Board shake-ups, threats to tenure and money: How conservatives are reshaping colleges
Alia Wong, USA TODAY
Sun, January 15, 2023
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's decision to overhaul the board of trustees at a progressive public college was his latest move in a larger movement against so-called "woke" education.
“Like so many colleges and universities in America, New College of Florida has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning,” Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’s press secretary, told USA TODAY, attributing low student enrollment and other financial challenges to the college’s “skewed focus and impractical course offerings.”
The shake-up is part of a years-long effort by DeSantis and a growing contingent of conservative leaders to chip away at what they view as higher education's liberal bias. They're shepherding legislation targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and critical race theory, including bills explicitly addressing colleges through provisions that would reduce tenure. They're shaping higher education in more subtle ways, too, including through philanthropic giving.
Observers say these trends will continue into 2023 as legislative sessions kick off and key players ramp up their campaigns for national elections.
Conservative board takeover: DeSantis seeks to transform Sarasota's New College
'We will not go down without a fight': New College students respond to DeSantis
What happened at New College of Florida?
New College has a reputation as a left-leaning college. All but two of the new appointees to New College’s board of trustees are prominent conservatives.
DeSantis's chief of staff has said the hope is to make New College into something “more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”
Hillsdale is a private Christian college in Michigan that has been lauded by some on the right for championing conservative values. The college doesn't receive any federal funding, exempting it from some of the civil-rights mandates typically applied to higher education institutions.
More: Can Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recreate Michigan's Hillsdale College in his state?
The prospective New College trustees “are committed to refocusing the institution on academics and truth and ensuring that students are receiving a quality education,” said Griffin. "The campus will become a place for learning and discourse, as it was designed to be.”
New College students have said they’re drawn to the school precisely because of its offerings and because its values contribute to its academic rigor, as reported by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network. Among those values: building a “just, diverse, equitable and inclusive community” on campus.
In a statement, New College President Patricia Okker said she sees "tremendous opportunity for New College and I believe that our new trustees will bring fresh ideas and new perspectives. New College has a long history of embracing change, all while being true to our mission of academic excellence."
Opinion: Two former New College trustees respond
Is there a liberal bias in higher education?
College students tend to skew more liberal than the general population. In a 2020 survey of 20,000 students across 55 colleges, the most comprehensive analysis of its kind, 50% of respondents identified as liberal, versus 26% as conservative. Roughly a quarter of Americans generally say they’re liberal.
However, just 19% of Gen-Z adults – the group of people most likely to attend four-year colleges now – identify with the right, suggesting there are more conservatives on college campuses than among their age group as a whole.
“Most colleges and universities are not extreme,” said Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and politics professor at Sarah Lawrence, a liberal arts college in New York that is often ranked as one of the country’s most liberal colleges. With the exception of some liberal-arts schools, particularly in the Northeast, “students are pretty centrist.”
Abrams' research suggests administrators and other leaders – from department heads to dorm staff – are the ones driving colleges' leftward shift. “We have undergrads who are a little bit more liberal than the average American, we have faculty who are understandably liberal but not crazy, as well as some conservatives,” Abrams said. “And then you have administrators who are extremely liberal activist progressives.”
Students continue to prize free speech rights on campus but increasingly feel those rights are being trampled upon, according to 2022 polling data from the Knight Foundation and Ipsos. The percentage of students who say speech rights are secure has dropped every year since the survey first asked the question in 2016.
Just last week, news broke that Harvard – where roughly eight in 10 faculty identify as liberal – had rescinded a fellowship offer to Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch. Roth is a prominent critic of Israel, which his organization has regularly accused of war crimes against Palestinians.
Critics are blaming the decision on pro-Israel bias within Harvard leadership and describing it as yet another example of the ways in which colleges – particularly elite ones – police thought.
Christian colleges: Battle over wokeness isn't just about politics, it's about dollars
Board shake-up part of larger movement against CRT, DEI
Since 2021, lawmakers in dozens of states have introduced legislation restricting lessons on race and systemic discrimination – often described as critical race theory – as well as on sexuality and gender identity.
For the most part, the bills have centered on K-12 schools. Increasingly, though, the legislation has focused on higher education. Thirty-nine percent of bills in 2022 targeted higher ed, compared with 30% in 2021, according to an analysis last year by PEN America, a free speech and literacy organization.
Another trend: Legislation targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives – for example, DeSantis’s “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” whose higher education provisions are on hold for now because of a lawsuit. DeSantis is appealing.
More: DeSantis dealt 'Stop Woke' setback after promoting policy on Election Night
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reacts after publicly signing HB7, "individual freedom," also dubbed the "stop woke" bill during a news conference in April.
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and one of the four prominent conservatives appointed by DeSantis to the New College board of trustees, has been at the forefront of the anti-CRT, anti-DEI movement. He and one of the other new appointees – Matthew Spalding, a dean and professor at Hillsdale – also played key roles in the Stop W.O.K.E. act's creation.
Rufo, through his chief of staff, said he would only consent to an interview if the reporter removed her pronouns from her email signature for 90 days. USA TODAY rejected the request and reiterated its desire for an interview but did not hear back. People state pronouns in email signatures for a variety of reasons, including to avoid being misgendered by people with whom they communicate.
“I was honored to be appointed to this board, along with friends and colleagues from the conservative movement,” Rufo wrote in a blog post Thursday. “Governor DeSantis has tasked us with something that has never been done: institutional recapture. If we are successful, the effort can serve as a model for other states.”
Christopher Rufo in Seattle.
Is New College replacing ‘one set of extremism with another’?
Mark Bauerlein, a fellow conservative and recent appointee to New College’s board, distanced himself from Rufo, however, saying he’ll take a different approach.
“I don’t have goals in mind,” the Emory University English professor emeritus said, stressing the DeSantis administration hasn’t given him any policy prescriptions and he doesn’t have an agenda for the role. Bauerlein said he’ll start by listening and getting "a feel for the atmosphere of the place.”
While “the leftward tilt (in higher education) has certainly happened, it’s not a problem if we find that academic standards are being maintained – if we find that the ideals of inquiry and discussion and peer review are held to a good level of rigor,” he said.
