School takes heat over ban on voting-rights case testimony

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida has been asked by its accrediting body to explain how denying a request by three professors to serve as paid experts in a voting rights lawsuit conforms to standards for academic freedom and avoids undue political influence.

University leaders prohibited professors Dan Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Austin from being paid as expert witnesses in a lawsuit that says Florida’s new elections law harms voting rights. Over the weekend, school officials said such testimony would go against the school’s interest by conflicting with the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

On Monday, Belle Wheelan, president of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, told news outlets that the organization planned to investigate the university’s decision.

Smith chairs the university’s political science department, McDonald is a national expert on elections and Austin studies Black political behavior. All have testified in other cases as paid expert witnesses.

Later Monday, University of Florida President Kent Fuchs and Provost Joe Glover said in a letter to the campus community that the school will immediately appoint a task force “to review the university’s conflict-of-interest policy and examine it for consistency and fidelity.”

They said it is critical that the policy advances the university’s interests while protecting academic freedom. They also said the professors are free “to testify pro bono on their own time without using university resources.”

In response, attorneys for the professors said Tuesday that they’ll fight for the scholars’ right “to speak on their own personal time, as citizens and as scholars.”

“By picking and choosing which of its faculty can testify in court as expert witnesses over voting rights, the University of Florida is violating these professors’ constitutional rights in the place where their truthful views are needed most: a United States Courthouse,” said a statement from attorneys David O’Neil and Paul Donnelly. “They have sworn an oath to work on behalf of the people of Florida, not political interests.”

The 10 Democratic members of Florida’s congressional delegation Tuesday condemned the decision in a letter to Fuchs.

“We urge you to reconsider this ‘prior restraint’ on speech that violates the First Amendment as well as the deeply rooted principles of academic freedom that we know you and the University of Florida community hold so dear,” said the letter issued by the office of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

As part of the accrediting body’s investigation, school officials will be asked to provide more details about the decision, the Miami Herald reported.

Wheelan said findings are expected no later than June, and the university could face no action, a warning, be further monitored, placed on probation or lose its accreditation.