The Review: Administrative Alligators in the Florida Swamp!

Should the people who run colleges sign a loyalty oath? ADVERTISEMENT [Academe Today Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. Last week I had a drink with an Indian academic who teaches at an out-of-the-way American college. I asked her why she’d gone there from India, and she told me about the years of sometimes [deadly crackdowns]( by government officials on student protests under Narendra Modi’s government. Though I’d been following those incidents in the news, I hadn’t understood their chilling effect on faculty members. Professors working in public universities, she said, are monitored by the state; [neither academic nor press freedom]( is assured. I told her about the University of California’s infamous 1950 loyalty oath, which required professors to affirm, on pain of termination, that they were not members of the Communist Party. “It’s just like that,” she said, “but worse.” What’s happened in Florida isn’t as bad as what’s been happening in India. But the [decision]( (since [reversed]( after enormous pressure and a public outcry) to prohibit three University of Florida faculty members from testifying as expert witnesses in a voting-rights lawsuit against the State of Florida on the theory that, in the words of UF’s Gary Wimsett, “litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests,” violates a taboo against government interference in higher education that, if dissolved, would spell disaster. (Wimsett is UF’s assistant vice president for conflicts of interest, a concept that he seems intent on embodying rather than monitoring.) The prohibition also violates the First Amendment, which is probably why the university backed down so quickly. (As FIRE [tweeted]( “If you pick a fight with the First Amendment, you will lose.”) In some ways, the University of Florida’s attempt at the political repression of its faculty members was a victim of its own blatancy. It attracted the ire of professors across the political spectrum, [including]( the conservative constitutional-law scholar Robert George. The Chronicle Review [published]( [three]( [op-eds]( in two days excoriating the move. FIRE, as well as the relatively new Academic Freedom Alliance, issued statements. This was not attention the University of Florida wanted. But if the administrators had been a little luckier, it’s very possible that no one would have noticed the political interference. In fact, earlier this year, they’d done the same thing to another faculty member with respect to a different lawsuit — this time, the professor was a physician and the subject was mask mandates. Our Lindsay Ellis [broke]( that story last Tuesday. A little while ago, I [wrote]( that academic freedom depends on the existence of “a principled administrative class capable of understanding and of honoring the ideals of the institutions they superintend.” In the Florida case, a bureaucracy meant to watch out for conflicts of interest was deformed in the service of statist repression. It’s difficult to imagine a more complete perversion of university ideals. Perhaps what’s needed is even more bureaucracy. Maybe universities should have “academic autonomy” deans whose role is to prevent violations of faculty freedom. If Yale had had such a dean, would its president, Peter Salovey, have [caved]( in to donors’ wishes to appoint Henry Kissinger to a board over faculty objections? Would David Gier, dean of the University of Michigan’s music school, have removed [Bright Sheng]( from a classroom because some students had complained about blackface in a film? Would Florida’s Wimsett have misused his position to help out the governor? Would the University of North Carolina have initially [refused]( to hire Nikole Hannah-Jones with tenure? Or maybe upper-level administrators should take some kind of oath of fealty to the ideals of academic freedom, autonomy, and self-governance. They could call it a loyalty oath. Write to me, at len.gutkin@chronicle.com. Yours, Len Gutkin SPONSOR CONTENT | ADOBE [Learn how digital literacy resources enhance hybrid learning environments.]( ADVERTISEMENT SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHRONICLE Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( for unlimited access to essential news, analysis, and advice. The Latest THE REVIEW [Steven Pinker’s Disciplinary Drift]( By Nathan Pensky [STORY IMAGE]( The psychologist lurches blindly into the humanities. Again. ADVERTISEMENT THE REVIEW [Totalitarianism Takes Aim at Higher Education]( By Silke-Maria Weineck [STORY IMAGE]( The university has declared itself an arm of Ron DeSantis’s government. THE REVIEW [Florida Is a Five-Alarm Fire for Academic Freedom]( By Jeffrey C. Isaac [STORY IMAGE]( With breathtaking cynicism, politicians are attacking the foundation of the university. THE REVIEW [Stand Up for What You Believe, President Fuchs]( By Holden Thorp [STORY IMAGE]( At the University of Florida, the time for strategizing and threading needles is over. Recommended: - “[What is enquiry? What are we doing when we try to know?]( At Aeon, Nate Sheff on the impasse in epistemology between internalist and externalist accounts of justification. - “When Shirley Hazzard responded to an advertisement in the Times Literary Supplement in August 1993 requesting information for a biography of Muriel Spark, she well knew she was touching pitch.” At Overland, Sue Rabbit Roff [on the evidently strained relationship]( between Muriel Spark and Shirley Hazzard. - “At once more addictively engrossing and fatally tedious than anything else I have read, it is the strange chronicle of a ‘great’ man whose genius is recognized almost exclusively by the chronicler himself.” At The New Yorker, [Benjamin Anastas on Claude Fredericks’s diary]( which runs to more than 50,000 pages. SPONSOR CONTENT | SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE [SEC Uses Athletics Platform to Celebrate, Support Conference Member Faculty]( Recognizing the exceptional teaching accomplishments of its outstanding faculty, learn who the 2021 SEC Faculty Achievement Award winners are as well as the impacts they are making. FROM THE CHRONICLE STORE [Today's Mission Critical Campus Jobs]( Explore how key campus positions are growing in strategic importance compared to how they have traditionally functioned, why they've recently grown more essential, and how they're continuing to evolve. [Order your copy today.]( JOB OPPORTUNITIES Apply for the top jobs in higher education and [search all our open positions](. NEWSLETTER FEEDBACK What did you think of today’s newsletter? [Strongly disliked]( | [It was ok]( | [Loved it]( This newsletter was sent to {EMAIL}. [Read this newsletter on the web](. 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