UF’s free speech task force offers no accountability

The saga of the UF professors may seem over. The University of Florida has said the three political science professors initially banned from testifying in a voting lawsuit against the state can go ahead and appear. But many questions remain, and a task force formed by UF President Kent Fuchs isn’t going to give the public the answers we deserve.

By Nov. 29, Fuchs’ task force must offer answers to two questions: “When should UF allow professors to serve as expert witnesses in lawsuits and what role does faculty have in reviewing these requests?” as the Miami Herald reported.

Important questions, certainly. The answers should, at a minimum, include an assertion that a public university can never serve as a mouthpiece for the state. How could a school of UF’s prominence have come up with the initial reasoning for refusing the professors’ request to testify for the plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the state’s new law reducing access to ballot drop boxes and limiting vote-by-mail requests?

“UF will deny its employees’ requests to engage in outside activities when it determines the activities are adverse to its interests. As UF is a state actor, litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests,” the university’s vice president in charge of compliance wrote in an email to the professors.

That statement is utterly antithetical to the spirit of free inquiry critical to higher education and the very foundations of a democratic republic. The idea that the university, as a state-funded entity, can never have employees criticize the state belongs not among higher education in the United States, but rather the despotic regimes around the world whose leaders were so beloved by our previous president.

Fuchs’ task force, from the outset, is doing only half the job. By strictly keeping its inquiries forward-looking, the university avoids accountability for past actions. The denial of professors’ abilities to testify in trials against the state was not limited simply to these three professors. Another professor was denied the ability to testify in a lawsuit against the state’s ban on mask mandates. Four others were barred from signing a brief in a lawsuit against the state’s implementation of a voter-approved constitutional amendment giving most felons the right to vote.

But by simply looking to change this outrageous policy of gagging professors, this task force fails to answer the most urgent question: How did this policy come to be in the first place?

Let us be clear: We expect heads to roll. It is not enough for the university to hide behind that passive-voice phrase that is the final defense of incompetent politicians and bureaucrats everywhere: “Mistakes were made.”

By whom?

Without answering that question, this task force is a sham.

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. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.