I live in a university town, albeit a town that at times seems to dislike the university population.1 The University of Florida is the lifeblood of Gainesville and students and professors are what make any school what it is.
In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis2 does not care about that. He is actively shaping higher education to fit his whims. What are those whims? Pushing an ideological agenda that discourages critical thinking about history, race, gender, literature, and the human experience.
If you’re an academic and you want to pursue that rare career with stability3, don’t come to Florida. The things you might love about the university experience are eroding like the beaches in the state. Come here and you’ll face an overbearing, micromanaging board of trustees while losing any shot at job security. DeSantis hasn’t exactly hid his intentions, working time and again to limit tenure.
The latest move against tenure comes from DeSantis’s handpicked Board of Trustees at New College, a school the governor has been particularly active in reshaping both via unqualified appointees and funding for pet initiatives. By a 6-4 vote, with all 6 votes coming from DeSantis appointees, the New College of Florida trustees voted to deny tenure to 5 college professors. There’s a long Twitter thread by Dr. Nick Seabrook explaining why it is so unusual for early tenure to be denied by a board that’s well worth the read. The short of it is if a professor has managed to go through the gauntlet that is the tenure process and been able to do it early, then chances are that professor has done some extraordinary work to merit that. Essentially, by the time the vote reaches a board of trustees, the case for tenure has already been made.
New College has been DeSantis’s pet project, but it’s not the only university he’s tried to reshape. The University of Florida4, arguably the flagship university of the state, has been a frequent target of the governor, with the board and the university president now comprised mostly of DeSantis allies. By working actively to reshape higher education for the worse, DeSantis is essentially encouraging professors and aspiring professors to leave the state or not come at all.
To outsiders, academia may seem cushy at times. It’s not. And especially in the early stages of a career, many professors go where the jobs are, even if they are in states or cities they never thought they’d be in. They upend their lives to pursue knowledge, to teach others, and they do that knowing that if they excel at their work, they can get a level of job stability that the private market just cannot ever provide. Florida, for reasons of weather and environment and culture and more, can be an attractive place to live. But if you want to pursue a career in higher education, why would you come to a state that repeatedly says by its actions that they don’t want you?
More in academia will ask themselves that and as a result, we’re going to lose a lot of talent – researchers responsible for the next breakthrough in science, medicine, tech or understanding humanity in some way, teachers who are able to connect with students and bring out their talent and passion to do something that improves lives, authors who impact generations with their work. Florida is going to be as dumb as the jokes all make it out to be.