Bauerlein, who has written about and helped the state of Florida develop K-12 standards, said one of his first tasks might be to compare student projects from the 1990s and more recent work to assess whether “there is some deterioration, whether the standards significantly lower quality than before.” He’s also curious as to why so many students – close to 70% – are female, and whether DEI efforts are crossing the line.
While having little prior knowledge about the college and living in another state, he’s prepared for the host of issues he may have to chime in on, from facilities and athletic programs to administrator salaries and contracts.
“I think that the ‘transformation’ may be a lot slower and less striking than people expect,” Bauerlein said.
New College of Florida Board of Trustees member Mark Bauerlein
USA TODAY reached out to the other new appointees but didn't receive responses.
In a statement, Hillsdale's Spalding said: "I appreciate the complimentary nods to Hillsdale College, but we are not going to serve New College’s mission by remaking it into a carbon copy of another institution."
AEI's Abrams emphasized the importance of a cautionary approach. “What Florida has to do very carefully is they can’t swing too far in the other direction,” he said. “Florida needs to make sure that they showcase how viewpoint diversity works. … We don't want to replace one set of extremism with another.”
Another target of conservatives: academic tenure
In addition to targeting DEI, DeSantis’s Stop W.O.K.E Act aims to weaken tenure protections on the grounds that academics need to be held accountable for promoting critical race theory.
Reports indicate some professors in Florida adjusted or altogether removed classes in response to the law.
Tenure, which protects professors from being fired except in extreme circumstances, has long been in decline and for many reasons, including financial ones, said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors. But “what we’re seeing right now is really a war,” and the renewed focus on tenure by “right-wing conservatives” is one aspect of it, she said.
Proposals to erode or eliminate tenure has come up recently in roughly half a dozen states, she said, primarily targeting professors who teach about race and racism, equity and justice, and gender studies.
“Tenure is what protects academic freedom for faculty in higher education – it’s necessary so faculty can promote the free and vigorous open exchange of ideas … without fear of being fired,” Mulvey said. “Trying to take away tenure from faculty is an age-old strategy from the totalitarian playbook to attack education to stop students from learning ideas the state disagrees with.”
Pressure could continue to mount this year as more states are expected to consider or implement tenure restrictions, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, for example, has vowed to revoke tenure from professors who teach critical race theory.
“The larger strategy is to create divisions … and then exploiting those divisions in order to win elections and build power,” Mulvey said. “It's cynical, it's disingenuous, and the consequences for higher education and democracy are really devastating.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ron Desantis turns eye towards progressive colleges in 'woke' war
Who are the six conservative trustees DeSantis installed at New College of Florida?
BY IAN HODGSON
Sat, January 14, 2023
Gov. Ron DeSantis stirred controversy this month with his selection of six noted conservatives for the board of trustees at New College of Florida.
Most of his picks are not new to Florida education politics — having advised the governor on state policy or curriculum. What is new is the degree of direct influence they will have on the State University System’s smallest school.
READ MORE: New College was thrust into DeSantis’ culture war. Can it remain ‘quirky, queer and creative’?
Here’s a look at their backgrounds:
Christopher Rufo
Christopher Rufo, a writer, filmmaker and activist who has challenged critical race theory, delivers a speech at Hillsdale College, a small conservative school in Michigan. His talk was titled “Laying seige to the institutions,” where he proposed major changes at public universities in the U.S. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Rufo’s appointment to the New College of Florida board of trustees on Jan. 6, 2023.More
Perhaps the most well-known of the six new appointees, Rufo, 37, is a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of the institute’s City Journal publication.
He gained attention in 2020 when he publicized examples of diversity training material used in government and business workshops, popularizing the term “critical rate theory” as a rallying cry for the right.
In Dec. 2021, Rufo appeared on stage with DeSantis during the announcement of the governor’s “Stop WOKE Act,” which prohibits the teaching in schools and workplaces that any one race or sex is inherently privileged or biased.
In a 2022 address at Hillsdale College, Rufo laid out a hypothetical blueprint for conservative capture of a public university, starting with an independent board of directors appointed by a state’s governor.
“We have to get out of this idea that the public university system is a totally independent entity that practices academic freedom,” Rufo said. “These are public universities that should reflect and transmit the values of the public, and the representatives of the public, i.e., state legislators, have ultimate power to shape or reshape those institutions.”
Matthew Spalding
Matthew Spalding
Spalding, the 58-year-old dean of the graduate school of government at Hillsdale College, has spoken positively of DeSantis’ previous education initiatives and appeared next to the governor at the Stop WOKE Act announcement.
“I believe we are on the cusp of a moment of which the idea of education as an issue is re-aligning,” Spalding said in a December 2021 news release. “It is no longer a question of budget or policy; it is about returning it to its rightful place in the formation of good citizens.”
Spalding did not respond to requests for comment.
He co-chaired former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission and was coeditor of the ensuing report, which sought to define a conservative understanding of the “history and principles of the founding of the United States” in response to the New York Times’ 1619 Project.
The American Historical Association called the report a “simplistic interpretation that relies on falsehoods, inaccuracies, omissions, and misleading statements.”
The report calls for “authentic education,” founded on principles including solid family structures, limited government, private property and religious faith.
Charles Kesler
Charles Kesler
Kesler, 65, is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank not associated with the university.
He serves as the editor of the institute’s flagship publication, The Claremont Review of Books, which has been characterized as the “intellectual home” of Trumpism.
His brand of “American Conservatism” — which he describes as “conservatism rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution” — found a home in Trump’s America-first ideology and landed him on Politico’s 2017 list of the 50 Ideas Blowing Up American Politics.
Kesler served on the 1776 Commission and is listed as a contributor to the report. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Mark Bauerlein
An emeritus professor of English at Emory University, Bauerlein served on the National Endowment for the Arts in the Obama administration and advised on the 2020 revision to Florida’s K-12 English language arts curriculum.
He is perhaps best known for his 2008 book “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).” In it, Bauerlein decries the fading interest in classical literature among millennials.
His outlook on the nation’s intellectual scene hasn’t improved since then, Bauerlein said. But despite his pessimism, he remains a devoted academic institutionalist — more concerned, he said, with academic rigor than ideology.
Jason “Eddie” Speir
Eddie Speir
Speir, 53, is the founder and superintendent of the Inspiration Academy, a private Christian high school in Bradenton.
He acknowledged that the six new trustees at New College may have been selected for ideological reasons: “Of course, there is motivation by politics. You can’t escape it,” Speir wrote in an email to the Tampa Bay Times.
