The University of Florida: From Top 5 to Censorship
In September of this year, the University of Florida was named a top five public university by U.S. News & World Report. Whatever your opinion of the annual ranking by U.S. News, it was a welcome laurel for alumnae, alumni and students. It was also the first of its kind for a Florida institution of higher learning. That glow has now, however, turned into menacing clouds with the report that UF is attempting to put the clamps on faculty speech, and doing so on no less a subject than voting access.
Three professors at the university have been barred by the UF administration from giving testimony in a lawsuit brought against Florida Senate Bill 90. That bill restricts ballot drop box hours, requires full-time drop-box monitors and mandates approved ID to request a mail-in ballot. The professors were to testify on behalf of a coalition of voting advocacy groups who seek to overturn a law that “will disproportionately disenfranchise Black and Brown voters and harm the work of civic engagement organizations.
UF has claimed the right to “deny its employees’ requests to engage in outside activities when it determines the activities are adverse to its interests.” You have to wonder by what tortured logic testifying for improved access to voting might be ‘adverse’ to the interests of an institution of higher learning. The path of that logic leads back to Florida governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is an ally of former president Trump, and Senate Bill 90 is clearly in the ‘rigged election’ vein of conspiracy theories, itself a front for ‘too many minority voters, we have to put a stop to that’.
There is doubtless intense financial and political pressure on the UF administration. By law, the governor names six of the thirteen university trustees and, according to Slate, the chair of the UF board of trustees, Morteza Hosseini, is an important donor to the Republican Party. And the governor, of course, plays a major role in determining the budgets of the state university system and individual institutions.
A public statement by UF claims the university has “a long track record of supporting free speech.” A track record, yes, but support of outspoken faculty, not so much. In 1967 UF denied Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Marshall Jones tenure because he urged rebellion in the struggle for civil rights. The American Association of University Professors investigated and censured the university. In 1969, Assistant Professor of Philosophy Ken Megill suggested that the power structure of UF should be opened to include faculty and students. A state legislator called for Megill’s head and he was kept under surveillance until UF denied him tenure in 1972.
An archived New York Times piece on the Megill case indicates that between 1968 and the article’s publication in 1972 “at least five teachers have been dismissed under similarly controversial conditions.” One of those was Assistant Professor of Wildlife Ecology George Cornwell, who contended he was forced out because his environmental activism and opposition to pesticides had displeased the agricultural industry.
The pattern of legislative interference in Florida education can be traced to the notorious Johns Committee. Formed in 1956 to identify supposed communists, the Committee soon focused on exposing gays and lesbians in order to drive them out of state schools. It made use of informants and subpoenas, news outlets reported that students and professors were pulled from class for interrogation. The Committee spread fear while jobs were lost and reputations devastated. Neither UF nor the Florida Legislature has ever publicly denounced the Committee’s work.
Do these older cases matter now? Institutional history has way of reasserting itself, and if UF has done admirable work in defending free speech, it also has a record of imposing silence on faculty and bending to political dictates coming out of Tallahassee. The current case is similar to those of the past, but it is not just the reputation of the University of Florida that is in question here. Not only is the professors’ right to speak at stake, but thousands of voters may be silenced by the law currently in force. Does UF wish history to record that it was complicit in eroding the right of US citizens to make their voices heard?
Photos are Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
