A UF law professor joined two other state university professors July 30 in filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a controversial 2023 state law that mandates stricter and more frequent tenure reevaluations.
The lawsuit argues the Florida Legislature usurped the constitutional authority of the State University System’s Board of Governors by coming up “with its own rules,” according to Gary Edinger, an attorney representing the three faculty in the suit.
The rules established in the law, Senate Bill 266, require state universities like UF to subject tenured faculty to comprehensive evaluations of their productivity, research and teaching duties every five years. The law also gives university presidents the final signoff on evaluations and prevents decisions from being arbitrated.
Former UF President Ben Sasse and Provost Scott Angle have vocally supported post-tenure review. At a Faculty Senate meeting last August, Sasse said the policy would help crack down on productivity issues stemming from “quietly-retired” faculty.
Steven Willis, the UF law professor in the suit, said post-tenure review is the “death of tenure.”
“Tenure doesn't exist in Florida right now,” he said. “It's a five year contract.”
In the state’s first round of post-tenure review completed in July, UF led the state in negative evaluations. According to preliminary data provided by Angle during a June Faculty Senate meeting, 21% of the 258 tenured UF faculty who were evaluated were unsatisfactory, didn’t meet expectations, resigned or are working with deans to become full-time teachers if they didn’t meet research requirements.
UF’s Office of Strategic Marketing and Communications didn’t respond to requests for the finalized post-tenure review data and a public records request for the report was not fulfilled in time for publication. Data provided by the UF Board of Trustees indicates about 22% of the 136 faculty in the bargaining unit didn't meet expectations or were unsatisfactory.
At Florida State University, all 134 tenured faculty who were evaluated either met or exceeded expectations, according to a report provided by the school.
UF faculty have previously expressed concerns the review process may allow the president and provost to make decisions on tenure based on political or personal favoritism. The university’s post-tenure review policy stipulates that “political opinion, expressive viewpoint and ideological beliefs” are not factored into tenured faculties’ evaluations, but fears remain.
“So many faculty think it's going to be used against faculty on the left, and maybe someday it will and that is wrong,” said Willis, a Republican. “I think for now, it's going to be used against faculty on the right.”
Qing Lu, a tenured UF biostatistics professor, said he was selected for post-tenure review and was evaluated as exceeding expectations. He’s concerned the review process endangers the job security that comes with tenure and will make the university less competitive.
“Tenure usually means it's a permanent job,” Lu said. “It gives you the freedom to pursue the research idea you want. But if we go to post-tenure review, there you have to meet all these criteria. You need to keep publishing papers, grants. If you don't have tenure protection, and if you have this post tenure review, it's very hard for people to do that important research.”
Lu said he saw firsthand how the weakening of tenure hurts a university. He said when he was a professor at Michigan State University, he witnessed professors from a neighboring school, Wayne State University, leave over the years after Wayne State was accused of trying to weaken tenure protections.
Ange Mlinko, a UF English professor, said she was evaluated as meeting expectations for this year’s post-tenure review. She said undergoing the evaluation “steals time from our teaching and research.”
Before post-tenure review, UF evaluated tenured faculty through a Sustained Performance Evaluation Program (SPEP). Professors were evaluated every seven years by a committee composed of tenured faculty, their department chair, their dean and the provost.
SPEP did not require evaluated faculty to be involved in the evaluation whereas post-tenure review mandates faculty to submit an updated resume to their department chair and write an optional paper detailing their achievements.
“Upper level administration are not in a position to really judge our work,” Mlinko said. “They don't know what criteria to use. You can't use ‘metrics’ to quantify the work of writing, the work of scholarly and literary influence.”
Bruce Welt, a UF agricultural and biological engineering professor, said while he wasn’t selected for this year’s round of post-tenure review, he considers the policy to be a mistake. Before SB 266, tenure allowed faculty to “pursue avenues of inquiry that might not be popular” and “[kept] the political realm out of higher education,” Welt said.
Under post-tenure review, Welt said the president or the university can retaliate against faculty who disagree on different views, threatening “free inquiry and academic freedom.”
“It is a threat to tenure,” he said, “Not that faculty are afraid of being measured. We're measured in every way: course evaluations, peer evaluation [and] annual evaluations in our work. This post-tenure review is rooted in a misconception of the definition of tenure.”
Welt said it is a misconception that tenure is permanent. He said in his own department, three tenured faculty had been fired for poor productivity before post-tenure review was established.
Proponents of post-tenure review say the process will reward productive tenured faculty.
“I think we owe it to students to ensure they have the very best faculty teaching their classes — just as we owe it to Florida taxpayers to ensure their dollars support productive, energetic and accomplished faculty,” wrote Provost Scott Angle in a document sent to The Alligator. “Post-tenure review is just one way to help achieve that outcome.”
Angle wrote post-tenure review will provide a tool to “reward faculty excellence” and that any issues this year for post-tenure review was related to its “transition,” not its concept or goals. He previously said during a June 21 Faculty Senate meeting that the post-tenure review process was “rushed” under state mandate.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said unproductive tenured faculty were the “number one financial drag” on state universities during a July 24 press conference at St. Petersburg College.
“We created a law that said, ‘all tenured professors must undergo review every five years and can be let go for poor performance,’” DeSantis said at the press conference. “You have seen that happen in some instances. I think you will continue to see it churn.”
Contact Timothy Wang at twang@alligator.org. Follow him on X @timothyw_g.
Timothy Wang is a junior journalism student and the Fall 2024 Santa Fe College Reporter. He was the University Administration reporter for Summer 2024. His hobbies include gaming or reading manga.