“I believe today’s universities, New College in particular, become pipelines into a tyrannical ideology,” he continued. “When you separate a person from their creator and reduce their identity to a group, sexual preference, or skin color, you often create a victim in search of a villain.”
Despite different viewpoints, Speir anticipates that there will be alignment in purpose when the board meets.
“I’m an ardent believer in freedom of speech, and I can respect people with whom I disagree,” Speir wrote.
Debra Jenks
Debra Jenks
Jenks, 64, is a securities mediation lawyer in Palm Beach County. Of the six new trustees, she is the only one who attended New College of Florida, graduating in 1980 with a degree in economics.
“New College was a beacon of light and hope for me,” Jenks wrote in a email. “I hope we can keep New College of Florida from closure or potential merger.”
Can Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recreate Michigan's Hillsdale College in his state?
Nirvi Shah, USA TODAY
Sun, January 15, 2023
The campus of Hillsdale College.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this month appointed six new members to the board of trustees of a public college in his state that describes itself as “a community of free thinkers, risk takers and trailblazers.”
Underlying these changes, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said, “is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida's classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”
Hillsdale College spokesperson Emily Banks Davis said that “with respect to the idea of New College becoming the ‘Hillsdale of the South,’ we are, of course, flattered by the comparison. There can only be one Hillsdale College. … But that said, we understand why Hillsdale is a sort of benchmark.
“Students are hungry for the kind of rigorous liberal arts education that the college offers.”
In response to DeSantis’ appointments, New College President Patricia Okker, who has been in her role since mid-2021, indicated she was open-minded about the new board.
"I see tremendous opportunity for New College and I believe that our new trustees will bring fresh ideas and new perspectives,” she said. “New College has a long history of embracing change, all while being true to our mission of academic excellence.”
DeSantis aims to create 'Hillsdale of the south': Conservative overhaul in the works for a Florida college's board
So, what is Hillsdale College?
In many ways, Hillsdale College, in south central Michigan, and New College of Florida, on the state’s Gulf Coast in Sarasota, could not be more different.
The former is a private, Christian college founded in 1844 that prides itself on not taking public dollars or allowing students to take government aid to attend, allowing it to forgo federal rules about disclosing its student demographics and adhering to Title IX guidance on sexual discrimination.
Its founders were abolitionist Baptists, though it is officially nonsectarian, and Hillsdale says it was the first American college to ban discrimination based on race, religion, or sex. It says it was the nation’s second college to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women. It has been called “one of the most important institutions in American conservatism” by the National Review. For conservatives, the outlet wrote in 1999, “Hillsdale is meant to be a model for how higher education should work.”
The campus of Hillsdale College which is located in south central Michigan.
How do Hillsdale and New College of Florida compare?
New College of Florida is a public institution. Though it was established in 1960 as a private college, it joined the University of South Florida in 1975 and became independent in 2001. At a campus dedication in 1962, its website says, earth from Harvard was mixed with soil from New College “as a symbol of the shared lofty ideals of the two institutions.” Today it has about 700 students, though in recent years it has struggled to maintain enrollment, as have many other colleges and universities.
At Hillsdale, annual tuition, fees, room and board are more than $43,000 this academic year. It has about 1,515 students. New College has won praise as one of the most affordable liberal arts colleges in the nation, and it costs about half as much as Hillsdale for in-state students. Enrollment at Hillsdale has grown over the past few years.
Both colleges boast a small student-to-instructor ratio, but the structure of an undergrad’s life at each respective institution is distinct.
Margo Nielsen, 19, a first-year student studying biology and art, finds a shady spot to read on the New College of Florida campus in Sarasota earlier this month.
At New College, the “chart your own course” program is designed to develop what it calls “essential skills that all students need to succeed in work, citizenship and life.” Hillsdale’s classical liberal arts program asks all students to enroll in what it calls “a structured core of courses that takes about two years to complete. Together, they follow a journey through literature, philosophy, theology, history, the fine arts, and the natural sciences, and [students] begin to see the world as a cohesive whole.”
Hillsdale’s acceptance rate also differs sharply from New College’s. Hillsdale is more selective, admitting fewer than 50% of applicants; New College accepts about 70%. And Hillsdale students are almost an even split between men and women, while New College is about 70% female.
New College says 83% of grads have a job within four months of graduating, and within 10 years of leaving, they earn a median salary of more than $106,000 and about $55,000 within five years of graduation. A recent class at Hillsdale made an average of about $40,000 within six months of earning their degrees.
In addition, New College boasts of being the nation's top public college for the proportion of students who go on to get Ph.Ds. Of a recent Hillsdale graduating class, 21 percent continued their education.
How has Hillsdale's political influence developed?
Larry P. Arnn is president of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.
Hillsdale's former president George Roche, who died in 2006, "became a hero to conservatives," according to the National Review, for standing firm on its admissions policies in spite of affirmative action. Students couldn't even accept GI Bill benefits or Pell Grants if they wanted to attend, because this would have allowed federal oversight. One line of defense: Roche said it admitted women and Black students before the Civil War.
Hillsdale's current President Larry Arnn, one of the architects of a ban on affirmative action in California before working at Hillsdale, has built on some of Roche's legacy, including a massive endowment that members of Congress once fought to protect from taxation and huge distribution for its Imprimis publication.
He also oversaw the creation of a Washington D.C. outpost for Hillsdale, with the help of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginni Thomas. And Arnn has called DeSantis, with whom the school has had a connection for nearly a decade, one of the most important people living. Arnn, Hillsdale’s president since 2000, is a critic of the teaching of critical race theory and the Common Core standards.
Arnn threw his support behind Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016, and that was reciprocated in what the college called “a take over” of the administration. At one point, Arnn was among those floated as Trump’s education secretary.
Hillsdale's president also was appointed by Trump to lead his short-lived 1776 Commission, which produced a report condemning the legacy of the civil rights movement. Matthew Spalding, one of DeSantis' new appointees to the New College board, was the 1776 Commission’s executive director.
The college has played a role in policymaking at public K-12 schools and in higher education for years and lends its expertise to a group of charter schools that enroll 14,500 students across the country, including at least seven in Florida.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee last year touted a partnership to bring 50 of the publicly funded, privately run schools to his state, but distanced himself from the plan after Arnn was captured on video disparaging teachers.
