‘Hard to stay’: Is NC a haven for public university faculty fleeing other states?

Public higher education around the country is caught in the crosshairs of political debates. Now those appear to come at a cost: “brain drain,” or the loss of faculty.

In survey results published in September by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a national faculty group, a majority of more than 4,250 faculty in four states — Florida, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina — said they “would not recommend their state as a desirable place to work for colleagues.”

Each of the four states included in the survey, among others, at various points have become flashpoints in higher education in recent years — with limits on diversity efforts and changes to academic tenure for faculty, among other issues, dominating headlines and conversations.

About one-third of those surveyed by AAUP said they were actively considering leaving their respective states for employment elsewhere, with about 60% of those faculty citing their state’s “broad political climate” as a top reason for doing so.

Florida has become perhaps the most high-profile of the group, but higher education observers told The News & Observer that they see similarities unfolding in higher education policies and decisions in North Carolina.

There are differences, though. Changes in policy have unfolded more slowly in North Carolina, and have appeared less sweeping than those in Florida. Such differences have been welcomed by faculty who have fled Florida to teach in North Carolina.

But faculty in North Carolina don’t always think the grass is greener.

The N&O spoke to five faculty — two who teach in North Carolina after previous stints at the University of Florida, and three who have left UNC-Chapel Hill for other universities — about how political developments in their respective states influenced their decisions to seek employment elsewhere.

Leaving UF’s ‘culture of silence’ for NC

The University of Florida experienced a steady rise to near the top of the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the country’s best public universities from 2017 to 2022, breaking into the top 10 in 2017 before rising to the top 5 in 2021 and 2022.

But Florida’s flagship university has also charted rising numbers in another area: employee resignations. More than 1,000 UF employees resigned in 2022, the highest number of resignations over the past five years at the university, according to records obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

The University of Central Florida, Florida State University and the University of South Florida also saw increases in faculty resignations.

Maria Coady, who studies the education of multilingual students, was one of those faculty members who left UF in 2022. She is now the Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Educational Equity at NC State University’s College of Education.

Coady made the move to NC State for professional reasons, she said, after waiting “for the right opportunity.” But it isn’t possible to disconnect politics from her decision to leave Florida.

Though she felt there was a “culture of silence” throughout her time at UF, political pressures reached new heights in her last few years at the university, Coady said.

In 2021, university leaders initially barred three professors from testifying against the state in a voting rights case, arguing

that doing so would be a conflict of interest and against the university’s interests.

Though the university eventually reversed its decision, Coady — having worked as an expert consultant with the U.S. Department of Justice on English-learner education — said such testimony was a common request of university scholars, and the university’s initial decision, which many viewed as an attack on academic freedom, did not sit well with her.

Juan Hincapie-Castillo, who received his graduate degrees in pharmacy from UF before beginning his career as a professor there in 2019, said the battle over whether the professors could testify represented a “tipping point” for his views of UF and its leadership.

He felt like university leaders were “wishy-washy” over the issue and were not “standing for the faculty or academic freedom.” A scholar specializing in opioid research, Hincapie-Castillo said he worried that he would not be supported by the university if he were to speak out against potential opioid-related laws or policies in the state, despite UF’s standing as a public, land-grant university intended to serve the people of the state.

Similarly, when the state banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) — the decades-old framework that asserts racism is systemic and embedded throughout society — Coady felt like university leadership didn’t do enough to address faculty concerns.

“Those conversations could have been had there, but they weren’t because [there] was some sense of fear and silencing,” Coady said.

Coady also felt like some faculty weren’t doing enough to stand up against the legislation.

“I understand, at the same time, the pressures faculty face to keep their jobs,” Coady said. “These are realities, so people don’t want to necessarily put themselves out there.”

Speaking out isn’t always easy or viable for faculty members, she said, especially for faculty of color who may not feel comfortable or supported when voicing concerns. One solution — moving out of state — is also out of the question for families who can’t afford to leave, Coady said.

Hincapie-Castillo, who is Latino and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, is now an assistant professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he feels school and university leaders are more “intentional” and make an effort to support diversity, equity and inclusion work by faculty.

Though Hincapie-Castillo said he enjoys being at UNC and that North Carolina seems like a good fit for him, he sees political pressures on higher education here and thinks about how future elections might impact the state of affairs — and lead to more faculty leaving the Tar Heel State.

