The New College of Florida kicked off the inaugural school year of its conservative makeover invigorated by a record freshman class enrollment but also dogged by growing pains and political fallout from a liberal exodus.
In January, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) appointed a slew of new trustees to the college’s board representing a who’s who of prominent conservative activists and scholars and tasked them with remaking the small Sarasota college into a bastion of conservative thought, a sharp reverse from the college’s reputation as a sanctuary of left-wing and liberal views.
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The radical changes were swift. By March, the board had fired the president of the college and hired Richard Corcoran, DeSantis’s former education commissioner, to the position on an interim basis. Meanwhile, new trustee and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo proudly proclaimed that the new trustees were restoring classical liberal arts education to the college. In the ensuing months, the trustees would ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, establish a collegiate athletics program, vote to eliminate the school’s gender studies department, and deny tenure to several New College professors.
The abrupt reorientation of the school infuriated the college’s liberal professors and students who suddenly faced the reality that the college would no longer be the liberal oasis it had been. Faculty left in droves, and Hampshire College in Massachusetts offered New College students the opportunity to transfer while keeping their financial aid packages.
Democratic politicians and liberal pundits, meanwhile, blasted the changes at the college and accused the new trustees of violating academic freedom at the Florida college. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) used the school as a backdrop to his budding rivalry with DeSantis by visiting the campus in April, decrying the college’s shift in direction as “an unbelievable assault.”
But the angst of liberals was met by the joy from Republicans, who see the New College’s changes as a golden opportunity to create a public college that was friendly to conservative ideas. DeSantis repeatedly invoked the Michigan-based Hillsdale College as a model for the trustees to follow. Several of the trustees are affiliated with the private college in various ways.
But the transition away from its liberal reputation has hardly been seamless.
By August, the college was facing an entirely new set of problems. The public perception of the school had radically changed, and while the institution was set to welcome its largest incoming class, the size of the class had created a dilemma for the school, which now had more students than it had housing. Additionally, the new conservative direction of the school prompted more than 40 faculty members to resign their positions, citing the actions of the trustees.
To deal with the shortage of housing, students have been reportedly placed in nearby hotels, while Rufo has resorted to advertising open faculty positions on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Rufo did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
But despite the somewhat chaotic transition over the past year, conservative activists see a lot of promise. Terry Schilling, the president of the American Principles Project, told the Washington Examiner that if the ideological flip of New College is successful, it could prove to be a model for changing other state colleges and universities.
“New College of Florida is a great experiment in the push to reclaim our institutions for the American cause,” Schilling said. “So far, they’ve made super smart moves, and it looks like it will pay off and could serve as a model for reforming other state schools. The American university system is a complete mess, burdening kids with unsustainable debt, indoctrinating them into anti-social and anti-science ideologies while not even increasing their employment prospects or income levels. We need to fix the college system in the ways New College is doing it, but we also need more plumbers and construction workers.”
Cherise Trump, the executive director of the campus free speech watchdog Speech First, told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the appointment of trustees who are invested in a specific vision for the college was “one of the most laudable” changes that could have been made.
“Most colleges and universities have either disinterested and aloof board members who provide minimal oversight over the policies their campus administrators are enacting, or they have board members who fear retaliation from the woke mob and therefore will not stand up for the rights of their students,” said Trump, who is not related to the former president.
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Trump explained that her organization, which sues colleges and universities for violations of free expression, typically names board members “because we believe the board is just as responsible for the bad policies and malicious actors on their campuses.”
“With all of the free speech violations, viewpoint discrimination, and coercion that is occurring on college campuses today, it is paramount that board members get engaged and play a larger role in holding university administrators accountable,” she said. “Say what you will about New College’s board members, but at least they care enough to pay attention and are courageous enough to address the rampant coercion taking place on their campus by shutting down the departments pushing radical political agendas.”
