Earlier this year, the conservative activist and writer Christopher F. Rufo proclaimed that intolerant left-wingers had essentially captured New College of Florida, the state’s designated honors college. As a newly appointed trustee, Rufo employed the rhetoric of battle in describing his effort to right the ship:
“We will plunge into a period of inevitable conflict and controversy, with determination to advance the interests of the people of Florida ... to demonstrate that there is a way out of the institutional hostage crisis,” he wrote in City Journal.
During a board meeting Thursday, Rufo lobbed a grenade. He made a motion — which ultimately passed — to “direct the president and staff to take the necessary and proper steps to terminate the gender-studies program, beginning with the 2024 enrollees.”
Rufo’s motion does not automatically eliminate the program, Bill Galvano, the college’s general counsel, said at the meeting. He noted that the Florida Board of Governors has requirements about eliminating academic programs.
Rufo said that the gender-studies program was not compatible with the Board of Trustees’ mission of reviving a “classical liberal-arts education” at New College. During the 35-minute discussion of his motion, he argued that there is “great historical precedent” at other colleges for abolishing academic programs that “stray from their scholarly mission in favor of ideological activism.”
Amy Reid, director of the gender-studies program, is also the faculty representative on the board. Clearly frustrated but composed, Reid read from a prepared statement praising the contributions of the program, such as a popular introductory course and a brown-bag series, and admonishing the “ongoing attacks” against it by “current and past members of this board.”
New College has been embroiled in controversy since January, when Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor and a presidential contender, announced the appointments of six new New College trustees, including Rufo. The idea was for the small liberal-arts campus to become “a Hillsdale of the South,” a DeSantis staffer said at the time.
Since then, the board has fired the former president and eliminated the office that handled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The college’s top diversity officer was also fired. The board tapped Richard Corcoran, a former Republican House Speaker, as interim president, and agreed to pay him nearly $400,000 more than the ousted president. Corcoran is now one of three finalists for the permanent post. More than a third of faculty members will not be returning this fall, a figure the interim provost called “ridiculously high,” the Tampa Bay Times reported.
At Thursday’s meeting, Grace Keenan, New College’s student-body president and a board member, said it was “inappropriate and a violation of Sunshine Law” that Rufo brought forward such a proposal with “no notice, no documentation, no opportunity for the public to come and make public comments.” Reid said she was also concerned that at least some board members knew this new business, which was not on the agenda, was going to be brought forward. Someone called her at 11 p.m. on Saturday evening and shared with her a “rumor” of this proposal, Reid said. Rufo strongly denied doing anything illegal.
Matthew Spalding, a trustee, echoed Rufo’s criticism of gender studies. “It’s not within the liberal arts, and it’s more of an ideological movement than an academic discipline,” said Spalding, dean of Hillsdale College’s Graduate School of Government, in Washington D.C., who was appointed to the board by DeSantis.
“It’s a mishmosh of things,” Spalding said at another point in the meeting. “Read the website — I have no idea what it’s about. It’s very confused.”
Mark Bauerlein, another DeSantis appointee and a professor emeritus of English at Emory University, in Georgia, said that while he’s not “against” gender studies, he does not think it should be an “independent disciplinary entity.”
During the meeting, Reid argued that gender studies is an established discipline at many higher-ed institutions. Some New College students take courses in gender studies because, for them, it is a “significant component of a liberal-arts degree,” she added.
“To say that it is not appropriate in the liberal arts flies in the face of the data,” she said.
After the votes were cast and the motion passed, Reid said, “This needs to go on the record as the first time this board has made a substantive attack on our academic program. This is a moment that this board needs to weigh.”
Rufo wasted no time declaring victory. He wrote in his Substack newsletter that Thursday, New College became “the first public university in America to begin rolling back the encroachment of gender ideology and queer theory on its academic offerings.”
