UF response to political interference controversy is weak

The University of Florida's administration building, Tigert Hall.

The University of Florida’s reputation has been battered in recent months due to administrators bowing to political pressure. University officials have tried denying the problem or taking half measures in an attempt to make it go away.

A federal judge’s ruling last week showed that UF’s weak response is insufficient. Chief US District Judge Mark Walker blocked UF from enforcing a policy that gave administrators discretion over allowing professors to serve as expert witnesses in lawsuits. In the ruling, Walker compared UF to China repressing dissent in Hong Kong.

“If those in UF’s administration find this comparison upsetting, the solution is simple. Stop acting like your contemporaries in Hong Kong,” he wrote.

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UF brought this controversy upon itself by prohibiting professors from testing against state laws backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-controlled Legislature. But that is far from the only example in recent months of UF aligning itself with the political priorities of state leaders in order to curry favor.

UF President Kent Fuchs reversed a decision on starting the academic year online during a COVID surge, while a professor was pushed to drop the words “critical” and “race” from the title of a planned course due to concerns that state officials would object. Administrators fast tracked Joseph Ladapo’s appointment to the faculty, giving him a hefty salary and paving the way for DeSantis to appoint him Florida’s surgeon general.

Ladapo has discouraged COVID testing, promoted risky treatments and downplayed the benefits of vaccines. This week, he dodged questions about the effectiveness of vaccines during an embarrassing confirmation hearing before a state Senate committee.

Jospeh Ladapo responds to questions posed by the Senate Health Policy Committee during a committee hearing on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022.

Email messages show that UF board of trustees Chairman Mori Hosseini, a GOP megadonor and DeSantis advisor, helped get Ladapo hired to the faculty. Hosseini has also blamed professors for the controversy over them testing rather than take responsibility for his role in damaging UF’s reputation.

The controversy started after UF barred three political science professors from testing against restrictive voting measures put into law by DeSantis and the Legislature. The professors sued the university along with three other faculty members, who were prevented from testing in lawsuits involving voting rights for former felons and a state ban on mask mandates.

After widespread criticism, Fuchs allowed the political science professors to testify and created a task force that developed a revised policy establishing a “strong assumption” that faculty could testify moving forward. But Walker found the policy gave administrators too much discretion to deny requests if testimony conflicts “with an important and particularized interest” of UF.

University of Florida President W. Kent Fuchs

The judge wrote that UF failed to explain exactly what that means, disavow its previous policy or declare that it would not keep faculty from testing against the state in the future. He granted the professors’ request for a preliminary injunction until a trial.

UF has benefitted from state support, including funding for a hiring push that helped it rise to the top five public universities in national rankings. But damage to its reputation has put that ranking and its accreditation at risk.

Fuchs recently announced that he was stepping down as president by early next year. Time is running out for him to truly acknowledge and address political interference at UF, and start repairing the university’s reputation.

— The Gainesville Sun Editorial Board

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