Are Other States Poaching Florida’s College Administrators?

Miriam L. Wallace is worrying about something she hasn’t worried about in nearly three decades: moving.

Wallace joined the faculty at New College of Florida in 1995, and she’s been in Sarasota ever since. Over the years she’s brought in tens of thousands of grant dollars, led the gender-studies program, and climbed the leadership ranks. Eventually she became chair of the humanities division, a job she’s held for the past six years.

This month she’s packing her bags.

“I just didn’t feel that I could stay here,” she told The Chronicle. “I definitely felt pushed from behind.”

Wallace — who is now off to an arts and sciences deanship at the University of Illinois at Springfield — is one of several senior administrators to leave Florida in recent months as Republican politicians try to impose a new vision on the state’s public colleges. State legislation has aimed to restrict teaching and programs related to diversity and race, and to reshape faculty tenure. New College in particular has been thrown into turmoil as conservative activists stage what critics describe as an ideological takeover.

Parsing out why a person leaves a job, particularly when it comes to the contingent world of college leadership, isn’t straightforward. Deans, provosts, and other types of administrators come and go for any number of reasons, such as family, a promotion, or a better work environment. Wallace, for example, said she was already considering a change.

But the steady trickle of administrators departing to other states — at least half a dozen so far this year — is adding to fears among many academics that the Sunshine State could face a mass higher-ed exodus. Faculty in Florida and elsewhere are wary of an “incredible brain drain” over the next year or so, according to Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida, the state’s faculty union. And what’s happening there could have national implications, as other GOP-led states take their cues from Florida on higher-ed policy.

“Over time, there could be a very distinct pattern of academic migration to certain states over others,” Paul Rubin, an assistant professor who specializes in higher-ed policy at the University of Utah, said in an email.

Executive search firms across the country are more heavily recruiting from Florida and Texas — where it’s become harder to fill jobs — for leadership posts elsewhere, two search consultants told The Chronicle.

When Wallace was considering a deanship in Georgia, she said one search consultant told her bluntly: “‘I’m looking at all of you in Florida and Texas.’”

Quietly, other administrators at New College, as well as faculty, are mulling their own exits, Wallace said. She called the situation a bellwether for academic migration across the country.

“Other people in higher ed need to know what this looks like, how it happens,” she said.

Administrative turnover came up frequently in interviews conducted for a new American Association of University Professors report about Florida, said Afshan Jafar, an assistant sociology professor at Connecticut College and one of the report’s authors. The faculty group found what it described as widespread threats to academic freedom in Florida, and concluded that professors in the state “face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in U.S. history.”

The overarching worry, Jafar said, was that faculty will ultimately be left without support from their bosses. One example: Last month, after drawing the ire of one of New College’s trustees, a visiting professor’s contract wasn’t renewed.

“If they don’t have outspoken deans, and outspoken provosts, and outspoken presidents … what are they left with, fighting this out on Twitter?” she said.

Senior administrators in charge of diversity offices are especially likely to leave their jobs, Jafar said. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, demanded in late December that public colleges in the state report how much money they spend annually on programs and courses that discuss diversity, spurring a wave of GOP-led states to do the same. Last month, Florida barred public colleges from spending state or federal money on diversity efforts.

“Florida’s getting out of that game,” DeSantis said at a May news conference. “If you want to do things like gender ideology, go to Berkeley.”

A spokesperson for the University of Florida declined to comment for this story; a spokesperson for New College of Florida didn’t respond to a request on Tuesday.

Bryan Coker, president of Maryville College, a small private institution in Tennessee, said he has colleagues in Florida who specialize in DEI efforts and are now looking for jobs in other states.

“Without a doubt, those are some of the most vulnerable positions,” he said.

Also vulnerable are student-life administrators, Jafar said. She said she learned from compiling the report that some are concerned about how the new ban on diversity spending could affect their ability to support students. Academic administrators, meanwhile, must contend with a law forbidding courses “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.”

At New College, the future of a course Wallace taught on critical theory is bleak, she said.

“This is not an unintended consequence,” said Frank Fernandez, an assistant professor of higher-education administration and policy at the University of Florida. “It’s very much intended.”

Laura Rosenbury recently left her post as dean of the University of Florida’s law school to become the president of Barnard College in New York City. In an interview with The New York Times in March, she said, “Florida politics are much more nuanced than what is often portrayed in the media.” Rosenbury was not available for an interview with The Chronicle in time for publication.

Last week, Kevin Coughlin, the former vice president for enrollment management and services at Florida International University, started a similar job at the University of Maine at Orono.

His reasons for leaving ran the gamut, he told The Chronicle. He said he’d accomplished many of his goals at FIU and wanted a challenge leading a New England flagship amid demographic change. Attacks on diversity programs weren’t necessarily a motivating factor, nor was the overall condition of Florida’s higher-ed system.

He does, however, have a daughter who is an undergraduate at the University of Florida.

“As a parent,” he said, “I’m worried.”