- New College of Florida was once considered a progressive and liberal institution.
- That image has been flipped in recent months thanks to new members of its board of trustees.
- A former Republican politician is now the college’s interim president.
- New College’s office in charge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs was recently eliminated.
A small liberal arts college in southwest Florida is now a central player in the so-called culture wars
raging in higher education.
New College of Florida is in the midst of a conservative transformation as Gov. Ron DeSantis, a presidential hopeful, remakes the school in his own image. The college, which enrolls under 1,000 students annually, had previously garnered a reputation for being a progressive and liberal institution, but new conservative leadership aims to steer the institution in the opposite direction.
Enrolled students, alumni, and faculty have strongly opposed the changes since the start of 2023.
The transformation has continued nonetheless, with entire offices and majors slated for elimination. Meanwhile, the school attracted a record number of new students for the fall 2023 semester, largely driven by student-athlete recruitment.
Here’s a rundown of the changes from the past nine months:
A Hostile Takeover
in January
New College of Florida’s transformation began when DeSantis installed six new appointees to the school’s board of trustees on Jan. 6. Many of these appointees have strong conservative viewpoints, and DeSantis spoke about wanting to turn the college into the Hillsdale of the South.
Hillsdale College is a Michigan college popular among conservatives.
New trustees wasted little time enacting the governor’s agenda.
Trustees gathered for their first meeting on Jan. 31. By the end of that meeting, the sitting president had resigned, the board directed staff to create a plan to dissolve the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, and a DeSantis appointee was installed as the chair of the board.
President Patricia Okker resigned during the meeting. She told people in attendance that her vision for New College did not align with the new mandate from DeSantis, and, therefore, she could no longer in good conscience lead the institution into this new era.
I do not believe that students are being indoctrinated at New College,
she said. This is a hostile takeover.
The board voted to name Richard Corcoran as the interim president to succeed Okker. Corcoran was the former state speaker of the House and is a Republican ally of DeSantis.
Tensions escalated again during an April 26 board meeting. Trustee Matthew Lepinski announced near the end of the meeting that he was resigning from the board, got up from his chair, and walked out before the meeting adjourned.
Abolishing DEI Initiatives
New trustees quickly put New College’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on the chopping block.
Trustees voted in February to dissolve the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, which ran the school’s DEI programs. The office also worked on student retention, community outreach, and supporting student job searches.
The office employed four full-time workers, three of which were reassigned to other jobs on campus, according to CBS News.
Trustees also voted to end all mandatory diversity training.
These actions align with the governor’s larger war against DEI at all levels. DeSantis signed into law May 15 a measure prohibiting public institutions in Florida from using federal or state funds on DEI programming and offices. That law went into effect July 1.
DeSantis signed the bill into law at New College of Florida.
Students and professors filed a lawsuit to block this law in federal court on Aug. 14. Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, the Florida Board of Governors, and trustees at New College are named defendants in the suit.
It’s worth noting that Trustee Christopher Rufo has been at the forefront of many of these anti-DEI measures at New College. Rufo, a fellow at the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, was a staunch critic of DEI initiatives and critical race theory (CRT) even before DeSantis appointed him to the board of trustees.
Faculty Shakeups
The new era at New College also came with some controversial faculty decisions.
The first domino to fall was the school’s former dean for DEI initiatives. The Catalyst, New College’s student-run newspaper, reported that the institution fired Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez without cause in early March, just a few days after trustees dissolved the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence.
New College fired librarian Helene Gold two months later, with just three weeks left in the semester. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that Gold was the second LGBTQ+ employee the college dismissed in 2023.
A personal feud with Trustee Rufo may have led to a history professor being let go from New College.
The institution let the contract for visiting professor Erik Wallenberg expire this summer. This comes after Wallenberg criticized the college’s new direction in a Teen Vogue opinion piece in March. The article called comments from Rufo to a student demeaning and rude.
Rufo responded on X, formerly Twitter, calling Wallenberg’s research pure left-wing Mad Libs.
He returned to the subject in June after New College decided to let the professor’s contract expire without renewing.
It is a privilege, not a right, to be employed by a taxpayer-funded university,
Rufo posted. New College will no longer be a jobs program for middling, left-wing intellectuals. We are reviving the great classical liberal arts tradition and setting a new standard for public education.
More than a third of the school’s faculty will not be returning for the fall 2023 semester, Provost Bradley Thiessen reportedly said.
Gender Studies Likely to Be Axed
New College trustees got the ball rolling to potentially cut the school’s 30-year-old gender studies program.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that trustees voted Aug. 10 to begin the process
of cutting the gender studies major from New College. However, the school’s general counsel advised that doing so may impact existing collective bargaining agreements and potentially violate state regulations, so leaders may need more time to determine if or how the program should be removed.
Rufo, who proposed the measure, said this would impact students enrolling in 2024. It would not affect the 2023 fall semester.
The measure passed 7-3.
More Students, More Problems
New College of Florida will welcome its largest incoming class this fall.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that interim President Corcoran succeeded in his drive to welcome the school’s largest number of incoming students. Much of that success is attributed to student-athlete recruitment.
That enrollment bump came with a decrease in overall grade point average (GPA) and test scores among new students, according to the Herald-Tribune.
The rise in student-athletes is a 180-degree turn for an institution that previously did not have an athletics department. Corcoran made establishing an athletic program a core tenant of his first few months in office.
Of the 341 incoming students, 155 are student-athletes. Seventy are reportedly enrolling to play baseball at the school, while the remaining athletes will participate in the five other sports the college aims to provide.
For context, 70 is an abnormally large number of players for a single baseball team.
Meanwhile, the other planned sports may not have enough athletes to field a complete team.
This influx of students follows an exodus of faculty over the past year. More than a third of the institution’s faculty won’t return for the fall 2023 semester, and Inside Higher Ed reports that as a result, many classes won’t be offered at New College during the term. That includes courses that are mandatory for certain majors.
It’s also creating a student housing issue. New College reached an agreement with a local hotel to provide 133 beds for students.
New College will pay approximately $1.6 million from its emergency fund for the fall semester.
Fresh state funds may help assuage issues brought on by the large incoming class.
DeSantis’ 2023-24 budget called for $15 million for New College’s faculty and student recruitment, with $10 million recurring annually. The legislature ultimately approved more than $34 million for the institution in the final budget.
