New College is the newest front in DeSantis' "War on Woke"

Despite their rabid obsession with it as a rhetorical cudgel, the vast majority of the right - from the Cable news talking heads to members of the U.S. Senate - couldn't coherently explain to you what "critical race theory" was if their life depended on it, despite the fact they were absolutely sure it was being taught in middle school. This basic ignorance hasn't stopped Republican attacks on the teachings of U.S. history and important works of literature, but it has led to some Republicans looking (more) foolish on the occasional news interview. 

But while Republicans have successfully distorted a complex legal theory into a race-baiting piece of political rhetoric (with some horrifying policy ideas to go along with it), Ron DeSantis - with his fat little finger on the pulse of the Republican base - has dumbed down the messaging even further in his declaration of war against "Wokeness". 

There is a difference between Republican's nebulous war over CRT and the aggressive tact that DeSantis has taken in Florida in opposition to "Woke". The difference being that DeSantis has a very clear idea* of what is "Woke" and just as clear of a strategy on how he intends to kill it wherever he can in the State of Florida. 

*Essentially: Colonists had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians and they all hugged at the end; the Founding Fathers were all infallible deities; the Civil War was fought over "State's Rights"; Black people totally stopped getting screwed in this country around 1965 (but definitely when Obama got elected); and anything which challenges that basic worldview is "Woke" and must be destroyed. Got it? Great.

In his first term alone, the DeSantis "War on Woke" was extraordinarily aggressive. He silenced public health professionals at the State's largest public college during the early days of Covid. He signed into law two bills (the Parental Rights in Education Act, i.e. "Don't Say Gay" and the STOP WOKE Act) that severely limit and whitewash public education in Florida. He funded numerous far-right wing candidates to local school boards, many of whom ran on platforms accusing their incumbent opponents (and public schools themselves) of being "groomers" and dispensing pornography to students. And he removed a duly elected State Attorney in Hillsborough County because he disagreed with his political stances on abortion and transgender rights.  

Well that was all just a teaser, folks. As he made clear in his Mussolini-like victory speech on election night last November, under Il Duce (Douchey?) DeSantis, "Florida is where woke goes to die." 

The new front line in DeSantis' second term is a small, public, liberal arts college in Sarasota, called New College. Despite Florida having some of the worst public schools in the nation as a result of Republican policies going back to Jeb Bush's term, we have one of the best, public higher education systems in the country - and New College has long been a crown jewel among Florida's public colleges and universities. New College is also unique in Florida because it is the only school - public or private - that offers the sort of liberal arts curriculum and approach that one finds primarily at small, prestigious colleges in the Northeast (e.g. Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Swarthmore, etc.). 

Precisely what makes New College such a unique and special place within Florida's higher education system is also why Ron DeSantis has made it his mission to dismantle the college, as we've known it, from the top down. 

Here's a few lines from New College's website, describing the school's values: 

A just, diverse, equitable and inclusive community: New College is on an ongoing journey to become a place where people can experience a sense of belonging and exist in their fullness no matter their human attributes. We seek a balance between recognizing and celebrating difference, respectfully supporting each other’s growth, and ensuring that historically marginalized and oppressed groups are not experiencing trauma and harm.

What New College describes as one of their core values, is literally at the core of everything that drives Ron DeSantis' jihad against "Woke". 

So on January 6th, of all days, DeSantis announced a complete overhaul of New College's Board of Trustees. So today I'd like to take a look at who the folks that DeSantis brought on to tear down New College are, where they're from and what we can expect. 

Christopher Rufo 

For all intents and purposes, Christopher Rufo arguably invented “Critical Race Theory”, as we have come to know it today, and is singularly responsible for venomously injecting the term into the rhetoric of the Right. Rufo was searching for a cudgel with which to beat on what he deemed to be a society that was becoming too racially progressive. So he dug up, from the footnotes of recent anti-racism literature, the legal scholarship of two academics – Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell – who in the 1990s created a legal theory that basically said that certain laws were rooted, either directly or indirectly, in racism and the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow. Crenshaw, Bell and their cohort termed their theory “critical race theory” and it stayed in the realm of legal scholarship until Rufo decided to weaponize the term in 2020 as a catchall to describe anything even vaguely racially progressive. 

