SURFSIDE, FLORIDA - AUGUST 10: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis waits to present a check to a first responder during an event to give out bonuses to them held at the Grand Beach Hotel Surfside on August 10, 2021 in Surfside, Florida. DeSantis gave out some of the $1,000 checks that the Florida state budget passed for both first responders and teachers across the state. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Story by Zac Anderson

New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees abolished the office handling diversity, equity and inclusion programs during a contentious and emotional meeting Tuesday that included testimony from students worried that a board reshaped by Gov. Ron DeSantis is making the school unwelcoming to minorities.

DeSantis appointed six members to New College’s board on Jan. 6 in an effort to transform the school, putting the small Sarasota institution at the center of the GOP’s nationwide pushback on education policies aimed at supporting historically marginalized groups, including racial minorities and LGBTQ individuals.

DeSantis has emerged as a key national figure in this debate after he pushed through legislation governing how K-12 schools discuss race and gender identity and recently prohibited an Advanced Placement course in African American studies, which caused an uproar. The governor is now taking aim at university programs.

Eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives − which have become a major flashpoint for conservatives and a target of DeSantis throughout Florida’s public university system − is among the first substantive actions by New College’s revamped board, which also fired the former president last month and hired DeSantis ally Richard Corcoran as interim president. Corcoran’s first board meeting was Tuesday.

A review of DEI programs

Among DeSantis’ New College board appointees is prominent conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who pushed at his first meeting on Jan. 31 to abolish diversity programs.

The board opted to wait until more research could be done. College administrator Brad Thiessen presented the results of his DEI review Tuesday, delving into everything from faculty training to hiring practices and student admissions.

Thiessen said there was little mandatory diversity training and that only recently had prospective faculty been asked to submit a statement in their job application outlining how they would promote diversity.

Additionally, only one of the employees in the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence was primarily focused on DEI programs. The others managed grants, worked on community outreach and performed other activities that aren’t controversial.

That led Trustees Grace Keenan and Matthew Lepinski to question whether the impacts of the DEI programs had been overstated.

“I’m concerned that we’re solving a problem that isn’t serious, or doesn’t really exist,” Lepinski said.

Keenan wondered if the board was spending a lot of time and energy on something that was relatively limited in scope. She suggested that the effort spent weeding out DEI programs was out of proportion to the amount of DEI that actually exists on campus.

“This is not a very impressive DEI bureaucracy,” Keenan said.

Keenan, Lipinski and Trustee Mary Ruiz voted against eliminating the diversity office.

Conservative appointee Christopher Rufo: DEI efforts discriminatory

Rufo conceded that DEI isn’t as deeply embedded in the college’s practices as he expected, but said it was still important to remove it on “principle.” Rufo and Trustee Matthew Spalding both suggested it is discriminatory to take race into account when setting the college’s priorities.

“It treats people differently on the basis of their skin color,” Rufo said.

“This is discrimination, it should be gone,” Spalding added.

The majority of trustees voted to have Corcoran move forward with eliminating the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, which handles DEI programs. The Office’s four employees will be offered other jobs.

Trustees also voted to eliminate the diversity statement when hiring faculty and to direct Corcoran to consider adopting a prohibition on diversity training for employees.

Additionally, the board voted to have Corcoran create a school policy that prohibits spending money on any DEI efforts.

Under the new regulation, DEI will be defined to include “any effort to manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to race, sex, color, or ethnicity.”

The definition of DEI also would include: “Any effort to promote as the official position of the administration, the college, or any administrative unit thereof, a particular, widely contested opinion referencing unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, group marginalization, anti-racism, systemic oppression, social justice, intersectionality, neo-pronouns, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender theory, racial or sexual privilege, or any related formulation of these concepts.”

The rollback of New College’s diversity programs came at the end of a 3-1/2-hour meeting that featured emotional testimony for students, parents and others. About 200 people attended the meeting.

Where is New College of Florida?

New College of Florida is in Sarasota, in the central part of the state just south of Tampa on the Gulf Coast. The college bills itself as a community of “Free Thinkers, Risk Takers and Trailblazers,” and invites prospective New College students to “discover a public arts and science education driven by your curiosity, career aspirations, and individual learning style.”

Parents, students decry abolishing diversity programs

Economics and finance student Joshua Epstein, 17, said he graduates next year and plans to become a corporate lawyer or banker.

“Folks, I am so far from woke,” Epstein said.

Yet Epstein argued that the school’s diversity programs are important. Epstein said his grandparents on his father’s side survived the Holocaust and his grandfather on his mother’s side was a tank commander in the Israeli Army “where he fought for the survival of a Jewish state to fight to have a place where I’d be safe from persecution if people ever saw Jews as less than human again.”

“Today I fear that other groups of people are being seen as less than human; today I fear that we may eliminate the office that ensures that the composition of our classrooms resemble that of our great nation,” Esptein added.

The concerns raised by the public extended beyond eliminating diversity programs to DeSantis’ broader effort to reshape the school, Corcoran’s $699,000 base salary and other issues.

Corcoran thanked DeSantis during his first public remarks as interim president, saying the governor has “a heartfelt desire to have New College be a leader” in liberal arts education.

Students vow continued resistance

Earlier in the day students joined religious and political leaders in a large protest before the board meeting.

About 300 people gathered in front of the Hamilton Center on New College’s Sarasota campus to again criticize DeSantis’ conservative takeover of the school and vow continued resistance. Many of the speakers were minority students who criticized the push to eliminate the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence.

DeSantis has targeted DEI programs across all of Florida’s public universities, and New College is first in line.

Lianna Paton, a minority student in her first year at New College, said targeting DEI programs is an attempt to suppress and “erase students of color.”

“You do not get to say diversity is divisive when its very existence is what makes communities like my own feel welcome and safe,” Paton said.

Members of the crowd held up signs saying “Black history is American history” and “Jesus was/is woke.”

Chai Leffler, 21, a gay third year New College student, said he struggled with his sexuality growing up and went through a dark time in high school. He went to a youth center in Sarasota where he met New College students who made him feel welcome.

“There’s one thing they cannot change,” Leffler said. “Us. We the students of New College are the spirit of New College and we will not let that be taken away from us.

Church leader accuses DeSantis’ of prioritizing presidential ambitions 

Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer leads the church that helped found New College as a private school in 1960 before it became part of the state university system. He said he is outraged by what DeSantis is doing to the school.

“I want to express my moral outrage at Gov. DeSantis willing to compromise and sacrifice the future, the vision, the hopes, the dreams and the safety of the students on this campus for his aspirations to serve as president,” Dorhauer said.

Dorhauer’s United Church of Crist provided funding to create New College and church members were active in the school during its early days.

Dorhauer also spoke at the board meeting, where he told trustees that their actions will be judged harshly by history.

“The long arc of history will grind you into dust and… you will be remembered for the sycophants that you are,” he said. “That’s what history does.”

By don

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