New College is what's ahead? And what happens to K-12 in a country in which this brand of right-wing indoctrination is what "education" means?
We'll see what happens when DeSantis must finally face his destiny as another Florida governor who tried to ride to the White House on education issues, and failed miserably. But even if he fades back into the woodwork, folks are taking notes on his revision of education, and the rest of the states had better pay attention.
