Florida continues dealing out one vile move against education after another under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis. The latest (providing you read this within a few hours of its publication): The DeSantis-stacked board of trustees of the New College of Florida voted to begin the process of abolishing gender studies at the public liberal arts college.
The proposal came from Christopher Rufo, an architect of the right-wing panics over “critical race theory” and “grooming” in schools. According to Rufo, it will affect students starting in 2024, though the process going forward is unclear: According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “General counsel Bill Galvano clarified that the vote only began the process of contacting the Board of Governors and looking into the collective bargaining agreement with faculty involved in the program.” The lack of clarity about the process does not change the political muscle behind it, as DeSantis continues his crusade to turn public education in Florida into a right-wing indoctrination machine.
“The best universities, when they have programs that do not fit in with a mission, that are not closely hewn to the scholarly intentions of the university, make the hard calls to discontinue those programs,” Rufo said, as if he were doing this with anything but glee. He wants to talk about the best universities, though?
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According to the U.S. News and World Report rankings, Princeton University is the top university in the country. Princeton has a gender and sexuality studies program. Number two is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they have women’s and gender studies. At number-three Harvard, there are studies of women, gender, and sexuality. (Rufo got a master’s degree from the Harvard Extension School.) Nine out of the top 10 national universities have some variation on such a program. (Number nine, the California Institute of Technology, is the lone exception.) Eight of the top 10 national liberal arts colleges have such programs, with the exceptions being the Naval Academy and West Point—and for that matter, West Point has a minor in diversity and inclusion studies.
This is the company that Rufo and the rest of the DeSantis trustees are taking New College out of. But the “best universities” part of that quote wasn’t the part he really meant. The thing Rufo was really saying was “programs that do not fit in with a mission, that are not closely hewn to the scholarly intentions of the university.” He was appointed with a partisan mission and he is fulfilling it. New College has had a gender studies major since 1995. The mission and the scholarly intentions at play here arrived in 2022 and 2023, when Ron DeSantis got high on his own supply and decided that a heavy-handed assault on Florida education was his path to the presidency.
The list of horrifying education stories coming out of Florida is getting to where it requires a spreadsheet to track, but let’s just list some:
As Duke University sociologist Kieran Healy tweeted about gender studies at New College, “The marketplace of ideas is when the government chooses which subjects colleges may teach. Academic freedom is when the state decides your subject shouldn't be allowed. The Classical Liberal Arts Tradition is when political appointees get to judge whether something is science.”
According to DeSantis and Rufo, yes. Faculty were already fleeing New College before this latest move against academic freedom there. That’s likely to accelerate, to the extent anyone is left who has other options.
The proposal came from Christopher Rufo, an architect of the right-wing panics over “critical race theory” and “grooming” in schools. According to Rufo, it will affect students starting in 2024, though the process going forward is unclear: According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, “General counsel Bill Galvano clarified that the vote only began the process of contacting the Board of Governors and looking into the collective bargaining agreement with faculty involved in the program.” The lack of clarity about the process does not change the political muscle behind it, as DeSantis continues his crusade to turn public education in Florida into a right-wing indoctrination machine.
“The best universities, when they have programs that do not fit in with a mission, that are not closely hewn to the scholarly intentions of the university, make the hard calls to discontinue those programs,” Rufo said, as if he were doing this with anything but glee. He wants to talk about the best universities, though?
Campaign Action
According to the U.S. News and World Report rankings, Princeton University is the top university in the country. Princeton has a gender and sexuality studies program. Number two is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they have women’s and gender studies. At number-three Harvard, there are studies of women, gender, and sexuality. (Rufo got a master’s degree from the Harvard Extension School.) Nine out of the top 10 national universities have some variation on such a program. (Number nine, the California Institute of Technology, is the lone exception.) Eight of the top 10 national liberal arts colleges have such programs, with the exceptions being the Naval Academy and West Point—and for that matter, West Point has a minor in diversity and inclusion studies.
This is the company that Rufo and the rest of the DeSantis trustees are taking New College out of. But the “best universities” part of that quote wasn’t the part he really meant. The thing Rufo was really saying was “programs that do not fit in with a mission, that are not closely hewn to the scholarly intentions of the university.” He was appointed with a partisan mission and he is fulfilling it. New College has had a gender studies major since 1995. The mission and the scholarly intentions at play here arrived in 2022 and 2023, when Ron DeSantis got high on his own supply and decided that a heavy-handed assault on Florida education was his path to the presidency.
The list of horrifying education stories coming out of Florida is getting to where it requires a spreadsheet to track, but let’s just list some:
The Florida Department of Education said that material in right-wing indoctrination videos from PragerU “aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards” and can be used in elementary schools. The videos include things like Christopher Columbus saying, “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”
Florida tried to bully the College Board into gutting Advanced Placement Psychology material on “how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development,” and when that didn’t work, the state education department said the class couldn’t go forward—before backing down at the outcry.
The state government didn't back down from a Black history curriculum teaching that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” DeSantis then tried to bait Vice President Kamala Harris into a debate about it. “There is no roundtable no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming quality of slavery,” Harris responded.
A growing list of books and movies have been banned by some Florida schools under state guidelines, or been seriously threatened with banning. That includes a 1998 Disney movie about the Civil Rights Movement, some of Shakespeare’s plays, and “The Fault in Our Stars.”
The state rejected 42 math textbooks because they supposedly “incorporate[d] prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies” such as advice on how to “disagree respectfully” when solving math problems.
As Duke University sociologist Kieran Healy tweeted about gender studies at New College, “The marketplace of ideas is when the government chooses which subjects colleges may teach. Academic freedom is when the state decides your subject shouldn't be allowed. The Classical Liberal Arts Tradition is when political appointees get to judge whether something is science.”
According to DeSantis and Rufo, yes. Faculty were already fleeing New College before this latest move against academic freedom there. That’s likely to accelerate, to the extent anyone is left who has other options.