Liberal-leaning professors are leaving coveted jobs with tenure. And there are signs that recruiting scholars has become harder.
Gov. Ron DeSantis had just taken office in 2019 when the University of Florida lured Neil H. Buchanan, a prominent economist and tax law scholar, from George Washington University.
Now, 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.”
He is not the only liberal-leaning professor to leave one of Florida’s highly regarded public universities. Many are giving up coveted tenured positions and blaming their departures on Governor DeSantis and his effort to reshape the higher education system to fit his conservative principles.
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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No fuckin way I would take a job in academia in Florida or any other hard right state for that matter.
At this point, I think the only conservative academics might be some economists and theology professors at religious universities. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out - if it’s true that lots of academics were not allowed into tenure etc because of bias rather than the alternate view that education corresponds with liberalism, there might be a flood of potential hires, albeit not with existing track records. However, if that isn’t true, then you’re going to be looking at the dregs of the academic system, people who both can’t get jobs elsewhere and don’t have an ability to get an associated job who are willing to go to a very annoying (to them) political climate.
universities hiring away top researchers have to provide positions with tenure to have any chance to poach them. Generally along with enticing research facilities. Even then its going to be hard to get them to leave their established lab. Granted im not sure florida had any of those type of folks to begin with and if they did I would not be surprised if they left already.
Well, then I have to say his policies are working. The Governor can’t just fire tenured professors, I don’t think. All he can really do is make them quit. So, while I’m sure plenty of liberals will see this as a reasonable response to his policies; it’s actually a win for DeSantis, and his supporters will only see it as such. Believe me, the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, et. al., will see to it that those positions are filled quickly with the “right people.”
