University of Florida administrators see themselves as Ron DeSantis’s servants
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Yet another U of F professor has been muzzled by university administrators acting as Ron DeSantis’s personal lackeys:
Last week, we learned that the University of Florida barred three professors from testifying as expert witnesses in a lawsuit challenging the voter suppression law that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed earlier this year. A bit of scrutiny showed the university’s rationale to be strange and inexplicable.
Now this story has taken another dubious turn. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the university banned a fourth professor from testifying in other lawsuits brought against another DeSantis policy: His ban on mask requirements in schools.
The fourth professor, pediatrician Jeffrey L. Goldhagen, said he was asked to testify on behalf of parents suing DeSantis, his commissioner of education and two state agencies over his July executive order banning school officials from implementing mask requirements. That policy has drawn intense national scrutiny amid a rebellion against it among parents and teachers.
Goldhagen is a professor at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, and the university denied his request to testify. Its rationale was as follows:“As UF is an extension of the state as a state agency, litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests.”
Also, Goldhagen was testifying for free, so there goes that pretext. It’s also worth noting that treating the flagship state university as an adjunct of the governor is something that only started when the Mini-Trump took over:
As one of those three professors told me, he repeatedly testified in lawsuits challenging state laws in the past — yet the university approved this.
What’s more, doesn’t the university compromise its independence — not to mention the independence of its professors — by constraining itself from weighing in on any lawsuit against a policy favored by state politicians?
“It’s about the inability of academic institutions to withstand the assault of hyper-pernicious partisan politics,” Goldhagen told me.
One rather important thing that has changed since the university allowed such testimony is that DeSantis is now governor. DeSantis has major allies on the university’s board of trustees, one of whom is both a major GOP donor and top DeSantis adviser.
Gee, I wonder of the SubStack/Harper’s Letter brigade will get on this, or whether they will instead engage in fawning praise of the guy who invented one of the most successful anti-free-speech race-baiting campaigns in recent American history? Or, come to think of it, I don’t.
…yet another example:
It keeps coming: Last year 4 UF law professors who wanted to sign a “friend of the court” brief in a lawsuit challenging a new felon voting law were told that they could not identify themselves as university faculty members. https://t.co/7Wtnrv9qW8— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) November 3, 2021