New College of Florida and Spartanburg Community College were added to the American Association of University Professors' list of institutions approved for material violations of widely accepted academic and government standards.
The AAUP Steering Committee voted on the bill on February 24.
The association reported further details in the special committee report, Political interference and academic freedom in Florida's public higher education system..
In the case of New College of Florida, the report criticizes the unprecedented politically motivated takeover of New College of Florida and the imposition on the institution of an aggressive ideological agenda that departs entirely from shared governance. Explain. The Board of Trustees and administration completely restructured the University's academic offerings without meaningful faculty participation and denied academic due process to several faculty members during tenure applications and renewals.
The report details the restructuring of New College of Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis. The restructuring began with the appointment of six new members to the university's board of trustees in January 2023, said to be committed to ignoring its fiduciary responsibilities to the institution. I support advancing the Governor's political goals.
Following the ouster of then-President Patricia Okker, the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee abolished the university's Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence and the Gender Studies Program. They also attacked tenure and imposed new admissions standards and athletics programs without meaningful faculty involvement. All of these actions violate the principles of shared governance that AAUP has long supported.
The Select Committee received ample evidence that these actions had seriously, if not irreparably, impaired the collective and individual functioning of New College's faculty. Statement on University Government. The report concluded that the college takeover was “one of the most serious and widespread violations of AAUP principles and standards at a single institution in recent history.”
For Spartanburg Community College The AAUP Investigative Committee found that: The community college administration's sudden and unilateral abolition of the Faculty Senate on April 10, 2023 was done to prevent the Senate from voting that day against implementing the administration's policy requiring faculty to be on campus for nearly 40 hours each week. .
In the message announcing the dissolution, the administration declared that “there is no shared governance” at the university beyond curriculum and instructional issues. All other institutional decisions rest entirely with the president and board of directors. The administration replaced the Senate with its own designed Academic Council, which included 13 administrators among its 33 members and whose bylaws limited its deliberation on academic policy.