Straws in the Wind - Part 214

From the NY Times: ...In early 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, executed what many viewed as a conservative takeover of New College, a struggling state school. With fewer than 1,000 students, the liberal arts college had long been a draw for nonconformists, where grades were verboten and students designed their own classes and majors. It was “a little Club Med” for people who were “all ideologically the same,” said Richard Corcoran, the school’s new president.

Under a new board and president, and as required by a new state law, the school has installed a curriculum emphasizing the traditional Western canon, with “The Odyssey” serving as a foundational text. It has created new teams for sports like baseball, basketball and beach volleyball and recruited athletes to fill out their rosters. It has hired dozens of new professors, some with conservative backgrounds and a few who are known for their vocal opposition to liberal orthodoxies, like Spencer Klavan, a lecturer at the college last year, and host of the Young Heretics podcast, about classical education.

In September, it announced that a statue of Charlie Kirk, the assassinated conservative activist, would be placed on campus. And the college was among the first to say it would sign the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, which links preferential access to federal funding to a willingness to adhere to federal policies and demands, and which better known schools have scorned. The school has also shed D.E.I. initiatives and gender studies.

About 20 faculty members and 200 students decamped within the first six months of the makeover, according to the college. Today, the campus culture reflects the new influx of many conservative-leaning professors and students, who are sharing classes with the old guard who tend to be more liberal. The conservative tilt is unusual  for colleges with a liberal arts curriculum.

The changes are not about imposing one point of view on education, Mr. Corcoran said, but about creating a place that values debate. But as the college continues to move toward the ideological right, ...longtime [faculty] are reserving judgment...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/us/new-college-ron-desantis-florida-conservative.html.