Faculty Candidates Weigh Divisive-Concepts Laws
Last week, I wrote about how education professors are responding to state laws limiting the teaching of “divisive concepts,” including race and sexuality.
Several of the professors and students I spoke with wondered how those laws might change where professors — particularly those who identify as LGBTQ or members of minority groups — choose to work and live. This week, I reached out to faculty members in states where those laws have passed to find out whether it’s getting harder to recruit or retain professors as a result.
Though it’s too soon to tell if the laws have become a deterrent for prospective hires, there are early signs that the issue is on job candidates’ minds.
In Florida, which has seen several new laws recently that concern college faculty and staff, one measure signed last month restricts how professors and teachers can discuss race.
Dana Thompson Dorsey is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of South Florida. She directs the university’s David C. Anchin Center for the Advancement of Teaching, where she teaches critical race theory, among other topics.
Dorsey said she frequently talks to friends and colleagues in academe who say they would not consider moving to Florida because of those new laws. They ask her if she’s concerned about the legislation, given that her research focuses on topics including school segregation and implicit bias. (Dorsey said she doesn’t curtail her teaching or her research based on the laws because what she is doing does not violate them.)
“There are constant questions I’m getting from colleagues and friends out of Florida where they say, ‘I don’t know how you do it, because I would not work there,’” Dorsey said. The questions make her worry about the faculty members that her university could lose. “It’s just anecdotal but it’s problematic,” Dorsey said. “That’s what scholars are thinking about.”
A faculty member at the University of Central Florida said a finalist for a position at the university this spring told her the political climate in the state was among the factors she was weighing when considering the job. The faculty member spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, saying that she feared retribution. State politics did not appear to be the deciding factor, the faculty member said, but the candidate did not end up at the university.
“When you are trying to find the best talent you can to enhance the academic program for your students, it doesn’t make it any easier to attract top talent when there is a perception that the state in which your university is located does not value academic freedom,” the faculty member told me.
Andrew Gothard, president of Florida’s faculty union, said he expects an exodus of faculty members, particularly those of color or who study issues related to history and race, along with gender and sexuality — two other topics at issue in new laws.
“People are wondering, ‘Should I take my career and my family and my life to a state where politicians are trying to control free speech, free thought, and academic freedom on college and university campuses?’” Gothard said. “We anticipate that these laws are going to have a detrimental effect on the ability of Florida’s higher-education system to compete nationally as it has up to this point.”
Patterns Across the Country
These concerns are not unique to Florida, as many other states have adopted similar laws.
Michael Givel is president of the University of Oklahoma chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which is among the plaintiffs in a legal challenge to a law restricting how teachers discuss race or gender. “If you’re prohibiting people from teaching certain legally protected subjects like race and gender, it stands to reason if somebody is specializing in that, that they’re not going to come here,” he said.
For my story last week about how education professors are responding to divisive-concepts laws, I spoke to Sheneka Williams, chair of the department of educational administration at Michigan State University. (Divisive-concepts laws have been proposed in Michigan but not enacted.) Williams also believes divisive-concepts laws will affect the ability of universities in states with those laws to recruit and retain strong faculty.
“You will lose some of your best and brightest faculty because they will go to places where they have more freedom to be a scholar,” Williams said. “I think that’s the larger threat — to the education that can be offered to students.”
In Tennessee, a similar law enacted last month is prompting graduate students to look elsewhere for work. Kevin Hoffman, who is earning a master’s degree at Vanderbilt University’s education college, said many of his classmates studying to become teachers have said, “I’d love to stay in Tennessee but I don’t feel like I can adequately do my job in a state where this is banned.” Hoffman plans to return to California to take on a vice-principal role after he graduates in May.
Chris Busey, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s College of Education, said he has spoken with faculty around the country who are collectively concerned about the divisive-concepts laws being enacted in different states.
“Faculty of color are looking at these things, they’re looking at where these laws are being passed, and a lot of faculty are making professional decisions based on that,” said Busey, who filed a grievance against the university last fall claiming administrators had infringed on his academic freedom. Our Emma Pettit wrote an update about the grievance on Monday.
He said that professors are “trying to protect their scholarship, but even beyond scholarship, I think people are asking questions about, ‘Is this the kind of place where I want to raise my family?’”
Your Take
Is your college in a state that restricts the teaching of “divisive concepts”? I want to hear from you.
How have any new laws influenced your decision about where to work? How have they changed your institution’s ability to recruit diverse scholars, or those studying certain fields?
Email me: adrienne.lu@chronicle.com.
—Adrienne Lu