But now, five Hillsdale-affiliated schools are in the works in Tennessee.
Contributing: Chris Quintana, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is Hillsdale College? Florida Gov. DeSantis wants to replicate it
BY IAN HODGSON
Sat, January 14, 2023
Gov. Ron DeSantis stirred controversy this month with his selection of six noted conservatives for the board of trustees at New College of Florida.
Most of his picks are not new to Florida education politics — having advised the governor on state policy or curriculum. What is new is the degree of direct influence they will have on the State University System’s smallest school.
READ MORE: New College was thrust into DeSantis’ culture war. Can it remain ‘quirky, queer and creative’?
Here’s a look at their backgrounds:
Christopher Rufo
Christopher Rufo, a writer, filmmaker and activist who has challenged critical race theory, delivers a speech at Hillsdale College, a small conservative school in Michigan. His talk was titled “Laying seige to the institutions,” where he proposed major changes at public universities in the U.S. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Rufo’s appointment to the New College of Florida board of trustees on Jan. 6, 2023.More
Perhaps the most well-known of the six new appointees, Rufo, 37, is a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of the institute’s City Journal publication.
He gained attention in 2020 when he publicized examples of diversity training material used in government and business workshops, popularizing the term “critical rate theory” as a rallying cry for the right.
In Dec. 2021, Rufo appeared on stage with DeSantis during the announcement of the governor’s “Stop WOKE Act,” which prohibits the teaching in schools and workplaces that any one race or sex is inherently privileged or biased.
In a 2022 address at Hillsdale College, Rufo laid out a hypothetical blueprint for conservative capture of a public university, starting with an independent board of directors appointed by a state’s governor.
“We have to get out of this idea that the public university system is a totally independent entity that practices academic freedom,” Rufo said. “These are public universities that should reflect and transmit the values of the public, and the representatives of the public, i.e., state legislators, have ultimate power to shape or reshape those institutions.”
Matthew Spalding
Matthew Spalding
Spalding, the 58-year-old dean of the graduate school of government at Hillsdale College, has spoken positively of DeSantis’ previous education initiatives and appeared next to the governor at the Stop WOKE Act announcement.
“I believe we are on the cusp of a moment of which the idea of education as an issue is re-aligning,” Spalding said in a December 2021 news release. “It is no longer a question of budget or policy; it is about returning it to its rightful place in the formation of good citizens.”
Spalding did not respond to requests for comment.
He co-chaired former President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission and was coeditor of the ensuing report, which sought to define a conservative understanding of the “history and principles of the founding of the United States” in response to the New York Times’ 1619 Project.
The American Historical Association called the report a “simplistic interpretation that relies on falsehoods, inaccuracies, omissions, and misleading statements.”
The report calls for “authentic education,” founded on principles including solid family structures, limited government, private property and religious faith.
Charles Kesler
Charles Kesler
Kesler, 65, is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank not associated with the university.
He serves as the editor of the institute’s flagship publication, The Claremont Review of Books, which has been characterized as the “intellectual home” of Trumpism.
His brand of “American Conservatism” — which he describes as “conservatism rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution” — found a home in Trump’s America-first ideology and landed him on Politico’s 2017 list of the 50 Ideas Blowing Up American Politics.
Kesler served on the 1776 Commission and is listed as a contributor to the report. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Mark Bauerlein
Mark Bauerlein
An emeritus professor of English at Emory University, Bauerlein served on the National Endowment for the Arts in the Obama administration and advised on the 2020 revision to Florida’s K-12 English language arts curriculum.
He is perhaps best known for his 2008 book “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).” In it, Bauerlein decries the fading interest in classical literature among millennials.
His outlook on the nation’s intellectual scene hasn’t improved since then, Bauerlein said. But despite his pessimism, he remains a devoted academic institutionalist — more concerned, he said, with academic rigor than ideology.
Jason “Eddie” Speir
Eddie Speir
Speir, 53, is the founder and superintendent of the Inspiration Academy, a private Christian high school in Bradenton.
He acknowledged that the six new trustees at New College may have been selected for ideological reasons: “Of course, there is motivation by politics. You can’t escape it,” Speir wrote in an email to the Tampa Bay Times.
“I believe today’s universities, New College in particular, become pipelines into a tyrannical ideology,” he continued. “When you separate a person from their creator and reduce their identity to a group, sexual preference, or skin color, you often create a victim in search of a villain.”
Despite different viewpoints, Speir anticipates that there will be alignment in purpose when the board meets.
“I’m an ardent believer in freedom of speech, and I can respect people with whom I disagree,” Speir wrote.
Debra Jenks
Debra Jenks
Jenks, 64, is a securities mediation lawyer in Palm Beach County. Of the six new trustees, she is the only one who attended New College of Florida, graduating in 1980 with a degree in economics.
“New College was a beacon of light and hope for me,” Jenks wrote in a email. “I hope we can keep New College of Florida from closure or potential merger.”
Can Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recreate Michigan's Hillsdale College in his state?
Nirvi Shah, USA TODAY
Sun, January 15, 2023
The campus of Hillsdale College.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this month appointed six new members to the board of trustees of a public college in his state that describes itself as “a community of free thinkers, risk takers and trailblazers.”
Underlying these changes, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said, “is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida's classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”
Hillsdale College spokesperson Emily Banks Davis said that “with respect to the idea of New College becoming the ‘Hillsdale of the South,’ we are, of course, flattered by the comparison. There can only be one Hillsdale College. … But that said, we understand why Hillsdale is a sort of benchmark.
“Students are hungry for the kind of rigorous liberal arts education that the college offers.”
In response to DeSantis’ appointments, New College President Patricia Okker, who has been in her role since mid-2021, indicated she was open-minded about the new board.
"I see tremendous opportunity for New College and I believe that our new trustees will bring fresh ideas and new perspectives,” she said. “New College has a long history of embracing change, all while being true to our mission of academic excellence.”
DeSantis aims to create 'Hillsdale of the south': Conservative overhaul in the works for a Florida college's board
So, what is Hillsdale College?
In many ways, Hillsdale College, in south central Michigan, and New College of Florida, on the state’s Gulf Coast in Sarasota, could not be more different.
