DeSantis Appoints 6 Conservative Trustees To New College Of FL Board

SARASOTA, FL — Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed a slate of new conservative members to New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees, setting up a clash of the college's liberal philosophy and the Republican governor's aim to reshape it as a conservative school focused on the classics.

According to a news release from DeSantis' office, the six potential new board members are:

• Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist known for challenging critical race theory and gender ideology,
• Matthew Spalding, a professor and dean at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian college in Michigan,
• Charles R. Kesler, a government professor at Claremont-McKenna College in California, where the conservative movement in America is among his areas of expertise, and the author of several books, including “I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism,”
• Mark Bauerlein, an Emory University English professor who once described himself as an “educational conservative” to Reason magazine,
• Debra Jenks, a New College alumna and attorney, and
• Jason “Eddie” Speir, founder of Inspiration Academy, a private, Christian, sports academy in Bradenton.

To take effect, their appointments need to be approved by the Florida Senate.

New College, a public honors, liberal arts college, touts itself as an institution that educates “free thinkers, risk takers and trailblazers,” according to its website.

It tells prospective students, “Your education. Your way. Discover a public arts and science education driven by your curiosity, career aspirations and individual learning style.”

Each student creates an individualized degree plan with an emphasis on hands-on learning.

But the DeSantis’ administration hopes to eradicate concepts such as diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as critical race theory from the classroom at New College and other higher education institutions.

The governor’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, told Florida Politics that New College has been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”

His press secretary, Bryan Griffin, added, “Starting today, the ship is turning around. New College of Florida, under the governor’s new appointees, will be refocused on its founding mission of providing a world-class quality education with an exceptional focus on the classics.”

"It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida's classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the south," Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said in a statement, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

One new appointee, Rufo, tweeted “our agenda for transforming New College of Florida,” which includes abolishing “'diversity, equity and inclusion’ and replac(ing) it with ‘equality, merit and colorblindness,’” and hiring “new faculty with expertise in constitutionalism, free enterprise, civic virtue, family life, religious freedom, and American principles.”

Not everyone is happy about the appointments, though.

“DeSantis just appointed a political propagandist to the (New College of Florida Board of Trustees,)” state House Rep. Anna V. Eskamanu of Orlando tweeted. “DeSantis is destroying higher education in Florida for his own political gain. It's disgusting, bad for our workforce development & everyone — faculty, admin, alumni, students — need to fight back.”

She added, “It didn’t start with New College, and it won’t end with New College.”

One New College alumni expressed disappointment in the appointments, tweeting, “This is very sad for me as a New College of Florida alum. I am horrified to see that DeSantis is (using) my school as a battleground to push radical conservative rhetoric. He is destroying everything New College stands for and has always stood for.”

Meanwhile, NCF Students for Educational Freedom, a group of current and former New College students, said they will fight the appointments and pledged to “stand up” to DeSantis.

“We believe that freedom means a diverse, inclusive, and equitable campus, not a hostile suppression of those who oppose you politically,” the group tweeted.