The Culture War Goes to College
New College of Florida was founded in 1960 as an experiment in public education. With a radically open-ended curriculum (and no grades or credit-hours), New College students and faculty had academic freedoms virtually unheard of at a land-grant institution. For decades, New College produced more Fulbright scholars per capita than Harvard or Yale.
And then, Gov. Ron DeSantis found out about it—and he sent a new board of directors to institute a hostile takeover of the school. They vowed to model the school on Hillsdale College, a private, conservative Christian college in Michigan.
I traveled to New College of Florida—my alma mater, to embed with the student newspaper, The Catalyst, to as they documented the destruction of their school.
As a Queer Floridian, New College Was My Haven. Now, DeSantis is Trying to Destroy It
Feb 2, 2023 for Them/Condé Nast
Fifteen years after graduation, I watched in real time via livestream as my alma mater, New College of Florida, was taken over by MAGA-aligned ideologues with the agenda of turning a Florida’s public liberal arts honors college into the epicenter of their “anti-woke” agenda.