Florida public college of free thinkers under attack by DeSantis.
Next week we will be flying down to Anna Maria Island, an island key in the Gulf off of Sarasota, Florida.
It’s a brief get-away from Chicago’s cold winter.
We will stay at a place we’ve rented for a couple of weeks a few steps from the white sands of Holmes Beach.
While Anna Maria Island has lovely beaches and warm weather in January, it also has Ron DeSantis as governor all year round.
In his attempt to replace Donald Trump as the fascist head of the MAGA Party, DeSantis is waging a holy war against all things progressive.
His most recent target is the public New College of Florida, located in Sarasota.
The New College of Florida describes itself as a school of free thinkers and it is highly regarded as a place of progressive education.
Its website says that the school community “celebrates diversity, encourages individual expression, and values openness, kindness and mutual respect” and that the private college that was its predecessor was “founded on principles of equality and inclusion.”
Exactly what DeSantis would dismiss as “woke”.
DeSantis has announced the appointment of six new board members of the small progressive college. The new board members are all right-wing political players and academics.
Among the appointees is Christopher Rufo, a current dean at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
Hillsdale is a small Christian private college in Michigan that has been active in support of Trump and reactionary education politics.
Hillsdale is the model for what De Santis wants New College to become.
Rufo is a major MAGA activist who in 2020 caught Trump’s favor with an appearance on Fox News.
A spokesman for the phony war on Critical Race Theory, Rufo declared that it has “pervaded every institution in the federal government.” He urged then President Trump “to stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology.”
Within days of Rufo’s appearance on Fox News (on which he has appeared many times), Trump signed an executive order restricting federal diversity training programs — though President Biden has since rescinded it.
States followed Trump’s move, passing legislation restricting what teachers could say about race and racism. DeSantis signed into law legislation that also restricted the diversity trainings that business could provide to employees, but a Florida judge last year blocked parts of the law.
Judges orders have not deterred DeSantis. He appears convinced that his war on wokeness will carry him to the White House.
The New College of Florida is home to about 650 students and is ranked as the country’s #5 public liberal arts school, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Later this month, Rufo said, he’ll travel to New College with a “landing team” of board members, lawyers, consultants and political allies. “We’re going to be conducting a top-down restructuring,” he said, with plans to “design a new core curriculum from scratch” and “encode it in a new academic master plan.” Given that Hillsdale, the template for this reimagined New College, worked closely with the Trump administration to create a “patriotic education” curriculum, this master plan will likely be heavy on American triumphalism. Rufo hopes to move fast, saying that the school’s academic departments “are going to look very different in the next 120 days.”
The values of the people who are already at New College are of little concern to Rufo, who, like several other new trustees, doesn’t live in Florida. Speaking of current New College students who chose it precisely for its progressive culture, Rufo said: “We’re happy to work with them to make New College a great place to continue their education. Or we’d be happy to work with them to help them find something that suits them better.”
New College students may not go quietly. Steve Shipman, a professor of physical chemistry and president of the faculty union, points out that tenured professors are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, which makes it hard to fire them unless there’s cause. People like Rufo “are making statements to make impact,” Shipman said. “And I really don’t know how viable some of those statements are on the ground.” (NYT)
What a shame. I love New College and hate to see it crushed under the fascist boots of DeSantis and Rufo. I spoke there for SDS back in '68 when the school was still new and took away some of my formative ideas about what schooling might look like in the future. It's gone through a lot of changes since then but remains a source for those of us who favor small, progressive schools.