The former is a private, Christian college founded in 1844 that prides itself on not taking public dollars or allowing students to take government aid to attend, allowing it to forgo federal rules about disclosing its student demographics and adhering to Title IX guidance on sexual discrimination.
Its founders were abolitionist Baptists, though it is officially nonsectarian, and Hillsdale says it was the first American college to ban discrimination based on race, religion, or sex. It says it was the nation’s second college to grant four-year liberal arts degrees to women. It has been called “one of the most important institutions in American conservatism” by the National Review. For conservatives, the outlet wrote in 1999, “Hillsdale is meant to be a model for how higher education should work.”
The campus of Hillsdale College which is located in south central Michigan.
How do Hillsdale and New College of Florida compare?
New College of Florida is a public institution. Though it was established in 1960 as a private college, it joined the University of South Florida in 1975 and became independent in 2001. At a campus dedication in 1962, its website says, earth from Harvard was mixed with soil from New College “as a symbol of the shared lofty ideals of the two institutions.” Today it has about 700 students, though in recent years it has struggled to maintain enrollment, as have many other colleges and universities.
At Hillsdale, annual tuition, fees, room and board are more than $43,000 this academic year. It has about 1,515 students. New College has won praise as one of the most affordable liberal arts colleges in the nation, and it costs about half as much as Hillsdale for in-state students. Enrollment at Hillsdale has grown over the past few years.
Both colleges boast a small student-to-instructor ratio, but the structure of an undergrad’s life at each respective institution is distinct.
Margo Nielsen, 19, a first-year student studying biology and art, finds a shady spot to read on the New College of Florida campus in Sarasota earlier this month.
At New College, the “chart your own course” program is designed to develop what it calls “essential skills that all students need to succeed in work, citizenship and life.” Hillsdale’s classical liberal arts program asks all students to enroll in what it calls “a structured core of courses that takes about two years to complete. Together, they follow a journey through literature, philosophy, theology, history, the fine arts, and the natural sciences, and [students] begin to see the world as a cohesive whole.”
Hillsdale’s acceptance rate also differs sharply from New College’s. Hillsdale is more selective, admitting fewer than 50% of applicants; New College accepts about 70%. And Hillsdale students are almost an even split between men and women, while New College is about 70% female.
'We will not go down without a fight': Students vow amid DeSantis' GOP takeover of Florida college
New College says 83% of grads have a job within four months of graduating, and within 10 years of leaving, they earn a median salary of more than $106,000 and about $55,000 within five years of graduation. A recent class at Hillsdale made an average of about $40,000 within six months of earning their degrees.
In addition, New College boasts of being the nation's top public college for the proportion of students who go on to get Ph.Ds. Of a recent Hillsdale graduating class, 21 percent continued their education.
How has Hillsdale's political influence developed?
Larry P. Arnn is president of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.
Hillsdale's former president George Roche, who died in 2006, "became a hero to conservatives," according to the National Review, for standing firm on its admissions policies in spite of affirmative action. Students couldn't even accept GI Bill benefits or Pell Grants if they wanted to attend, because this would have allowed federal oversight. One line of defense: Roche said it admitted women and Black students before the Civil War.
Hillsdale's current President Larry Arnn, one of the architects of a ban on affirmative action in California before working at Hillsdale, has built on some of Roche's legacy, including a massive endowment that members of Congress once fought to protect from taxation and huge distribution for its Imprimis publication.
He also oversaw the creation of a Washington D.C. outpost for Hillsdale, with the help of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginni Thomas. And Arnn has called DeSantis, with whom the school has had a connection for nearly a decade, one of the most important people living. Arnn, Hillsdale’s president since 2000, is a critic of the teaching of critical race theory and the Common Core standards.
Arnn threw his support behind Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016, and that was reciprocated in what the college called “a take over” of the administration. At one point, Arnn was among those floated as Trump’s education secretary.
Hillsdale's president also was appointed by Trump to lead his short-lived 1776 Commission, which produced a report condemning the legacy of the civil rights movement. Matthew Spalding, one of DeSantis' new appointees to the New College board, was the 1776 Commission’s executive director.
The college has played a role in policymaking at public K-12 schools and in higher education for years and lends its expertise to a group of charter schools that enroll 14,500 students across the country, including at least seven in Florida.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee last year touted a partnership to bring 50 of the publicly funded, privately run schools to his state, but distanced himself from the plan after Arnn was captured on video disparaging teachers.
But now, five Hillsdale-affiliated schools are in the works in Tennessee.
Contributing: Chris Quintana, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What is Hillsdale College? Florida Gov. DeSantis wants to replicate it
New College was thrust into DeSantis’ culture war. Can it remain ‘quirky, queer and creative’?
BY DIVYA KUMAR AND IAN HODGSON
Sat, January 14, 2023
Nestled between Sarasota Bay and the Tamiami Trail, the small campus once dubbed “Barefoot U” has been a progressive enclave in a conservative county for 60 years.
New College of Florida has clung to its identity since its founding at the peak of the counterculture movement.
Now, the 110-acre liberal arts school with fewer than 700 students finds itself in the national spotlight, thrust into the culture wars after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the appointment of six noted conservatives to its board of trustees on Jan. 6.
The new members include Matthew Spalding, a former vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank; professors and right-leaning authors Charles Kesler and Mark Bauerlein; and Christopher Rufo, an activist who spurred a national backlash against critical race theory and LGBTQ issues.
Rufo, who appeared with DeSantis when the governor unveiled Florida’s “Stop Woke Act” in 2021, already has announced an ambitious plan to quickly revamp New College. In an interview with the New York Times, he said plans are afoot for a “top-down restructuring” and the design of “a new core curriculum from scratch.”
He predicted the school would look “very different in the next 120 days.”
Some Republicans say the appointments are an opportunity for Florida to emulate Hillsdale College, a small, private Christian university in Michigan that has helped DeSantis shape education policy since 2019. New College, they say, could be “a Hillsdale of the South.”
While a Hillsdale spokesperson called the comparison flattering, the label elicited polarized views and concern among some alumni, faculty, students and prospective students.
Both supporters and critics see the six appointments to the 13-member board as part of a larger, rapid push to alter Florida’s higher education system in much the same way DeSantis put his mark on K-12 schools in 2022.
READ MORE: DeSantis’ ‘full armor of God’ rhetoric reaches Republicans. But is he playing with fire?