Rufo is one of the most incendiary and influential figures on the alt-right. If DeSantis only appointed to Rufo to the New College board, it would be a warning to the institution,  but his other five appointees are just as insidious, if not as prominent as Rufo. 

Matthew Spalding

From the Governor’s press release, “Spalding is the Kirby Professor in Constitutional Government at Hillsdale College and the Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C., campus.” Haven’t heard of Hillsdale College? Well, you must not be on the vanguard of Christian White Nationalism, or you’d have heard about the “small Christian school in southern Michigan that has quietly become one of the most influential entities in conservative politics.” Seriously though, you haven’t heard of Hillsdale’s nationally ranked Shotgun Team? How about the new Pistol Team that won a national competition its first year out of the gate? Make sure you flag this one to your kids’ college counselors, folks. 

Spalding however, has said that, “I appreciate the complimentary nods to Hillsdale College, but we are not going to serve New College’s mission by remaking it into a carbon copy of another institution.” So maybe New College will have to wait on their Shotgun Team. 

Spalding is a proud alumnus of Claremont-McKenna, an influential conservative liberal arts college in Southern California. Which brings us to our next appointment…

Charles R. Kesler, A.B., A.M., and Ph.D.

Kesler is a tenured professor at Claremont-McKenna and the editor of the Claremont Review of Books. (Some recent headlines from the Claremont Review of Books: “Diversity and Its Limits”; “Dividing by Race”; and “An American Originalist”, which is a hagiography of Clarence Thomas, if you couldn’t guess by the title.) Andrew Roberts, hagiographer of Winston Churchill, calls Kesler, “one of America’s foremost conservative intellectuals.”

Much in the vein of Clarence Thomas, and in the magical thinking world of anti-wokeness where the Founding Fathers were godlike and infallible, Kesler’s most recent book, “Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise Decline and Recovery of American Greatness” takes the position that the founders wrote the constitution 250 years ago and damnit they knew what they were doing, and that liberal cucks have been gumming up the works since FDR. The book, “refutes fashionable doctrines including relativism, multiculturalism [and] critical race theory.” Surprise, surprise! 

Mark Bauerlein, Ph.D.

Mark Baurlein has a pretty straightforward and impressive resume, on its face. Mark has, “taught at Emory University since 1989, with a two-and-a-half-year break in 2003–‘05 to serve as the Director, Office of Research and Analysis, at the National Endowment for the Arts.” Maybe not a right-wing culture warrior, right? 

Wrong. Shortly after his appointment to the board of New College, Baurlein penned an oped for The Federalist that declared Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in higher education to be “a form of social engineering that cannot coexist with ‘the free search for truth and its free exposition’.” He’s also semi-famous for telling the world how horrible he thinks millennials are, and how the fact they live in a social media bubble makes them ignorant sheep who could put our democracy at risk. Funny, I don’t think it was young people who acted like ignorant sheep and tried to storm the Capital. “Two-thirds of those arrested for Jan. 6 are over the age of 34. They’re concentrated in their 40s and 50s.” Not exactly millennials. 

Debra Jenks 

Jenks is the only person on this list who doesn’t show outward signs of being a complete wing-nut. She’s also the only person on the list who is an alum of New College. According to the bio in her announcement, “Jenks is a Partner and Attorney at Jenks & Harvey, LLP. She is an arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association and currently serves on the Fourth District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission. Jenks earned her bachelor’s degree from New College of Florida and earned her juris doctor from Lewis and Clark Law School.”

She’s not a major political donor, but she’s given some money to candidates on both sides of the aisle. Her law firm’s donation history is also fairly minimal and bipartisan, with the notable exception of a donation to Friends of Ron DeSantis in 2018. 

Jason “Eddie” Speir

Eddie Speir had retired to the West Coast of Florida, after having built and sold a successful software business to accounting giant Accenture, when God told him to start a school. As he says on the website for his “Inspiration Academy,” “Without any formal background in education, we felt called to start a school.  And so the adventure in faith began. Faith is not knowing. We didn’t know where we were going and weren’t sure why.” 

The effect of the DeSantis’ regime calculated attack on New College cannot be overstated. Anyone with an interest in freedom of thought, academic independence and intellectual advancement must follow this story as it develops.