TAMPA, Fla. — The University of Florida violated its own hiring procedures while bringing aboard Joseph Ladapo to a tenured position, according to a faculty committee report released Wednesday.
The hiring of Ladapo, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis picked last year to be the state’s surgeon general, did not adequately involve the input of faculty normally charged with reviewing a candidate’s application for tenure, the report found.
Administrators accelerated Ladapo’s start date to accommodate DeSantis’ announcement that the doctor would become the state’s next surgeon general, it said. And some faculty members felt Ladapo was the subject of “preferential treatment on the basis of his political opinions,” the report said.
“The irregularities noted above were of concern to the members of this committee and appeared to violate the spirit, and in review the exact letter, of UF hiring regulations and procedures, particularly in the vital role faculty play in evaluating the qualifications of their peers,” reads the report, which was compiled by seven professors from across five different university sectors.
When DeSantis announced he was picking Ladapo to be Florida’s next surgeon general, the governor’s office wrote that the doctor “was recently granted a professorship at the University of Florida.” Under his deal with the state and UF, Ladapo is to spend 20 percent of his time teaching and researching at the university, and 80 percent of it running the Department of Health.
Ladapo makes $262,000 a year as a professor, plus $75,000 for a role in which he’s charged with “developing policies and interventions to reduce healthcare disparities for UF Health.”
The report came in the wake of media scrutiny about Ladapo’s hiring. UF Faculty Senate chairperson David Bloom convened the committee and asked them to evaluate whether Ladapo’s hiring was consistent with UF College of Medicine hiring practices.
Using interviews with faculty members, public emails and media reports, the committee came to the conclusion that Ladapo’s hire did not comport with those practices.
For example, university rules require a search committee to be convened during the hiring process. In Ladapo’s case, such a committee of four professors was formed, but two of the professors on it say they were never consulted and had “no knowledge that this position was being filled,” the report said. Another had stopped working at UF two years prior.
However, it’s not unusual for the university to skirt certain procedures when rushing to fill a competitive vacancy, some administrators said in the report.
“The entire process can easily come down to whether someone has a CV that checks the right boxes, and ... Dr. Ladapo’s CV did,” the report reads, citing David Nelson, the university’s vice president for health affairs; Colleen Koch, the dean of the college of medicine; and department chairperson Jamie Conti.
Those administrators pledged to revisit hiring procedures in the future, the report says.
DeSantis announced Ladapo’s appointment as surgeon general on Sept. 21. Last month, after a series of contentious hearings, the Florida Senate voted along party lines to confirm Ladapo in that role.
The Florida Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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