When Nicholas Clarkson submitted his letter of resignation as an assistant professor of gender studies at New College of Florida (NCF) on 17 August, he became the 41st faculty member who has chosen not to return to its Sarasota campus during this year’s fall semester.
The decision was not a hasty one: throughout the first half of 2023, Clarkson went about his teaching responsibilities even as he witnessed how the progressive, inclusive ethos of the small liberal arts college was being steadily eroded by a board of trustees dominated by political allies of Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Florida governor, whom he named in January.
As DeSantis pursues his quest for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2024, he made battling liberal causes across the state a core part of his campaign. His attempt to transform New College was a centerpiece of that effort, triggering national headlines and unleashing chaos on the campus.
Now the transformation of New College that he set in motion eight months ago continues unabated. The exodus of staff represents a staggering 40% of the entire faculty who were employed during the spring semester of the 2022-23 academic year.
First came the abrupt removal of Patricia Okker, the president of New College, at the first meeting of the reconstituted board in late January. Then came a vote by the trustees three months later to deny tenure to five of Clarkson’s faculty colleagues who had been strongly recommended by scholars from within New College as well as outside the institution of higher education.
The removal of gender-neutral signage from some rest rooms at the seaside campus only heightened the 38-year-old trans man’s mounting anxieties about his future prospects at New College.
But it was the trustees’ decision on 10 August to abolish the gender studies program altogether that triggered Clarkson’s departure. One DeSantis-appointed trustee derided the program as “more of an ideological movement”, and in a blistering, two-page letter addressed to the New College interim president, Richard Corcoran, Clarkson responded by condemning the trustees’ action as “a reactionary attempt to prevent cultural shifts that scare you”.
He went on to characterize the exodus of faculty members as “an indictment of your and the trustees’ actions”. And in a paraphrase of DeSantis’s signature anti-woke slogan, Clarkson declared that “Florida is the state where learning goes to die.”
Some of Clarkson’s former colleagues have accepted teaching positions elsewhere, while still others are taking temporary leaves of absence to consider their options.
“A lot of people are using their research leaves to look for other jobs,” said Katherine Walstrom, a professor of biochemistry who heads the faculty union chapter at New College and will be retiring in 2024. “I don’t know what majors we will have next fall or even who will still be here.”
According to Nathan March, the New College communications director, of the absent faculty members “approximately three-quarters had already planned retirements or sabbaticals before Governor DeSantis made any changes at New College”. He added that NCF “has already hired dozens of highly qualified faculty to fill necessary positions” in time for the fall semester that began on 28 August.
Approximately 125 undergraduates have transferred to other colleges and universities or dropped out in the face of what some have likened to a hostile, rightwing takeover of NCF. Hampshire College in Massachusetts has admitted 36 New College students ahead of the fall semester after it guaranteed admission to all applicants in good academic standing at the state-run college and pledged not to increase their existing tuition costs.
Florida’s current commissioner of education Manny Diaz, Jr has expressed the resolve of state officials to reshape NCF along the lines of Hillsdale College, a private, conservative and Christian-oriented institution in southern Michigan.
The college’s recently appointed vice-president of communications and marketing, Ryan Terry, has hailed the metamorphosis underway on its campus as “a renaissance” that is reinforcing the institution’s traditional “passion for creating lifelong learners”.
A series of changes in student recruitment and housing policies has fueled the outflow of students. Under Corcoran, a former Republican legislator who previously served as DeSantis’s commissioner of education, New College has sharply increased the percentage of student-athletes in the incoming class of 328 undergraduates.
Average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores are down among members of the college’s class of 2027 by a factor of 100 points compared with the incoming class of a year ago.
In a break with longstanding practice, many of the newly arrived 115 student-athletes have been assigned to well-appointed, apartment-style dormitories previously reserved for undergraduates entering their third or fourth years of studies.
To cope with the resulting shortage of housing for juniors and seniors, New College has earmarked dozens of rooms in three Sarasota hotels for such students, even though none are located within convenient walking distance of its main campus.
“It’s a complete disregard and abandonment of the current student body,” says Vivian Cargille, a third-year student majoring in marine biology. “[The administration] is trying to erase the culture on campus and they’re not prioritizing academics for students any more.”
Cargille’s three closest friends at New College have voted with their feet. Olivia Pare will continue her biology and chemistry studies this fall at Evergreen State College in Washington state, a small, publicly funded liberal arts college which she says offers an intellectual zeitgeist comparable to New College.
Pare had been working on an organic chemistry internship under faculty member Rebecca Black last spring. But the 20-year-old student was disappointed to learn that Black was among the five academics denied tenure by the board of trustees.
“I have no regrets about having gone there and wish the environment could have remained the way it was. It’s just devastating to have to move on,” said Pare.
A fellow academic refugee worries about the long-term implications posed by the New College experience for colleges and universities throughout the country. Clarkson says he is likely to leave academia as he begins his search for a new job.
“I am really concerned about what this experiment means for the future of higher education in the United States,” says Clarkson. “This is a test case for a conservative overhaul of higher education – and it isn’t going to stay isolated to New College or Florida.”
