The Latest Battle in the Conservative War on the American Mind

[Nevilledog]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/08/desantiss-new-college-minions-want-to-ax-gender-studies.html

No paywall
https://archive.li/HiMIv

When Ron DeSantis appointed six far-right trustees at the New College of Florida, he did so with destruction with mind. An inquisitive culture and quirky spirit once set the liberal-arts college apart from its peers, but what made it unique made it objectionable to the right. Now the college faces an involuntary transformation, and the latest casualty may be its gender-studies program.

On Thursday, the school’s board voted to begin the process of eliminating the major. Christopher Rufo, a trustee and conservative activist appointed by DeSantis, said that gender studies was “wildly contradictory” to the goal of reviving “a classical liberal-arts agenda,” the Tampa Bay Times reported. Rufo and his allies can’t unilaterally ban the program. According to the Times, the college’s general counsel “advised that the university would need to comply with state regulations and collective bargaining agreements before making a final decision.” If they get their way, however, students will be worse off for it. That inquisitive culture is under siege.

The DeSantis trustees are open about their illiberal motivations. In a piece for City Journal, Rufo bragged that 36 professors have left New College, “clearing the way for a large number of new hires interested in pursuing the great human questions rather than maintaining a stifling, left-wing echo chamber.” But Rufo is motivated not by “the great human questions” or a hostility to echo chambers. There is no evidence that he prizes intellectual inquiry. Instead, he wants an echo chamber of his own. He admitted as much in City Journal. Lawmakers and college trustees “have the right — the duty — to redirect, curtail, or close down academic programs in public universities that do not align with the mandate of the taxpayers who generously support them,” he wrote. That is incompatible with any recognizable definition of academic freedom, which must function independently of any “taxpayer mandate” in order to exist at all.

Rufo then tried to skate around the issue of academic freedom by defining gender studies out of academia altogether. The field is really “ideological activism,” he claimed, and universities thus have the right to eliminate it. “Finally, every university has a mission — and a corresponding obligation to honor it,” he concluded. “The mission of New College of Florida is to restore classical liberal education and to revive the pursuit of transcendent truth,” which is “incompatible with the disciplines of gender studies and queer theory, which are explicitly opposed to the classical conceptions of the true, the good, and the beautiful.” The students of New College may have questions for Rufo. Who gets to decide what is true, and good, and beautiful? Rufo has appointed himself the arbiter of each quality, without debate or challenge. That’s not how higher education works.

*snip*

[William769]

1. K&R.

[underpants]

2. Sad for the current students but this place is going to be like Liberty Regent Bob Jones

and Hillsdale. Those are private schools and the one in Florida is not. No one other than true believers will go there.

[303squadron]

3. WSU - White Supremacy University

[Hortensis]

4. 36 professors have left New College so far. By creating a new athletics

department and focusing on drawing student athletes to that, assisted with scholarships, giveaways like free laptops, etc, enrollment since this started has actually grown. GPA and test scores have dropped, of course, at what once aspired to be a top liberal arts college.

Very sad, sickening actually. No doubt the academic jobs will be filled by applicants who couldn't get hired, or let go, elsewhere but never really understood why.

Students interested in gender studies will go elsewhere.

[Tickle]

5. This is all about Gender study program

At first, I thought they were changing the whole academic study.

At this point, pick your battles. States have the right to do what they want, at least for now, and if you don't like it, don't go to the colleges in Florida. Teachers who don't agree left, and teachers who do agree now can work in Florida.
Don't whine. Just don't go there. We have 49 other states with great colleges.

[keep_left]

6. This Rufo asshole is the same guy responsible for creating the "Critical Race Theory"...

...moral panic among the MAGA chuds. Not surprisingly, he has been a beneficiary of the wingnut welfare system, including positions at the Claremont Institute, City Journal, and the Manhattan Institute. Now he's further padding his resumé with a position as a trustee at New College of Florida.

Here's a little more background, courtesy of Hullabaloo:
https://digbysblog.net/2022/04/08/universal-distrust/

[czarjak]

7. Jodey Arrington was way ahead of that game years ago.

While Vice-Chancellor at TTU, he was in charge of getting Deans and Professors to change grades to improve their graduation rates so that TTU could attain Tier One status. Mission Accomplished, BTW. Ask him.