New College of Florida Board of Trustees Begins Process of Eliminating Gender Studies Program
“At one point as the board met, four members of the public were escorted out by police.”
Since the day Ron DeSantis appointed some conservatives to the board of trustees at the New College of Florida, changes at the school have been coming swiftly.
The DEI office was almost immediately dismantled, then some liberal staff members left over a tenure dispute.
Now the gender studies department is being taken apart.
Naturally, Christopher Rufo is at the center of all this.
BREAKING: The New College of Florida board of trustees has directed the administration to abolish its Gender Studies program. We are the first public university in America to begin rolling back the encroachment of queer theory and gender pseudoscience into academic life.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) August 10, 2023
The Tampa Bay Times reports:
New College of Florida trustees move to end gender studies major
The New College of Florida board of trustees voted during a heated meeting Thursday to begin the process of eliminating gender studies as a major at the Sarasota school.
The decision, opposed by three board members, concluded an already tense day during which the trustees interviewed candidates to be the school’s next president. At one point as the board met, four members of the public were escorted out by police.
The outbursts were an outgrowth of tensions that have simmered since January, when Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new trustees to the New College board with a mandate to dramatically change the school’s mission and culture.
One of those board members, conservative activist Christopher Rufo, proposed an addition to the agenda toward the end of Thursday’s meeting.
The gender studies program, he said from a projected Zoom screen, is “wildly contradictory” to the board’s mission to “revive a classical liberal arts agenda.”
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has more on this:
The gender studies program at New College was established in 1995 and sees about eight student majors in a given year, with dozens more taking courses that are gender studies eligible.
The incoming 2024 class of students would be the first to be affected by the change, Rufo said.
The action is the latest by Rufo and other board members appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to execute a lightning transformation of the state’s only public liberal arts honors college into a model of conservative education, likened to the Christian Michigan-based Hillsdale College. One of the appointees’ first moves was to abolish the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion program.
It also moved to fire the previous president and install Richard Corcoran as interim president, who has moved to quickly boost enrollment by establishing a first-ever sports program at the college.
Here are a couple of Twitter reactions:
I propose this counter-perspective:
Gender Studies is banned in one college in the country
Is that bad? Maybe.
How many colleges allow students to take "Pro-Life Studies" classes
None?
I guess that perspective, one held by a hundred million Americans, is also banned https://t.co/Wv4AYsYKrE
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) August 11, 2023
The outrage over New College creating a curriculum that doesn’t have “Gender Studies” when there are literally hundreds of schools that offer such is pretty amusing. Tbh I’m more concerned that kids are graduating American universities without having read a drop of Aristotle.
— Erielle Davidson (@politicalelle) August 11, 2023
The left still controls 99.9% of higher education. This is just one school.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Math is always good, if you don’t know what to major in.
Gender Studies won’t be missed.
There a “ process”
Just end it
Ron DeSantis shouldn’t be president. Florida still needs him. The work is just beginning!
Florida has term limits, and this is DeSantis’ last term. Next!
Then he should finish that term
Poor Ironclaw, to love another so deeply that the thought he might beat the orange-man focus of your affection must be disconcerting. My heart goes out to those, like you, who cannot bear the thought of their beloved losing another election to the likes of Biden.
You mean like Reagan did?
You are a cultist and your goal is that nobody defeats Joe Biden because if Biden goes down to his first non=Trump challenger after defeating Trump at the ballot box twice Trump goes down as an unpopular president.
“Gender Studies” has always appeared to be a degree in Femi-Nazism to me. Glad to hear that this worthless degree is being euthanized as well as DIE at this institution. Marchons!
This is what using the government looks like.
Sorry to keep beating a dead horse but if DeSantis had stuck to the 21st century Republican Party idea of “MUH GOVERNMENT BAD” instead of going back to basics and actually governing like a 20th century Republican this would not be happening right now.
Wrong. This is what not using the government looks like. One division of the Florida government has decided to stop doing something that it should never have been doing in the first place. Meanwhile other divisions of the same government are still doing it. They should stop too. That would be less government, which is exactly what the principle you’re opposing calls for.
First off welcome back
But second on what planet is an American University government instead of business?
Without DeSantis’ intervention in the running of that university this simply would not have happened.
An American business doing something unethical and providing no value saw the face of government stop it.
No government intervention in Universities…..yes we know what that looks like it looks like the clown show we have now.
It isn’t one division of the Florida Government. Ron DeSantis used his power to put his people into positions of power within that University so they could exert the hand of government to change that University for the better.
Universities including state Universities are businesses although in the case of a state university with a government charter giving government some degree of power (which varies by charter) within them in return for the government having some of the costs of operation of said business.
There is no way to slice this that doesn’t end up with “Ron DeSantis intervened in the running of a business”. I say wonderful.
A government business is part of the government, which is why it’s subject to the Bill of Rights. It doesn’t matter whether the business is a post office, a supermarket, or a school. Ideally governments shouldn’t run any kind of business, but all governments do;.
The New College of Florida is a division of the State of Florida. It shouldn’t be; ideally Florida would sell it off and then it could do whatever it liked. But since that isn’t on the cards, the state is responsible for how it runs. As a private college that has to make a profit, it might decide on its own to drop useless and destructive courses — or it might not. But as a government division it’s the government’s responsibility to make that decision, and in this case it’s done so. The rest of the State University System of Florida should do the same. That would be the government doing less, which is (in general) good.
The New College started out as a private institution, but the State of Florida bought it in a bailout. It is supposed to be the “honors college” of the state system of higher education. It evolved from an emphasis on the great books to a “woke” mess. I hope that it can be saved and its value to students enhanced.
Biology 101: Humans, and indeed all mammals, come in two sexes; male and female.
Class dismissed.
When it comes to gender studies, I’m an autodidact.
Shutting down a scam ‘studies’ department should be simeple – frog march the faculty out the door. Unenroll the students in the system, and give them the option of applying for a real major or leaving the school.
That would be a breach of contract with the students who are already doing the course and have the right to complete it and get the degree they’ve contracted for.
This is a good start at a small State college. Let me make a recommendation. Why not order the Florida Dept of Education order all State colleges post potential earnings for each degree offered. Ranking them lowest earnings potential to highest. Make it a part of the incoming package signed off by the students and their parents. Make them own their choices. That way if you are using loans you can see what you’re paying for and how long your earnings potential for a particular degree will encumber you financially. FJB
Because government only has the authority over universities that a state legislature gives it to the extent that said legislation does not impede on the charter the University was granted.
Each charter is different, and grants government different degrees of authority.
That said I do hope DeSantis has lawyers looking at those charters now to find the loopholes that grant authority for something like that.
Congrats to New School and Mr Rufo and Gov DeSantis.
Still and all — it seems pretty obvious that if you’re an American teen, in 2023, your future ability to earn a living
will depend more on your ability to function in Spanish.
than on any of these other issues.
Jmo
Now it’s time for all the other “studies” departments. Black studies, Chicano studies, etc.