Florida professors leaving in droves blame 'very dystopian' environment: report

03 December 2023

Under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' leadership, educators across the Sunshine State are suffering.

Reports earlier this year noted the state has seen its "highest drop out rate" yet under the 2024 GOP presidential candidate.

According to a Sunday, December 3 report, "The Times interviewed a dozen academics — in fields ranging from law to psychology to agronomy — who have left Florida public universities or given their notice, many headed to blue states. While emphasizing that hundreds of top academics remain in Florida, a state known for its solid and affordable public university system, they raised concerns that the governor’s policies have become increasingly untenable for scholars and students."

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The Times notes, "Some of those professors said political interference contributed to their departures, while other faculty said Florida's reputation had deterred professors elsewhere from joining."

The University of Florida has been hit particularly hard, according to the report, as liberal arts "faculty of color have left," including "Paul Ortiz, a history professor" as well as "a former president of the school’s faculty union," who's "leaving after more than 15 years to join Cornell next summer."

Furthermore, the Times reports, the school of arts "struggles to hire or retain good faculty and graduate students in the current political climate."

The university's law school has seen a "30 percent faculty turnover rate."

Economist and tax law scholar Neil H. Buchanan left George Washington University for a University of Florida position in 2019, and according to The Times, "just four years after he started at the university, Dr. Buchanan has given up his tenured job and headed north to teach in Toronto. In a recent column on a legal commentary website, he accused Florida of 'open hostility to professors and to higher education more generally.'"

The Times reports, Buchanan's "final straw was the institution of a review process for tenured faculty, which he viewed as the end of academic freedom."

He said, "It's not just that the laws are so vague and obviously designed to chill speech that DeSantis doesn't like. It's that they simultaneously took away the benefit of tenured faculty to stand up for what’s right. It's tenure in name only at this point."

The prominent economist added, "The Republicans who are running Florida, are squandering one of the state’s most important assets by driving out professors who otherwise wouldn’t have wanted to leave."

Former University of North Florida Pride club advisor Hope Wilson, who now teaches at Northern Illinois University, emphasized, "Florida isn't a state where I can raise my family or do my job."

The Times notes, "Dr. Wilson said that she particularly objected to what she regarded as intrusive requests from the state for information — to which her school responded — on everything from how many students had received transgender care to expenditures for D.E.I. initiatives."

She added, "It just felt very dystopian all the way around."

The New York Times' full report is here (subscription required).

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