Walker compared that situation with how the University of Hong Kong, fearful of its new masters in Beijing, last month removed a statue, known as the Pillar of Shame, commemorating the pro-democracy demonstrators who were slain at China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
As at Gainesville, administrators at Hong Kong said it was in “the best interest of the university,” Walker wrote. He also noted reports of professors there being denied tenure, promotions or contract renewals.
Nothing in the legal briefs or the arguments had cited the Hong Kong example. Walker, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2012 and presently the Northern District’s chief judge, developed that appropriate analogy himself. His sharpest put-down was in a footnote.
‘THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE’
“If those in UF’s administration find this comparison upsetting, the solution is simple. Stop acting like your contemporaries in Hong Kong.
“Some might say, ‘That’s China, it could never happen here,’” he wrote.
But it did happen here.
- Three UF political science professors were blocked from testifying as expert witnesses in a case against a restrictive state election law. Four law professors were prohibited from identifying themselves as such in a friend-of-the-court brief challenging a law restricting the restoration of ex-felons’ voting rights. A medical professor was not allowed to testify against the state concerning school face mask requirements.
- A Faculty Senate committee has alleged censorship of COVID-19 research.
- A professor of education filed a grievance over the blockage of his proposed curriculum entitled “Critical Study of Race, Ethnicity and Culture in Education.” He said he was warned not to pair the words “critical” and “race.”
- The chairman of the university board of trustees, a major financial supporter of Gov. Ron DeSantis, threatened protesting faculty in these words: “Let me tell you, our legislators are not going to put up with the wasting of state money and resources, and neither will this board.”
No fingerprints from DeSantis or legislative leaders are directly evident in any of this. But their policies are well known as to denying racism and obstructing public health measures. The university administration admitted that it fears reprisals for any defiance.
Pending a final hearing, Walker has temporarily barred the university from enforcing any conflict-of-interest policy on expert witness testimony or legal consulting. He has left in place for now some limitations on faculty filing friend-of-the-court briefs, which is a higher level of personal advocacy than being an expert witness.
Before it’s over, Walker should dispose of that, too. Had something similar been in force in the 1960s, Manning Dauer, the founding chairman of the UF political science department, would not have been able to submit a reapportionment plan that a federal court imposed in 1967 to end decades of rural rule in the Legislature. Its leaders had everything to lose from that, yet there’s no record of anyone trying to censor Dauer’s right of free speech. In other words, even the arrogant “pork choppers” didn’t go as far as UF.
‘ANTICIPATORY OBEDIENCE’
This time, Walker wrote, there was an “all-too-familiar display of anticipatory obedience.”
He cited a September 2021 address to the Faculty Senate in which President Kent Fuchs warned against criticizing Florida’s COVID-19 response lest it “fracture the relationship between the university and the state government.” He was thinking, of course, of annual state appropriations on which the university heavily depends.
Fuchs is retiring. It is no safe bet that the trustees will choose a successor any less servile to Tallahassee, so Walker’s final order needs to be as forceful as his temporary injunction.
“Anticipatory obedience” is, of course, a gentle euphemism for lack of courage. Authoritarians like DeSantis don’t necessarily have to unsheathe the iron fist to have their way. Simple fear can suffice, and the perceived peril can be as bloodless as losing one’s job or funding.
It’s as important to defy the fear as to repel the fist.
“Consider the costs UF is willing to bear to maintain its power to discriminate based on viewpoint,” Walker explained. “It is willing to suffer threats to its accreditation, congressional inquiries, unrelenting bad press, an all-but-certain hit to its rankings, and the substantial monetary cost of hiring an experienced D.C. firm to defend its policy. The only thing UF will not do, it seems, is amend its policy to make clear that it will never consider viewpoint in denying a request to testify.”
UF’S LOFTY RANKING COULD SLIP
The threat to its accreditation is not remote. Neither is a ranking substantially lower than the fifth place among public universities that U.S. News & World Report published last year. Its judgment is based in part on how other educators esteem a school. Academic freedom must loom large in this “peer assessment survey,” which accounts for 20% of the total weight.
This isn’t UF’s first moment of shame. Under pressure from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, it fired a history professor in 1911 who dared to write that the South was in the wrong in the Civil War. In the late 1950s, it not only failed to protect students, faculty or staff from a legislative committee investigating homosexuality on Florida campuses; it also provided assistance to the hunters.
In that dark chapter of Florida history, UF fired 14 faculty members, others quit, and at least 50 students left or were expelled. In 1971, following protests that UF President Stephen O’Connell refused to recognize, 123 Black students withdrew from school. Earlier, more than 60 protesters had been arrested at a sit-in in his office.
There’s one thing the University of Florida can be proud of, however: It educated Walker. The judge earned both his bachelor’s and law degrees there, making him a “Double Gator.” If only its administrators cared as much for its reputation as he does.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee.
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