This is amazing.
I’ve lectured and written many times how higher education cannot be transformed from within, there has to be outside action. The bureaucracies, particulary as to DEI, are too entrenched and powerful, as are the ideologically one-sided faculty, senior administrators, and Trustees.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is showing how transformation is possible. His “Stop Woke Act” may or may not survive judicial review (so far not), but he’s taking a more productive route that needs to be emulated in all red states: Take on the bureaucracy at every level.
DeSantis already has requested that Florida’s public universities report by next week the amounts of money and administration spent on DEI. What he does with that information likely will be to gut the DEI non-academic infrastructure, but that’s to be determined.
Today DeSantis announced a total “lol” move that legit made me laugh. He appointed Chris Rufo and two other conservatives to the Board of Trustees of New College of Florida, a small public lefty college modeled on northeastern liberal colleges. I looked into it when applying to college in the late 1970’s, at which point it was relatively new; I don’t even remember if I applied.
The formal announcement was made today, and if you didn’t know the players, you might think not much about it. Rufo, of course, is the person who more than anyone brought to public attention radical Critical Race Theory in higher education.
Florida Politics reports:
Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed conservative activist Christopher Rufo and five others to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees in his continuing move to eliminate “political ideology” from public higher education.With the six new members of the school’s Board of Trustees, the DeSantis admin plans to weed out concepts like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT). The move comes amid low student enrollment at the New College of Florida and as DeSantis ramps up his second term.In a statement Friday, DeSantis Communications Director Taryn Fenske said New College has been “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”“Starting today, the ship is turning around,” DeSantis Press Secretary Bryan Griffin continued. “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,” DeSantis Chief of Staff James Uthmeier said in a statement.
This is not possible in the private sector and in most states. From what I’m told, it’s not possible in a place like Texas, where there is no political will to take on the UT and TAMU Boards. But it’s a model nonetheless.
It’s also a model for recapturing and taking on the federal government bureaucracy. Not just talk, but action. It will take control of Congress and a Republican president with the guts and skill to do it.
This is the song that immediately came to mind when I heard this news.
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