U. of Florida Doctor Says Administrators Blocked Him From Participating in Lawsuits About Masking

A fourth University of Florida professor says administrators rejected his request to testify in litigation against state leaders this year, and denied him the opportunity to share his expertise on the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on children in two additional lawsuits. He said he would not have been compensated for the testimony.

The professor, the pediatrician Jeffrey L. Goldhagen, had been asked by a lawyer for plaintiffs to testify in litigation against Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida commissioner of education, the Florida Department of Education, and the Florida Board of Education. The plaintiffs, Florida parents and children, had sought to overturn the state’s ban on mask mandates in schools. He had been asked to participate in two additional lawsuits as a declarant, he said. Declarants take part in legal proceedings by filing a statement that they declare to be true.

Goldhagen is a professor and chief of the division of community and societal pediatrics at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, in Jacksonville, and a professor in pediatric palliative care. He is also a former director of the Duval County Health Department.

The request to testify came at a critical time. DeSantis signed an executive order in late July barring schools from mandating masks, as cases of Covid-19 were climbing in Florida. Goldhagen submitted conflict-of-interest disclosures to the university, but his requests to participate were refused, he said.

For two of the lawsuits, he said, he participated anyway as a declarant. For the third, for which he was asked to testify, he urged the lawyer representing the plaintiffs to subpoena him. The lawyer, Charles Gallagher, did not. Gallagher, who confirmed Goldhagen would not have been paid for his testimony, said there was no time to waste when he and his team were preparing for trial. The case is now in appellate court.

A spokeswoman for the University of Florida did not immediately respond to questions on how the decisions about Goldhagen’s testimony had been reached, and whether other faculty members had also received rejections. Goldhagen said he would have spoken about the efficacy of masks and the virus’s impact on children.

The revelations mean that the university’s denial of three faculty members’ requests to participate in voting-rights litigation — a move that has provoked strong criticism from academic-freedom advocates — was not an isolated case. On Friday a court filing revealed that the university had denied requests by three political-science professors to testify as experts in voting-rights litigation. In its denial, the university said “litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests” and therefore a conflict of interest for faculty members.

Such a stance signals that professors at Florida’s flagship are being discouraged by the university from contradicting the political leadership of the state, a departure from the freedoms that faculty members depend on to conduct research and share that knowledge freely. The campus’s accreditor is investigating whether UF violated accreditation standards, and the university said late Monday it would review its conflict-of-interest policies. The university recently revised those policies, and the administrator in charge of that process did not respond to questions from The Chronicle about how requests for outside work are evaluated and what constitutes an “adverse interest” to the university.

Goldhagen heard from that administrator, Gary Wimsett, in mid-August about the denial of his request to testify. “I am not able to approve this activity,” Wimsett wrote. “Outside activities that may pose a conflict of interest to the executive branch of the State of Florida create a conflict for the University of Florida.”

Wimsett sent Goldhagen an identical message in mid-August on one of his requests to be a declarant. In September, Goldhagen followed up in an email to Wimsett on that request. “I am writing to learn about the appeal process/procedure for decisions related to disclosure for outside activities,” he wrote.

Wimsett responded firmly: “There is no mechanism for appealing disapprovals.”

Goldhagen asked why his request had been denied. “As you know,” he wrote, “I would be participating as a private citizen, and not as a UF faculty member.”

Wimsett wrote back: “UF will deny its employees’ requests to engage in outside activities when it believes the activities are adverse to its interests. As UF is an extension of the state as a state agency, litigation against the state is adverse to UF’s interests.”

A Moral and Ethical Standard

In an interview on Tuesday, Goldhagen said the denials had hurt on a personal and professional level. “This was a fundamental violation of the roles and responsibilities of the universities, in particular public universities,” he said. “It was frankly the first time in my 40-year career where I was forced into a situation to disregard a moral and ethical standard that I’d always maintained for myself … It caused me more internal turmoil than I have ever experienced.”

He said he was speaking out now because “it is not hyperbole how much is at stake here.”

Goldhagen’s case also contradicts a key element of Florida’s stated rationale for the political scientists’ rejections. The university on Monday said the issue was that the professors would have been paid, and campus leaders on Monday evening said the faculty members would have been free to participate pro bono.

But Goldhagen told The Chronicle that he had no expectation of being paid for any activity in the cases, and that he had not been asked by the conflict-of-interest office whether he would be compensated.

To experts in higher education, restricting testimony is the latest signal that policy making at Florida, including on classroom management and instruction, is entrenched with the interests of the Republican-dominated state government. The university’s president, W. Kent Fuchs, told colleagues last year that holding more virtual classes could lead to state budget cuts. He later said he did not have the power to mandate masks.

The revelation of another instance in which faculty testimony was restricted is striking to Barrett Taylor, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Texas. “That really suggests that this might be a more aggressive, more invasive strategy than I had anticipated,” he said. “The political pressures coming at higher ed right now are formidable, they’re intense, and they’re very different.”

On Tuesday the Democratic congressional delegation from Florida condemned the university’s rejection of the three political-science professors’ testimony in a letter to Fuchs, the president. No Republican representatives signed on.

“It is our hope that you simply reverse your current positions and allow these professors to participate with compensation in this voting-rights lawsuit,” the lawmakers wrote. “The prospect that the University of Florida would stand on an academic island in this respect would undoubtedly chill its ability to retain and recruit top talent.”