New College of Florida began writing history when it welcomed its first undergraduate cohort of 101 students in 1964. It was the first college or university in Florida, which had belonged to the Confederacy and owned slaves, to have an open admissions policy promising not to discriminate based on “race, creed, national origin, or cultural standing.”
The distinguished historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee was persuaded to come out of retirement to join the young institution’s charter faculty because the college’s founding ideals stressed freedom of inquiry.
When New College entered Florida’s state university system in 1975, it became a public institution and quickly rose to become one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country.
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To tarnish its unofficial image as a shelter for about 650 primarily progressive-leaning students, almost half of whom identify as non-heteros*xual, right-wing Republican state governor Ron DeSantis has targeted the school’s lovely beachfront campus in the city of Sarasota, Florida. DeSantis famously remarked to the “wake mob” on the evening of his re-election triumph last November that “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
He is widely expected to run against Donald Trump for the Republican party’s presidential nominee for the 2024 election. To that end, he has sued Disney for its CEO’s declaration that the company would cease all political donations in Florida after the state legislature passed the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law, which forbade the teaching of lessons on s*xual orientation and gender identity to students in public schools who are in the third grade or younger.
The 44-year-old DeSantis has also recently given educational concerns more of his attention. He failed to prevent the University of Florida professors from participating as expert witnesses for the defense in criminal court hearings last year.
He prohibited teaching an advanced level African Studies course earlier this month in all public high schools in the state because he claimed that some of the course content utilized Black history to advance a political goal, which amounted to “indoctrination.”
DeSantis’ office announced six appointments to the 13-member board of trustees of New College on the first Friday of the new year, and some of the names astounded both students and professors.
They included Charles Kesler, a professor at Hillsdale College in Michigan; Matthew Spalding, the dean of a private, conservative Christian university that the late Rush Limbaugh frequently recommended on his popular radio talk show; and Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has led the ongoing attack on the alleged teaching of critical race theory in elementary and secondary schools. Almost nobody on campus anticipated that one.
Physical chemistry professor Steven Shipman, the faculty union leader at the institution, stated, “I was utterly blindsided.” Since we are a small organization, I assumed that the governor would have other responsibilities.
In a blitz of tweets and press appearances in the early days of 2023, Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think organization, all virtually declared war on New College.
The 38-year-old Georgetown University alumnus made clear his objectives and those of his fellow DeSantis-appointed trustees in an interview with a New York Times columnist, saying, “We want to provide an alternative for conservative families in the state of Florida to say there is a public university that reflects your values.”
As a potential trustee of New College, Rufo happily used military metaphors on Twitter to explain his strategy. When DeSantis’ office released the unexpected statement on January 6 regarding the future composition of the College’s board of trustees, Rufo tweeted that “we are over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within.”
He also arranged to explore the campus shortly with “our landing team. Some academics who focus on issues relating to higher education claim to have never witnessed a scorched-earth attack on a college or institution for ostensibly political purposes that even comes close to what New College is currently dealing with.
Ronald Reagan kept part of his ire for the University of California’s main campus, which he referred to as “that disaster at Berkeley,” where the radical free speech movement had grown, in his first campaign for governor of California in 1966.
At the first board meeting Reagan attended in 1967 as the newly elected governor of the state, he sacked the head of the University of California Board of Regents. However, Berkeley came out of that incident with its reputation unscathed, and one academic claims that what happened 56 years ago is nothing compared to what is currently taking place in the Sunshine State.
According to Brian Rosenberg, visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former president of Minnesota’s Macalester College, DeSantis “makes Reagan look like a supporter for academic freedom.”
“I’ve never seen a case where a governor, whose political platform revolves around being a social warrior, sent in a team with a mandate to overhaul everything from the school’s curriculum to its departments and its faculty,” the author said.
Some of its most prominent supporters are former students of New College. With a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts and they/them pronouns, X González, who identifies as transgender, appreciated the school’s acceptance of a range of gender identities and the freedom to create their area of specialization if none of the more than 50 available majors satisfied their academic curiosity and ambition.
González also appreciated the fact that faculty members generate thorough written evaluations of each student under their care, as opposed to simply assigning grades to each student.
The Parkland school shooting, which left 14 students and three staff members dead, left a 23-year-old survivor saying, “It was so radically better than any other situation I could have encountered.” One of the reasons DeSantis chose to stage this hostile takeover was New College’s blatantly transgender and LGBTQ culture.
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When Rufo and another DeSantis-appointed trustee met with faculty members and students in separate sessions last Wednesday, the dramatically divergent perspectives of what New College should stand for came to a head.
Rufo substantially toned down his language and positioned himself as a lifetime advocate for a liberal arts education while wearing a sharply tailored blue business suit and sporting a well-trimmed beard.
Amid some audible chuckles in the audience, he warned faculty members, “I don’t want my views to be the new suffocating dogma on campus.” “We want to make room for kids who are conservative, liberal, and Marxist.
We must be courageous enough to disagree with one another and uphold the democratic process. However, other academic staff members and students said they wouldn’t be sipping that Kool-Aid soon.
Riley Wood, 19, a second-year computer science student, questioned Rufo and stated, “Their rhetoric is focused on advancing their Christian and anti-science goals while professing to be fighting for free speech and variety of viewpoints.”