Late last month, the governor’s budget office required all state universities and colleges to detail what they spend on diversity initiatives and critical race theory. And later this month, the state Board of Governors will consider a new policy that restricts faculty tenure and ties enforcement to the Stop WOKE Act.
DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said New College is due for a change.
The new trustees will be “committed to refocusing the institution on academics and truth and ensuring that students are receiving a quality education,” he said. “The campus will become a place for learning and discourse, as it was designed to be.”
The newly reelected governor, supporters say, is out to “recapture higher education.
‘Just the beginning’
When Bella Croteau first toured New College, the senior at Lakewood High in St. Petersburg immediately felt at home.
“My first thought was I don’t want to take a gap year anymore,” Croteau said. “I want to be here now. The demographic is exactly my type of people. There are so many LGBT students, there are a lot of Dungeons & Dragons players.”
Croteau gasped with delight during a visit when someone on campus said, “You look like you go here.”
“I was like, ‘That’s the best compliment ever,’” Croteau said.
“It’s so important to feel like your existence can be acknowledged, especially in school, when you are always beneath someone, when you’re always the small fish,” they said.
“Having an unconditional love for people, just humans, regardless of age or what major they’re in or what they identify as, having that there and saying we see you and we work with you — not around you — is what New College does and what makes it New College.”
The school, which has a ratio of six students for every faculty member and an average class size of 11, is known for its atypical approach. Students receive evaluations rather than grades and pursue independent research projects between traditional semesters.
Alaska Miller, a second-year cognitive science major, described the New College atmosphere as “quirky, queer and creative.”
Alaska Miller, a second-year student studying cognitive science and minoring in gender studies, described the campus as “quirky, queer and creative.” In trying to capture it, she mentioned she knew multiple people who read philosopher Michel Foucault for fun.
“Have you ever met that person who is a little quirky, but they’re like the smartest person you’ve ever met?” she said. “That’s like the kind of people who go to New College.”
Miller said the school’s significant LGBTQ population is a hallmark of its culture. She heard about the six new trustees on the way to a dining hall.
“To see suddenly we’re in the middle of a culture war is completely insane,” Miller said. “I never in a million years thought they even knew we existed sometimes. But now they want to turn New College into this weird ‘Hillsdale of the South’? It’s very strange.”
To Miller, who considers herself a leftist, the portrayals of New College as a bastion of “woke ideology” don’t hold up. In a class on political theory, she read Karl Marx and Thomas Hobbs, Frantz Fanon and Niccolo Machiavelli, a group encompassing a wide range of thought.
Sam Sharf, a second-year international politics major, predicted the move to put a conservative stamp on New College could spread to other Florida schools.
Sam Sharf, a second-year student from Tampa studying international politics, agreed.
“We come here as a predominantly LGBT student body and have a progressive vision for society,” Sharf said. “It’s not like they’re teaching us to be like this. We would be like this regardless if we came here or not. This is just a place where freedom of thought is allowed to flourish. Not all teachers are sympathetic to our visions.”
Sharf said she’s concerned about the attention the campus has drawn in recent days.
“Our small school is becoming a battleground in the conservative culture war, and with that it could bring violent actors to our campus,” she said.
She’s also concerned at the direction the new trustees may take.
“The alternative they’re positing is actually what they’re projecting us as being,” she said. “They want to create a conservative, dogmatized education where only that thought process is accepted. … They don’t want people to learn things that are critical of the state or America, or just critical thinking in general. This is just the beginning. If they succeed, they’ll be emboldened to try this everywhere. They’ll try this at Florida State University or the University of Florida.”
A school ‘on the ropes’
Though U.S. News & World Report ranks New College No. 5 among public liberal arts colleges nationally, the school has faced troubles in recent years.
“They’ve kind of been on the ropes,” said Christian Ziegler, vice chairperson of the Florida GOP. After the new trustees were announced, he sent a message to supporters about DeSantis’ “aggressive and incredible actions,” asking them to “let the victory saturate — THIS IS WINNING!”
The college’s most recent state accountability plan outlined two challenges to overcome. It said, “New College of Florida must become an inclusive community where all independent thinkers and innovators eager to learn in an engaging academic environment experience a strong sense of belonging.” Also, the college “must fully realize the transformative power of integrating career education with a challenging honors curriculum,” the plan said.
It laid out a goal that every student complete an internship or apprenticeship before graduating. It set a target to increase enrollment to 800 undergrads by 2026.
Since 2016, when New College welcomed a freshman class of 861, enrollment and revenue have declined. Patricia Okker became president in 2021 and was handed the task of building community partnerships, boosting the endowment and improving the school’s numbers. The most recent fall class saw a slight increase in enrollment and the largest group of transfer students in recent years.
Okker started a task force to improve retention rates and recently launched the New College Challenge, bringing students and scholars at top universities together to solve coastal resiliency issues.
For some, like faculty union chair Steve Shipman, the newest call for changes came as a surprise.
“It’s a little disheartening,” he said. “It felt like we were on an upswing.”
Griffin, the DeSantis press secretary, said the new trustees have a firsthand understanding of Florida’s education system after working with the state on other initiatives.
He pointed to the values section on New College’s mission page, which says the school is committed to creating a more “inclusive community” and “ensuring that historically marginalized and oppressed groups are not experiencing trauma and harm.”
Griffin said the passage illustrates the college has been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”
“The public expects their tax dollars to go towards the statutorily stated mission of ‘provid[ing] a quality education,’” he said in an email, quoting state law. The school’s mission statement, Griffin argued, “quite literally admits the institution will adjust outcomes based on non-academic factors of their choosing.”
Ziegler, the GOP leader, said the change is beneficial for everyone involved.
“Their mission, vision and values have the same woke principles the governor and Legislature frankly are fighting against every day,” he said, adding that New College might fare better with state budget writers after undergoing “a reset.”
Ziegler said Hillsdale College has “carved out a reputation going back to the basics and really focusing on history as it really was, rather than going to college, getting brainwashed by liberals.”
He said that, as a father of three young daughters and a Sarasota County business owner, he’s excited by the prospect of broader higher education options for his family and the community.
“This is the first step,” Ziegler said. “And hopefully there are more steps when it comes to reforming higher education.”
What will happen?
