Another Year, Another New College: Fighting Right Wing Takeover on our Campuses
On January 6, 2023, Governor DeSantis of Florida announced the appointment of six highly ideologically motivated individuals as trustees of the New College of Florida, a tiny public liberal arts college in Sarasota. Since then, it has been the subject of more than 3000 media pieces. Why so much interest in this small, obscure school? As predicted in the September 2023 NOVES platform I delivered, what happened at New College, didn't stay at New College. Furthermore, what happened at New College, didn't start at New College. This platform will highlight similarities between education-targeting strategies and narratives used by Viktor Orban in Hungary, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and the Heritage Foundation at a national level as operationalized through Trump's administration. Recognizing the playbook has helped New College alums make sense of the apparent chaos and take action towards reclaiming the school. Sharing some of our actions can foster discussions to help us all be more effective and engaged citizens.
E. Juliana Paré-Blagoev is an alumna of the New College of Florida and other institutions also under attack. She has the good fortune to be a faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University which, as the number one recipient of federal grants, has a particular vulnerability in an era when our leadership has declared that the universities are the enemy. Since everyone knows that lightning won't strike more than three times in the same place, she figures that NoVES has nothing to worry about in hosting a talk about perilous times for higher education. She is currently on the board of the Novo Collegian Alliance and Scholars for a New Deal in Higher Education; she is the Past President of the Hopkins Advocacy Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
This is a Zoom only meeting. The Zoom link is below
