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‘I’m not wanted’: Florida universities hit by
brain drain as academics flee
Ron DeSantis’s slew of laws attacking teaching of race
and gender issues sees state’s colleges struggle to fill faculty posts
Joseph
Contreras
Sun 30 Jul
2023 06.00 EDT
With the
start of the 2023-24 academic year only six weeks away, senior officials at New
College of Florida (NCF) made a startling announcement in mid-July: 36 of the
small honors college’s approximately 100 full-time teaching positions were
vacant. The provost, Bradley Thiessen, described the number of faculty openings
as “ridiculously high”, and the disclosure was the latest evidence of a brain
drain afflicting colleges and universities throughout the Sunshine state.
Governor
Ron DeSantis opened 2023 with the appointment of six political allies to the
college’s 13-member board of trustees who vowed to drastically alter the
supposedly “woke”-friendly learning environment on its Sarasota campus. At its
first meeting in late January, the revamped panel voted to fire the college
president, Patricia Okker, without cause and appoint a former Republican state
legislator and education commissioner in her place.
Over the
ensuing weeks, board members have dismissed the college’s head librarian and
director of diversity programs and denied tenure to five professors who had
been recommended for approval.
In a
statement given to 10 Tampa Bay about faculty vacancies that was issued earlier
this month, NCF officials said that six of the openings were caused by staff
resignations and one-quarter of the faculty member departures “followed the
changes in the New College board of trustees”. One of those resignations was
submitted by Liz Leininger, an associate professor of neurobiology who says she
started looking for an exit strategy as soon as she learned about the DeSantis
appointments in the first week of 2023.
The
40-year-old scientist joined the New College faculty in 2017, drawn by the
opportunities of living near her ageing parents on Florida’s Gulf coast and
working closely with undergraduates at a relatively small school where total
student enrollment hovers around 700. But as the Republican-controlled Florida
legislature passed a series of bills over the last two years that sought to
curtail academic freedom and render a professor’s tenure subject to review at
any time, Leininger witnessed first-hand the devastating effects of the new
laws on her colleagues’ morale.
“All of the
legislation surrounding higher education in Florida is chilling and
terrifying,” said Leininger, who is rejoining the biology department at St
Mary’s College in Maryland this fall where she had been teaching before moving
to central Florida. “Imagine scientists who are studying climate change,
imagine an executive branch that denies climate change – they could use these
laws to intimidate or dismiss those scientists.”
The new
laws have introduced a ban on the funding of diversity, equity and inclusion
programs at Florida’s public colleges and universities, withdrawn a right to
arbitration formerly guaranteed to faculty members who have been denied tenure
or face dismissal, and prohibited the teaching of critical race theory, which
contends that inherent racial bias pervades many laws and institutions in
western society, among other changes.
In the face
of that and other legislation backed by DeSantis and Republican lawmakers that
has rolled back the rights of Florida’s LGBTQ+ community, many scholars across
the state are taking early retirement, voting with their feet by accepting job
offers outside Florida or simply throwing in the towel with a letter of
resignation.
Hard
figures for turnover rates will not be available until later this year, and
none of the other 11 state-run universities are expected to match New College’s
exceptionally high percentage of faculty vacancies.
A
spokesperson for the office of State University System chancellor, Ray
Rodrigues, issued a statement asserting that the “State University System of
Florida has not received any concerns from our member institutions indicating
turnover this year has been any higher than previous years. Turnover occurs
every year.”
But Andrew
Gothard, the state-level president of the United Faculty of Florida labor
union, predicts a loss of between 20 and 30% of faculty members at some
universities during the upcoming academic year in comparison with 2022-23,
which would signify a marked increase in annual turnover rates that
traditionally have stood at 10% or less.
James
Pascoe moved to the Gainesville campus of the University of Florida in 2018,
the same year that DeSantis was first elected governor. Three years later, the
Dallas native started looking for jobs elsewhere when new disclosure
requirements made it more difficult for Pascoe to apply for grants. An
unsuccessful attempt by the DeSantis administration to prohibit three
University of Florida colleagues from testifying as expert witnesses in a
voting rights case raised more alarm bells in Pascoe’s mind.
Then came
the passage of legislation in March 2022 that banned the discussion of gender
identity and sexuality with elementary school students between kindergarten and
the third grade. Pascoe and his male partner began to worry about their future
eligibility for adopting children in an environment that was becoming
increasingly hostile to gay couples in their judgment.
“It was
becoming clear that the university was becoming politicized,” the 33-year-old
assistant professor of mathematics said. “When I was waiting to hear back on
job applications, they started passing all these vaguely anti-gay, anti-LGBTQ+
laws. The state didn’t seem to be a good place for us to live in any more.”
In the
summer of 2022, Pascoe accepted a comparable position at Drexel University in
Philadelphia. His partner followed suit by joining the biology department at
Haverford College in a nearby suburb.
The
prevailing political climate in Florida has complicated efforts to recruit
qualified scholars from outside the state to fill some vacancies. Kenneth Nunn
served on a number of appointment committees during the more than 30 years he
spent on the faculty of the University of Florida’s law school. He said the
task of persuading highly qualified applicants of color to move to Gainesville
has never been more difficult under a governor who, earlier this year,
prohibited a new advanced placement course in African American studies from
being taught in high schools.
DeSantis
came under renewed criticism this month when the state department of education
issued guidelines recommending that middle school students be taught about the
skills slaves acquired “for their personal benefit” during their lifetimes in
bondage.
“Florida is
toxic,” noted Nunn, one of the few Black members of the law school faculty who
says he chose to retire last January in part because of the legislated ban on
the teaching of critical race theory. “It has been many years since we last
hired an entry-level African American faculty member. They’re just not
interested in being in a place where something with the stature of critical
race theory is being denigrated and attacked.”
The
65-year-old Nunn will be teaching law in the fall in Washington DC as a
visiting professor at Howard University, one of the nation’s leading
historically Black colleges and universities.
“I could
have stayed in a place where I’m not wanted and tough it out,” he adds. “Or I
could retire and look for work elsewhere.”
In the end,
Nunn says, concerns about his professional career and even his own physical
safety made that decision a relatively easy one.
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