A tenured University of Florida professor has sued the university’s president and three other administrators, alleging UF violated his free speech rights when it stripped him of his teaching assignments and barred him from walking onto the campus last fall after he criticized the school’s decision to conduct classes in person amid surging COVID-19 cases in Florida.
Richard Burt, a UF professor of English since 2003, alleges UF President Kent Fuchs and other key administrators issued conflicting COVID-19 protocol guidelines at the start of the fall semester last August, according to the suit filed March 29 in U.S. District Court in Gainesville.
He maintains the state’s top public university abruptly reversed its policy of teaching remotely during the first three weeks of the fall semester after UF Board Chairman Morteza “Mori” Hosseini, a close ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis, mandated that all classes be taught in person, according to the suit.
At the time, DeSantis was fighting with the state’s school districts over mask mandates. And a UF Faculty Senate report released in December said UF employees were told “not to criticize the Governor of Florida or UF policies related to COVID-19 in media interactions.”
Hessy Fernandez, a UF spokeswoman, said the university doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
Burt has sued Fuchs, the UF president; David Richardson, dean of the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Mary Watt, an associate dean of the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Sidney Dobrin, the chair of the Department of English. None responded to a request for comment from the Herald.
The lawsuit comes six months after three UF political science professors sued Fuchs, UF Provost Joe Glover and the university’s board of trustees, alleging their First Amendment rights were violated when the school barred them from testifying as expert witnesses in a case challenging Florida’s new voting law. Last week, a federal judge ruled the law, Senate Bill 90, contained several measures that were unconstitutional and barred Florida lawmakers from passing future voter laws without getting court approval.
After public outcry in the political science professors’ case, UF allowed the three to serve as paid expert witnesses, on their own time and not using UF resources.
Three other UF professors joined the political science professors’ suit, contending the university also violated their rights when it prevented them from filing amicus briefs in suits against the state, one related to a felons voting case and another to COVID-19 mask mandates.
The six professors asked the court to strike down UF’s conflict-of-interest policy and declare unlawful any policy that would prevent faculty from participating in outside activities, paid or unpaid, “on the ground that the proposed activity is not aligned with the ‘interests’ of the State of Florida or any of its entities or instrumentalities.”
On Jan. 21, a federal judge ordered UF from enacting its conflict-of-interest policy, calling it unconstitutional.
“This is part of a bigger thing; it’s part of a thing where the DeSantis forces are trying to squelch any opposition opinion,” said Richard Johnson, the Tallahassee attorney who’s representing Burt. “It’s just part of a generalized attack on freedom of speech.”
Burt, who’s asking a judge for monetary relief and to order administrators to stop violating his First Amendment rights, declined to comment.
Email exchange sparked tension
The seeds of the Burt case were planted in early August when Burt learned of a university memo stating faculty could teach remotely for the first three weeks of the fall 2021 semester, according to Burt’s suit. During this period, Florida was reporting a record number of new novel coronavirus cases from the delta variant, with daily COVID case counts topping 20,000 and higher.
Burt notified Dobrin, his English Department chair, that he would be teaching remotely. He felt vulnerable to a COVID infection because of several surgeries, being 67 and not having at the time a third COVID-19 vaccination.
On Aug. 13, however, Fuchs sent an email to UF’s faculty that directed all professors to teach in person. According to the suit, Fuchs sent a draft of that email to Hosseini, UF’s board chair, offering to let Hosseini make changes. Hosseini told Fuchs that DeSantis’ office had received his draft email.
Dobrin emailed the English Department faculty on Aug. 16, referencing Fuchs’ order about teaching in person. Three days later, on Aug. 19, after a department meeting the day before, Dobrin sent an email to the English Department faculty, apologizing for not providing minutes from the previous day’s meeting, saying in the email, “The ground is shifting too often for me to convey policies in writing and be comfortable that those policies will remain constant.”
On Aug. 22, Dobrin sent another email to the English Department faculty, saying, “Please remember that if you plan to provide a remote option for your students, you need to notify me.“
On Aug. 23, Burt notified his students they would be meeting remotely so they should not show up to class in person. As part of that email, he attached a statement from the president of UF’s faculty union, criticizing UF for its poor compliance with the CDC’s COVID guidelines.
An unnamed student dropped the class and complained to UF about Burt, the complaint reads.
Dobrin reiterated to Burt that UF’s policy was to hold in-person classes for the fall semester.
Later on Aug. 23, Burt sent another email to his students, saying, according to the suit, “he had been ordered, by his Chair, against his will, to teach his classes face-to-face.” In that email, Burt also wrote, “YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO KEEP READING. YOU MAY STOP HERE.” He then shared with his students the emails between him and Dobrin.
UF takes away his classes
The next day, Dobrin told Burt to cancel his classes for the day. On Aug. 25, Dobrin informed Burt someone else would take over his classes.
On Aug. 30, Watt put Burt on involuntary administrative leave with pay, pending an investigation. She barred him from stepping foot on campus and required him to submit to a mental exam and to authorize release of the results to UF.
‘On Aug. 24, Richardson, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, requested a human resources investigation initially into Burt’s “disruptive behavior.” UF’s Employee Relations Investigator Petra Pindar then added two more charges: faculty misconduct and violation of the collective bargaining agreement.
Burt’s lawsuit denounced the charges as “so vague and amorphous that guilt or innocence can be easily manipulated to the desired outcome of the investigator.”
On Nov. 8, Pindar released her final report. The report reprimanded Burt for allegedly taking action after being told not to do anything (which the complaint contends is false), not attending the fall meeting and using “Herr Doktor Rev. Professor Blind Burt Ph.4KUltaHD,Department of loser Studies, Pharmakonology, and Cosmic Criticism” as a signature block.
Professor suspended without pay
On Jan. 19, Richardson and Dobrin co-signed a letter notifying Burt he would be suspended without pay for five days, describing his emails to students as “improper and unprofessional in content and form.”
In addition, they warned he would need to “comply with all university rules and all directions of the Chair, Dean and university leadership; make all student-related email communications professional and applicable to the immediate discussion; use the correct signature block; and take courses in email effectiveness and cultivating judgment.”
Otherwise, the university would terminate him.
Johnson, the attorney representing Burt, said the sanction set up Burt to be fired on any future pretext, prompting Burt’s suit.
“They said, ‘We’re suspending you without pay for five days,’ which is not a big deal. But what was a big deal was that they said, ‘We’re putting you on a sort of permanent probation where you can be fired for just anything,’ ” Johnson said.
“That’s a hell of a thing to do when you’re a tenured professor and have lifetime security. What they’ve done is stripped his tenure away.”
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