On Monday, President Okker issued a statement giving a “warm welcome” to the new trustees, who are awaiting confirmation by the Republican-controlled state Senate. She said she was eager to hear their ideas for making New College “a national model for a top-tier liberal arts college.”
For the first time in years, Okker added, the school has a “tremendous opportunity” to be led by a full board.
Florida gives university boards of trustees broad powers — from hiring the president to planning and budgeting and deciding which academic programs stay or go. Each board has 13 members — six appointed by the governor, five by the state Board of Governors and one representative each for the students and faculty.
The Board of Governors, which is mostly appointed by the governor, will soon add a new trustee as well, likely giving the New College board a seven-member majority that could execute the governor’s vision for the school. State officials declined to answer questions about how the governor’s six vacancies came open at once and how the new trustees were vetted.
Others were more cautious than Okker but still optimistic about New College’s future.
Joey McMahon, a transfer from the University of South Florida, is studying psychology and philosophy at New College.
Joey McMahon, a third-year transfer student, said he looks forward to talking with the new trustees, particularly Rufo, who compared his 120-day plan to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
Shipman, the faculty union chair, said he was unsure how much could be achieved in that time frame, given academic hiring cycles. “We’re adopting a wait-and-see mentality,” he said.
Even Rufo’s fellow appointees expressed skepticism about his timeline.
Bauerlein, the Emory professor, said he felt the board would operate in a way that would be “a lot less political and a lot more managerial,” with a healthy mix of personalities.
“At this point, it’s good to have a guy like Christopher in the room,” he said, referring to Rufo. “We’re going to have a student representative on the board, who I’m betting will be very much on the opposite side of Christopher. There’ll be a faculty member, who I imagine will not share Christopher’s outlook on things.”
Spalding, the Hillsdale professor, said in a statement that the “political controversy” surrounding the appointments was “overwrought.”
“I appreciate the complimentary nods to Hillsdale College,” he said, “but we are not going to serve New College’s mission by remaking it into a carbon copy of another institution.”
Croteau, the Lakewood High student, said they still plan to attend New College.
“It’s not like we’re going to disappear,” Croteau said. “Until something changes, it’s still the New College I toured and the one that I love. I’m just having high hopes now.”
Times staff writers Ian Hodgson and Jeff Solochek contributed to this report. Divya Kumar and Hodgson cover higher education for the Tampa Bay Times, in partnership with Open Campus.
BY DIVYA KUMAR AND IAN HODGSON
Sat, January 14, 2023
Nestled between Sarasota Bay and the Tamiami Trail, the small campus once dubbed “Barefoot U” has been a progressive enclave in a conservative county for 60 years.
New College of Florida has clung to its identity since its founding at the peak of the counterculture movement.
Now, the 110-acre liberal arts school with fewer than 700 students finds itself in the national spotlight, thrust into the culture wars after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the appointment of six noted conservatives to its board of trustees on Jan. 6.
The new members include Matthew Spalding, a former vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank; professors and right-leaning authors Charles Kesler and Mark Bauerlein; and Christopher Rufo, an activist who spurred a national backlash against critical race theory and LGBTQ issues.
Rufo, who appeared with DeSantis when the governor unveiled Florida’s “Stop Woke Act” in 2021, already has announced an ambitious plan to quickly revamp New College. In an interview with the New York Times, he said plans are afoot for a “top-down restructuring” and the design of “a new core curriculum from scratch.”
He predicted the school would look “very different in the next 120 days.”
Some Republicans say the appointments are an opportunity for Florida to emulate Hillsdale College, a small, private Christian university in Michigan that has helped DeSantis shape education policy since 2019. New College, they say, could be “a Hillsdale of the South.”
While a Hillsdale spokesperson called the comparison flattering, the label elicited polarized views and concern among some alumni, faculty, students and prospective students.
Both supporters and critics see the six appointments to the 13-member board as part of a larger, rapid push to alter Florida’s higher education system in much the same way DeSantis put his mark on K-12 schools in 2022.
READ MORE: DeSantis’ ‘full armor of God’ rhetoric reaches Republicans. But is he playing with fire?
Late last month, the governor’s budget office required all state universities and colleges to detail what they spend on diversity initiatives and critical race theory. And later this month, the state Board of Governors will consider a new policy that restricts faculty tenure and ties enforcement to the Stop WOKE Act.
DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin said New College is due for a change.
The new trustees will be “committed to refocusing the institution on academics and truth and ensuring that students are receiving a quality education,” he said. “The campus will become a place for learning and discourse, as it was designed to be.”
The newly reelected governor, supporters say, is out to “recapture higher education.
‘Just the beginning’
When Bella Croteau first toured New College, the senior at Lakewood High in St. Petersburg immediately felt at home.
“My first thought was I don’t want to take a gap year anymore,” Croteau said. “I want to be here now. The demographic is exactly my type of people. There are so many LGBT students, there are a lot of Dungeons & Dragons players.”
Croteau gasped with delight during a visit when someone on campus said, “You look like you go here.”
“I was like, ‘That’s the best compliment ever,’” Croteau said.
“It’s so important to feel like your existence can be acknowledged, especially in school, when you are always beneath someone, when you’re always the small fish,” they said.
“Having an unconditional love for people, just humans, regardless of age or what major they’re in or what they identify as, having that there and saying we see you and we work with you — not around you — is what New College does and what makes it New College.”
The school, which has a ratio of six students for every faculty member and an average class size of 11, is known for its atypical approach. Students receive evaluations rather than grades and pursue independent research projects between traditional semesters.
Alaska Miller, a second-year cognitive science major, described the New College atmosphere as “quirky, queer and creative.”
Alaska Miller, a second-year student studying cognitive science and minoring in gender studies, described the campus as “quirky, queer and creative.” In trying to capture it, she mentioned she knew multiple people who read philosopher Michel Foucault for fun.
“Have you ever met that person who is a little quirky, but they’re like the smartest person you’ve ever met?” she said. “That’s like the kind of people who go to New College.”
Miller said the school’s significant LGBTQ population is a hallmark of its culture. She heard about the six new trustees on the way to a dining hall.
“To see suddenly we’re in the middle of a culture war is completely insane,” Miller said. “I never in a million years thought they even knew we existed sometimes. But now they want to turn New College into this weird ‘Hillsdale of the South’? It’s very strange.”
