Summary
New College of Florida, once a liberal arts institution, has undergone a conservative overhaul driven by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and allies, who installed a right-leaning board and administration.
Led by Richard Corcoran, the college has hired faculty with connections to rightwing media and think tanks, sidelining traditional hiring protocols, according to an internal letter.
This transformation, viewed by some Republicans as a model for conservative reform in higher education, has sparked controversy, faculty pushback, and a significant drop in national rankings amidst a shift in curriculum and institutional focus.
What’s doubly sad here is that New College was not “just” a public Liberal Arts college. It was an educational laboratory and countercultural bastion in a state that has always had a pretty wide conservative streak. There were no set majors, and there were no traditional grades, just granting credit or not and then a narrative statement on your performance. It was so small it didn’t make any significant dent in the Florida educational scene, but it was an important place for its community and an important symbol about the state’s relationship to education. It was always known as a place for kids who were bright-to-brilliant but didn’t fit the mold.
I went to a different public university in Florida (which has been dealing with its own meddling from DeSantis’s ghouls), but I was low-key proud New College was there. This is like shoving a needle under somebody’s fingernails, intentional torture that’s painful out of all proportion to the measurable damage.