The Florida state legislature has long been frustrated with New College, the state’s smallest public university, for repeatedly failing to meet recruitment targets, achieve financial stability, or improve its dismal dropout and graduation rates. The college accepts almost anyone, with a 74 percent admissions rate, but few choose to attend: the “yield,” or matriculation rate, is a grim 13 percent.In recent years, legislators have contemplated shutting down the college altogether and transferring its assets elsewhere in the public university system. But, in a dramatic move, DeSantis proposed a last-ditch alternative: bring in a new board of reformers and turn the school around.
I (i.e., author Rufo) was honored to be appointed to this board, along with friends and colleagues from the conservative movement, including Claremont Institute scholar Charles Kesler, Hillsdale College vice president Matthew Spalding, former Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein, and others. 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.
The premise of this reform is simple. Voters in Florida, who charter and fund the public-university system through their legislative representatives, deserve to have their values reflected and transmitted in their public institutions. Left-wing hegemony over public universities, in academic departments and administrations, is antithetical to free inquiry and civil debate. With the New College of Florida transformed into a classical institution, voters will have access to a wider range of voices, scholars, and opportunities for their children. At a moment when universities are merging into a homogenous, “diversity, equity, and inclusion”-style morass, it is essential that the people’s elected representatives create meaningful alternatives.
This task won’t be easy. The legacy media has already sought to portray this effort as one of “barbarians at the gates of the university.” But the truth points in the other direction. As esteemed historian Daniel Boorstin observed in 1968, the activists of the New Left—that is, the progenitors of the “woke” ideologies that have now seized America’s institutions—were “the new barbarians” who rejected the ideals of the American Founding and sought to tear down society. “We must not be deceived by our own hypersensitive liberal consciences, nor by the familiar, respected labels under which the New Barbarians like to travel,” Boorstin wrote. “If American civilization is to survive, if we are to resist and defeat the New Barbarism, we must see it for what it is.”
...snip...
Ours is a project of recapture and reinvention. Conservatives have the opportunity finally to demonstrate an effective countermeasure against the long march through the institutions. The Left’s permanent bureaucracy will be dead-set against this gambit, but if it succeeds, a new era for higher education—and for the country—is possible.
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a leading free-market think tank.
This is absolutely OUTSTANDING. I had not heard that Desantis was taking on higher education like this and has launched an effort to recapture the radical far-left institutions of higher ed. This is exactly where the battle must be taken. Every pernicious, destructive, anti-American, communist idea in the past 70 years has emerged from American universities and they have trained several generations of skulls-full-of-mush.
This Desantis effort in Florida and the Hillsdale College effort to expand through charter schools around the country have real promise to push back on the communist efforts.
See also...
"Conservative Hillsdale College Expanding Charter School Program"
Newsmax, April 10, 2022.The Hillsdale network now has 24 schools in 13 states and hopes to expand even further, but its push is sparking concerns from critics who say it uses taxpayer money to educate students through a political-leaning agenda, reports The New York Times.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, has recently invited Hillsdale to start 50 of the charter schools in his state through the use of public funds that includes $32 million that the state set aside for charter schools.
Lee said he sees the expansion as an effort to expand "informed patriotism" in the state, and told lawmakers that he believes Hillsdale College's efforts are a "good fit for Tennessee."
Critics, however, say such plans allow states to use public money for political-leaning schools. [POF - that is just too rich!]
Hillsdale currently sponsors 22 member charter schools that get a full suite of its curriculum and training. Two other public schools are regarded as affiliates using the Hillsdale curriculum, with eight more ready to open, including one in Tennessee. Applications have been filed for more of the charter schools, which include three of the 50 additional schools Hillsdale says it will open in Tennessee. Part of Hillsdale's offerings includes the "1776 Curriculum" which paints the United States as an "exceptionally good country."
What DeSantis has done here is crucial, but it is important for those of us who are activists to remember that we have a role to play for ourselves.
Our job is NOT just to (on election day) go, vote, and then sit around twiddling our thumbs for the next 729 days until the next election day comes around.
We can influence and pressure education completely from the outside!
I heard Rufo on Beck the other day. Sounds like a real plan happening.