Leaving UNC for other states, a private university

Holden Thorp, who served as chancellor at UNC from 2008 to 2013, told The N&O that even before political battles over higher education intensified in North Carolina in recent years, many faculty have historically left Chapel Hill and other public universities — generally when they are recruited by universities with more financial resources or promising professional opportunities.

But there have been “tragic losses” among the UNC faculty in recent years, especially of faculty of color, he said, due in part, at least, to those battles.

Faculty who have left UNC in recent years, and who spoke to The N&O, cited both professional and political reasons for their decisions.

Jennifer Ho, a scholar of Asian American studies and race who left for the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019, said her decision was largely due to what she felt was a lack of support from department and university leaders when she sought leadership roles or spoke out about issues at the university.

But the battle over Silent Sam, the Confederate monument that stood on the UNC campus for more than a century before protesters tore it down in 2018, and other controversies didn’t encourage her to stay, either.

Deen Freelon, who joined the faculty at UNC in the fall of 2017, said he enjoyed his work and day-to-day teaching at the university’s journalism school, but he took issue with university leaders’ decisions regarding Silent Sam during his first few years at the university — including the UNC System offering to pay the Sons of Confederate Veterans $2.5 million to care for and preserve the statue off campus.

“Those were decisions that I felt were unforced errors, as they say, and it was very difficult for me to reconcile why those decisions were being made,” Freelon said.

Freelon, an expert in political communication and digital politics, left for an endowed chair position at the University of Pennsylvania this summer, a move he said was driven by “a push and pull” of reasons. He wanted to advance professionally to a chair position, he said, but the university’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its initial denial of tenure to journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones in 2021 — for which he signed a petition criticizing university leaders’ actions — also contributed.

Notably, Freelon said, Penn is “a private institution and not subject to some of the political pressures that UNC has been.”

Leaving UNC for Duke

Kelly Hogan, who spent almost two decades as a biology professor at UNC, also left the university this summer for a private institution: Duke University.

A teaching professor who was not on the track to academic tenure, Hogan has become a noted expert in innovative, student-centered education that breaks away from traditional models of lecturing. Her approach includes “inclusive teaching” — also the name of a book she authored with fellow UNC professor Viji Sathy about the practice — in which professors can use a series of tips and tools “to make all students feel welcome and included” in the classroom.

While she felt her teaching and her work was celebrated by UNC administrators, Hogan said she became increasingly aware over the past few years that some states have begun to target diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in higher education.

While it was not “the biggest factor” in deciding to leave UNC — Duke also offered her “a different workload and professional package,” she said — Hogan worried that her “inclusive” methods might be misconstrued by critics outside of the university, or that bans on DEI-related topics in some state employee training programs around the country might limit her ability to effectively train professors on her approaches.

“I feel good about everything I was teaching curriculum-wise and how I was teaching it,” Hogan said. “But I also felt like someone could take one sentence — whether it was out of the book I wrote … or something I was teaching — and blow it up into something that became political.”

This past legislative session, the state General Assembly passed a law banning 13 race- and gender-related concepts from being promoted in state workplace training programs, including at the state’s public universities.

Other policies passed by the UNC System Board of Governors and the General Assembly have banned “compelled speech” in hiring and admissions, which led UNC-Chapel Hill to end the practice of asking for “DEI statements” — generally, statements in which faculty seeking employment or promotion are asked to detail how they have contributed to diversity, equity or inclusion in their work — on applications.

“I think we need to have a more nuanced view of what we mean by ‘DEI.’ It is not one thing and it is not to be vilified,” Hogan said, noting that her definition of “inclusive teaching” expands beyond just race and gender to supporting students with disabilities or those from rural areas, among other characteristics. “But the climate around that is certainly changing, and it doesn’t feel like faculty have the same voice they used to have around that.”

Both Hogan and Ho said they continue to believe in the mission of UNC and public higher education in North Carolina.

Watching what has unfolded in higher education in North Carolina and at UNC over the past few years has been “heartbreaking,” Ho said.

“I really believe in the mission of UNC-Chapel Hill and the UNC System as a whole. There are amazing people who work at UNC-Chapel Hill, and I’m always going to have a deep fondness and appreciation and gratitude for being there,” Ho said, adding that she believes “there is room for improvement.”

“I have so much respect for the faculty who stay,” Ho said. “Because it’s hard to stay.”