Florida’s Governor told Michigan Republicans that no one had heard of the state’s public honors college before his recent revamp.
In remarks at the Midland County Republican Party Spring Breakfast, Ron DeSantis offered scathing remarks about New College of Florida.
“I had a small liberal arts college in Sarasota called New College of Sarasota. I don’t think anyone had even heard of it. Very few people had heard of it. It was performing very poorly,” DeSantis contended.
“It was supposed to be Florida’s top honors college in the entire state under Florida Statute. That’s what it says. But what happened is it became an ideological epicenter. It was all about things like gender ideology, (critical race theory) and all that,” DeSantis added. “And we don’t think that that has a lot of value from the perspective of our taxpayers.”
The Governor framed his drastic revision to the college’s board of trustees, which installed former Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran as President and gave him a $699,000 salary, as a way to “make sure it aligns with the state’s values.”
“I appointed in January six conservative board members to the board of trustees,” DeSantis recounted.
“They fired the President, hired a conservative President, got rid of the provost, eliminated (diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives) and CRT, and said the mission of New College is not to be a Marxist indoctrination center, but is actually to be the top classical liberal arts public college in America. So we’re on our way to do that.”
The Governor selected on Jan. 6, 2023 six new members (Mark Bauerlein, Debra Jenks, Charles Kesler, Christopher Rufo, Matthew Spalding and Eddie Speir) to the board, in a push to make the quirky Southwest Florida school what one senior aide called the “Hillsdale of the South.” Providentially, the Governor will speak at Michigan’s Hillsdale College Thursday evening.
Those board members are subject to Senate confirmation, and that process is moving this Legislative Session. On Wednesday, the Senate Education Postsecondary Committee advanced the confirmation of the new trustees on a 5-2 party-line vote.
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Jacob Ogles of Florida Politics contributed to this report.
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