New College of Florida Moves to Abolish Gender Studies
The New College of Florida board of trustees voted to instruct the administration to remove gender studies courses from the school, becoming the first college in America to roll back on the LGBTQ+ ideologies that have overwhelmed higher education.
The New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, Florida aims to pursue a traditionally classic education while removing progressive ideologies that have taken root in universities across the nation.
Christopher Rufo, who was appointed to the board of trustees by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this year, announced the move in a tweet in which he called gender studies a “pseudoscience” that does not belong in academic life.
“[The Governor] tasked us with a challenging mission: to revive classical liberal education and restore the founding mission of the college,” Rufo wrote in an article for City Journal. When making the case to abolish gender studies programs, Rufo explained that despite cries of “academic freedom,” that “state legislators and boards of trustees have the right—the duty—to redirect, curtail, or close down academic programs in public universities that do not align with the mandate of the taxpayers who generously support them.”
He also explained that any department which strays from its academic mission in “favor of ideological activism” may be abolished under historical precedent.
Former board of trustees member, Matthew Lepinski, who served as the faculty chair but resigned from both the board and his tenured position as a professor of computer science, told Newsweek about his concerns for the future of other public colleges in the state.
“I think because we’re small, they felt that they could test things out on a very rapid timeline,” Lepinski said. “I’m not optimistic about the future of New College and I worry about what this means for other colleges in Florida.”
The decision to remove gender studies courses was opposed by three board members in a heated meeting deciding the department’s future at the institution.
“The mission of New College of Florida is to restore classical liberal education and to revive the pursuit of transcendent truth—a mission ultimately incompatible with the disciplines of gender studies and queer theory, which are explicitly opposed to the classical conceptions of the true, the good, and the beautiful. These postmodern, anti-normative lines of thought may be welcome at other universities, but they are not a requirement for a university as such.”
Christopher Rufo, City Journal