To Miller, who considers herself a leftist, the portrayals of New College as a bastion of “woke ideology” don’t hold up. In a class on political theory, she read Karl Marx and Thomas Hobbs, Frantz Fanon and Niccolo Machiavelli, a group encompassing a wide range of thought.
Sam Sharf, a second-year international politics major, predicted the move to put a conservative stamp on New College could spread to other Florida schools.
Sam Sharf, a second-year student from Tampa studying international politics, agreed.
“We come here as a predominantly LGBT student body and have a progressive vision for society,” Sharf said. “It’s not like they’re teaching us to be like this. We would be like this regardless if we came here or not. This is just a place where freedom of thought is allowed to flourish. Not all teachers are sympathetic to our visions.”
Sharf said she’s concerned about the attention the campus has drawn in recent days.
“Our small school is becoming a battleground in the conservative culture war, and with that it could bring violent actors to our campus,” she said.
She’s also concerned at the direction the new trustees may take.
“The alternative they’re positing is actually what they’re projecting us as being,” she said. “They want to create a conservative, dogmatized education where only that thought process is accepted. … They don’t want people to learn things that are critical of the state or America, or just critical thinking in general. This is just the beginning. If they succeed, they’ll be emboldened to try this everywhere. They’ll try this at Florida State University or the University of Florida.”
A school ‘on the ropes’
Though U.S. News & World Report ranks New College No. 5 among public liberal arts colleges nationally, the school has faced troubles in recent years.
“They’ve kind of been on the ropes,” said Christian Ziegler, vice chairperson of the Florida GOP. After the new trustees were announced, he sent a message to supporters about DeSantis’ “aggressive and incredible actions,” asking them to “let the victory saturate — THIS IS WINNING!”
The college’s most recent state accountability plan outlined two challenges to overcome. It said, “New College of Florida must become an inclusive community where all independent thinkers and innovators eager to learn in an engaging academic environment experience a strong sense of belonging.” Also, the college “must fully realize the transformative power of integrating career education with a challenging honors curriculum,” the plan said.
It laid out a goal that every student complete an internship or apprenticeship before graduating. It set a target to increase enrollment to 800 undergrads by 2026.
Since 2016, when New College welcomed a freshman class of 861, enrollment and revenue have declined. Patricia Okker became president in 2021 and was handed the task of building community partnerships, boosting the endowment and improving the school’s numbers. The most recent fall class saw a slight increase in enrollment and the largest group of transfer students in recent years.
Okker started a task force to improve retention rates and recently launched the New College Challenge, bringing students and scholars at top universities together to solve coastal resiliency issues.
For some, like faculty union chair Steve Shipman, the newest call for changes came as a surprise.
“It’s a little disheartening,” he said. “It felt like we were on an upswing.”
Griffin, the DeSantis press secretary, said the new trustees have a firsthand understanding of Florida’s education system after working with the state on other initiatives.
He pointed to the values section on New College’s mission page, which says the school is committed to creating a more “inclusive community” and “ensuring that historically marginalized and oppressed groups are not experiencing trauma and harm.”
Griffin said the passage illustrates the college has been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”
“The public expects their tax dollars to go towards the statutorily stated mission of ‘provid[ing] a quality education,’” he said in an email, quoting state law. The school’s mission statement, Griffin argued, “quite literally admits the institution will adjust outcomes based on non-academic factors of their choosing.”
Ziegler, the GOP leader, said the change is beneficial for everyone involved.
“Their mission, vision and values have the same woke principles the governor and Legislature frankly are fighting against every day,” he said, adding that New College might fare better with state budget writers after undergoing “a reset.”
Ziegler said Hillsdale College has “carved out a reputation going back to the basics and really focusing on history as it really was, rather than going to college, getting brainwashed by liberals.”
He said that, as a father of three young daughters and a Sarasota County business owner, he’s excited by the prospect of broader higher education options for his family and the community.
“This is the first step,” Ziegler said. “And hopefully there are more steps when it comes to reforming higher education.”
What will happen?
On Monday, President Okker issued a statement giving a “warm welcome” to the new trustees, who are awaiting confirmation by the Republican-controlled state Senate. She said she was eager to hear their ideas for making New College “a national model for a top-tier liberal arts college.”
For the first time in years, Okker added, the school has a “tremendous opportunity” to be led by a full board.
Florida gives university boards of trustees broad powers — from hiring the president to planning and budgeting and deciding which academic programs stay or go. Each board has 13 members — six appointed by the governor, five by the state Board of Governors and one representative each for the students and faculty.
The Board of Governors, which is mostly appointed by the governor, will soon add a new trustee as well, likely giving the New College board a seven-member majority that could execute the governor’s vision for the school. State officials declined to answer questions about how the governor’s six vacancies came open at once and how the new trustees were vetted.
Others were more cautious than Okker but still optimistic about New College’s future.
Joey McMahon, a transfer from the University of South Florida, is studying psychology and philosophy at New College.
Joey McMahon, a third-year transfer student, said he looks forward to talking with the new trustees, particularly Rufo, who compared his 120-day plan to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
Shipman, the faculty union chair, said he was unsure how much could be achieved in that time frame, given academic hiring cycles. “We’re adopting a wait-and-see mentality,” he said.
Even Rufo’s fellow appointees expressed skepticism about his timeline.
Bauerlein, the Emory professor, said he felt the board would operate in a way that would be “a lot less political and a lot more managerial,” with a healthy mix of personalities.
“At this point, it’s good to have a guy like Christopher in the room,” he said, referring to Rufo. “We’re going to have a student representative on the board, who I’m betting will be very much on the opposite side of Christopher. There’ll be a faculty member, who I imagine will not share Christopher’s outlook on things.”
Spalding, the Hillsdale professor, said in a statement that the “political controversy” surrounding the appointments was “overwrought.”
“I appreciate the complimentary nods to Hillsdale College,” he said, “but we are not going to serve New College’s mission by remaking it into a carbon copy of another institution.”
Croteau, the Lakewood High student, said they still plan to attend New College.
“It’s not like we’re going to disappear,” Croteau said. “Until something changes, it’s still the New College I toured and the one that I love. I’m just having high hopes now.”
Times staff writers Ian Hodgson and Jeff Solochek contributed to this report. Divya Kumar and Hodgson cover higher education for the Tampa Bay Times, in partnership with Open Campus.
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