Gambits, Gaffs, and Grift
An explosive new investigative report by Kathryn Joyce reveals the broader context of the New College takeover. A must read!
Tragedy or Farce?
The subtitle for Kathryn Joyce’s fantastic long form investigative article “The New College Gambit” in the magazine In These Times is “The right-wing takeover of Florida’s public honors college blurs the line between tragedy and farce, but attacks on universities are about to get worse.” It is a blistering opening for an in depth exploration of what happened to New College of Florida, and why.
While the Right doesn’t admit it, the vision of higher ed they’re advancing is one where the lucky few have access to a rich liberal arts education, others get a “classical” right-wing imitation and the majority receive utilitarian instruction designed to fill holes in the labor market.
Joyce is already well known in journalistic circles, and received critical acclaim for her book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. In this piece, which has been shared like wildfire throughout New College networks for the past couple of days, she takes a deep dive into the history of the takeover, from the first days of DeSantis gutting the Board of Trustees to more recent threats to the New College Foundation itself.
In came the trustees. There were two members of Trump’s 1776 Commission, created in 2020 to foster “patriotic education” — one of them a Hillsdale dean, the other a fellow at the “MAGA think tank” the Claremont Institute. There was an editor of a Christian Right magazine and an anti-LGBTQ activist who heads a Christian Right group. And, of course, there was Rufo, who immediately cast the “hostile takeover” in military terms — he was assembling a “landing team” to “liberate” the campus from “cultural hostage takers.” They were “over the walls and ready to transform higher education from within.”
As an alum, I’m thrilled to see the full story being told in full, from the gambits to the gaffs to the grift. But even I can see that the bigger picture is what is important here, and Joyce makes it very clear just how this entire situation fits into the right-wing extremist goals of gutting the proud American tradition of academic freedom in higher education. The destruction of a treasured institution like my alma mater is just collateral damage in that overarching goal.
New College’s administration and trustees are bad at running a college in “the same way the Freedom Caucus is bad at governing.” Which is to say, “If you’re funded by people who want government to fail, then by being bad at governing, you’re doing exactly right.”
Please go read the article in full and share it around your networks. It’s more than time for the full truth to be told. Thank you, Kathryn Joyce, for your hard work on this fantastic article!
