Barnard President Laura Rosenbury Is Focus of AAUP Conference Panel on “Political Interference in Florida’s Higher Education System”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 27, 2024
Contact: aaupbarnard@gmail.com
Laura Rosenbury became the focus of discussion during a panel on “Political Interference in Florida’s Higher Education System” at the 2024 national AAUP National Conference in Washington, DC earlier this month for her role in the attack on academic freedom at the University of Florida, where she was Dean of the Levin School of Law before becoming Barnard College’s President. The panel discussed a 2023 AAUP Special Committee report on interference in higher education by the DeSantis administration. Among the examples highlighted were the University of Florida and Laura Rosenbury’s actions in barring law school faculty from testifying as expert witnesses against a voter suppression law, which were described as “one of the earliest and most disturbing signs of trouble in Florida’s higher education system.” The crisis arose when faculty were asked to offer their academic expertise by an economic and racial justice group trying to stop SB90, a law that “created obstacles to vote-by-mail, curtailed access to drop boxes, and criminalized ‘line warming’ activities such as providing food or water to voters waiting outside polling stations under Florida’s hot sun . . . and disproportionately limited the ability of Black and Latinx voters to cast ballots.” Rosenbury prohibited these faculty from the public exercise of their academic freedom by deeming their testimony, as state employees, to be a conflict of interest. However, the faculty eventually won a lawsuit against the University of Florida and Rosenbury, in particular, for suppressing academic freedom in an act of “preemptive subservience” to Florida’s ruling party.
When the AAUP Special Committee began their year-long investigation and issued a preliminary report, they found that “academic administrators in Florida “not only have failed to contest” attacks on the system “but have too frequently been complicit in and, in some cases, explicitly supported them.” They also found that “numerous faculty members in the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law whom the committee interviewed expressed disbelief that their dean, Laura Rosenbury . . . had just been announced as the incoming president of Barnard College.” At this month’s panel, discussants emphasized how Rosenbury’s move to Barnard was an example and warning to those who think that attacks on higher education and academic freedom only happen in places like Florida. After all, as the AAUP preliminary report stated, “academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history,” which, “if sustained, threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state, with the direst implications for the entire country.”
Notably, President Rosenbury’s attempts to suppress academic freedom during her tenure at the University of Florida echo the concerns that Barnard faculty expressed about her leadership in their April 2024 vote of no-confidence. For more information, please see links below.
AAUP Special Committee Preliminary Report: https://www.aaup.org/file/Preliminary_Report_Florida.pdf
AAUP Special Committee Final Report:
Judge Mark E. Walker Opinion on Faculty Lawsuit:
https://casetext.com/case/austin-v-univ-of-fla-bd-of-trs
Washington Post Editorial Board Opinion Piece on Judge Walker’s Injunction:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/25/win-florida-academic-freedom-democracy/
Chronicle of Higher Education coverage:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/inside-the-academic-freedom-crisis-that-roiled-floridas-flagship
Inside Higher Ed Coverage:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/01/24/judge-mostly-sides-florida-professors-speech-case
New York Times Coverage: