Teaching Moments From The University Of Florida Debacles

The University of Florida is a rising star in higher education. This year, US News named it the #5 public university in the country. Forbes has the school listed as the #25 school overall, ahead of such lofty names as Brown, Notre Dame and Johns Hopkins.

But that’s not why the school has been in the news lately.

The headlines recently have been about political interference with faculty and programs. The biggest of these rolled out when it became clear that school leaders had blocked – and had long blocked – professors from giving expert testimony in legislative and legal venues, especially when such testimony may be contrary to the prevailing sentiment of the state’s political leaders. To their credit, the school owned up to the anti-academic posture and changed course.

Now, news is also circulating about other political shenanigans at Florida. These new allegations involve a professor who said they were pressured to change the name of a course because the title – “Critical studies in race, ethnicity, and culture” – might offend certain ambitious politicians. And that someone who was a major political donor, major university donor and Chair of the University Board – yes, all three – exerted influence to get a politically-favored critic of Covid-related public health and safety issues a tenured job at the school.

Before either of those, the school also stepped in a freedom-related controversy by rescinding admissions offers over what it decided were the racial or racist social media activities of future students.  In other words, it appears that it’s not just the speech of its professors that the school wanted to curb, restrict or otherwise sanction.

For any school, that’s a deeply and profoundly embarrassing place to stand. For a flagship university with a growing national reputation, it’s an anathema.

And please allow me to set this up correctly. I am a Florida Gator. I am a member of the alumni association and school donor, though at completely minuscule levels. I also used to work in the Florida Legislature and in the Executive Office of the Governor, as it’s known there. At one time, I knew the policy and political machinery of the state very well. I believe that those experiences allow me to say that what’s been making news at the University of Florida is not a University of Florida problem – it’s a Florida problem and a system of governance problem.

Political interference in the operations of state universities in the Sunshine State is not new at all. It’s been subtle, even subversive at times. But it’s been pernicious and consistent. And it’s been that way for one overriding reason – political leaders hold every school’s purse strings and even more valuable things in their hands.

When I was in Tallahassee, there was virtually no limit to the gifts and gratuitous graft that state universities would bestow on state lawmakers or state elected officials. If the amount of puckering and posturing and pecuniary enticements were distasteful, the consistency was impressive.

The schools did it for good reason. In Florida, state law and policy makers literally decided what schools lived or died, which schools got a new schools, what schools could open libraries or operate art museums. They decided how much money the schools got, how many professors, how many dorms and programs. And those folks, the state’s political class, showed no hesitancy whatsoever in yanking a school’s chains if they wanted to – for any reason or no reason whatsoever.

Here are just two examples of how those policies manifest in universities.  

Florida A&M (FAMU), is a historically black university. It is in Tallahassee. FAMU has a law school, which is 250 miles away – in Orlando, home of the state’s largest university, the University of Central Florida (UCF). The reason is that around the same time both FAMU and UCF wanted to open law schools and the Florida Legislature, not wanting to pay to open two new law schools, gave the school to FAMU but put it in Orlando.

The Ringling Museum of Art is in Sarasota, about a 40 minute drive south of St. Petersburg. The museum has, with zero exaggeration, one of the most impressive collections of Baroque art in the country, complimented by sizeable and impressive collections from other periods. It’s a legitimate star of a museum. The museum is managed by Florida State University, which is 330 miles away. Five other state universities are closer, including the University of South Florida which is just up the road in Tampa.

The reason for this is that when the Ringling Museum needed funding to repair its buildings and preserve its collections from the Florida humidity, the Speaker of the House – an FSU alum – insisted the museum be given to FSU as part of the bargain.

But it’s not just the big stuff. A state Senator has a nephew who needs favorable admissions consideration at a school – no problem. The state Representative really wants VIP tickets to the football game or has a brother who wants to teach – say no more. A governor really hates that teacher who said bad things about him in the paper – don’t give it another thought.  

Maybe other states operate their schools similarly. I hope not. But that’s how it was – and I understand how it still very much is – in Florida.

And that is why we see things like The University of Florida barring its teachers from speaking on certain topics – issues that may upset the fragile sensitivities of some people, or of one person in particular. It’s why schools in Florida had blocked their teachers from upending the accepted political narratives with facts. Because when you run a school or school system to please politicians, you end up running a school to please politicians. And that’s not a school at all.  

The larger point is that, first and foremost, the Florida model is no way to run a state, or its schools. To be genuine homes of scholarship and free thought, schools can’t have their funding and programs held hostage every year by politically-motivated, election-focused officials. It’s why the state has tried more than once, but largely failed in practice, to insulate its schools from the whims of lawmakers and governors. Florida is the textbook case for college and university policy and budget-setting to be removed from lawmakers and other politicians.

There’s just no way the Chairman of a University Board should be allowed to be a major donor to the state’s Governor. That’s not happenstance. That’s extortion.

What’s remarkable is that despite these interferences and molestations and kowtowing, the University of Florida is still well regarded, at least by various rankings. It’s a success in spite of the people who frequently take credit for it and a cautionary tale – a classic teaching moment – for other schools and states.