Free Republic

The goal of programs such as gender studies is not to discover knowledge but to remake the academy and society in its image.I voted to abolish the gender studies program at New College of Florida. Critics of the decision to eliminate gender studies have since labeled it an attack on education itself. But as a matter of academic integrity and intellectual honesty, the board has a firm basis to remove gender studies as an area of concentration at the state’s liberal arts honors college.Science Versus Self-IdentityGender studies is not a science. Pretenses of legitimacy obscure its lack of scientific rigor...

The Biden administration comes after New College and its conservative reforms, alleging specious civil rights violations. Last week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into New College of Florida, where I serve as a trustee, regarding alleged “disability discrimination.” The investigation was prompted by a complaint by ACLU attorney Jennifer Granick, alleging that the college’s trustees and administrators violated civil rights law by removing “gender neutral” signage from bathrooms, defunding the DEI and gender studies programs, and “misgendering” the former DEI director and a former student, who use “ze/zir” and “they/them” pseudo-pronouns, respectively. According to...

A public university in Florida will allow students to submit test scores from a college entrance exam that is said to be more rooted in Western classical and Christian traditions as an alternative to the ACT and SAT.New College of Florida announced that it plans to become the first public university in the state to accept Classic Learning Test scores in place of the ACT or SAT by fall 2024. Students can still submit ACT and SAT test scores as part of the admissions process. “As New College strives to become a world-class liberal arts educational institution, adding the CLT...

The past few weeks has proven that the freedom of speech enshrined under the First Amendment is under assault by our government. Independent Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger‘s March 9 testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed just how determined Democrats in Congress are in silencing any speech that they do not agree with and any platform that chooses to disseminate said speech. Both Taibbi and Schellenberger are progressive Democrats who voted for Joe Biden. Yet, because they hold the First Amendment and truth as a higher standard than political agendas and...

The New College of Florida board of trustees has ousted its president, the first major shakeup of the institution since Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new members to the board. President Patricia Okker will be succeeded by former Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, according to Politico. Corcoran previously served as the state's 100th Speaker of the House. The DeSantis administration had contended that New College had been "completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning," per the outlet. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, one of the newly appointed trustees, denied that the decision was...

One of New College of Florida’s trustees plans Tuesday to suggest replacing the school’s President and firing all faculty. Eddie Speir, one of six new trustees appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to the New College board this month, wrote a blog post about his intentions for his first trustee meeting. Among his first orders of business is beginning a search for a new college President and demoting Dr. Patricia Okker, the school’s leader since January 2022, to interim President. But he doesn’t want the changes to stop with a new President. He also wants to dismiss and replace the General...

Over the past several years, Republicans have very gradually acquired some backbone in pushing back against progressive idiocy. But a glaring example of failure to push back remains in the state university systems, very much including those of the red states. In essentially all of those states, Republican governors and legislatures have allowed the very worst of Marxist and racist monoculture to fester and metastasize not only without opposition, but with ever-increasing taxpayer funding. Well, count on Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida to be the one to finally step up and do something about it. On January 6, DeSantis announced...

Following up on his comments about "trendy ideology" and partisan interest groups in higher education, Governor Ron DeSantis has named six people with ties to conservative institutions to the Board of Trustees at New College in Sarasota. The appointments are subject to confirmation by the State Senate. The most prominent of the six nominees is Christopher Rufo, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Manhattan Institute. Rufo has recently led the fight, according to a release from the governor, against critical race theory in American institutions, resulting in legislation in fifteen states. Rufo said in a tweer, "my ambition is...

Put on probation, S.F. school at risk of losing accreditation - New College of California, a private liberal arts school in San Francisco, is at risk of losing its accreditation for academic and ethical violations. School administrators, under pressure from faculty, students and the Western Association of Schools & Colleges, announced that they will form a committee to search for a new president and will reconfigure the board of directors. New College, which emphasizes activism and social change, was put on probation July 5 by the association for violations found by the association's commission. The commission's investigators found that: --...

New College conservative carves a niche on campus The first time I heard the term "openly Republican" was the first day of freshman orientation at New College. My initial reaction was to laugh. Prior to this, I had only heard terms like "openly" and "closet" when referring to personal qualities that go against the social norm. I always considered being a member of either of the two main parties to be relatively normal, as the majority of Americans register with one of the two. But that all was soon to change. Even the definition of normal changed, the day I...