What's Happening?
Overview
On January 6th, 2023, Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed 6 new board members to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees. These new board members, along with DeSantis, are working quickly to take over operations of the college with the intentions of turning it into a conservative school.
DeSantis' media director Taryn Fenske said, "Unfortunately, like so many colleges and universities in America, this institution has been completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning."
This is very clearly a coup-style takeover by DeSantis. By "conquering" a very small, left-leaning school and forcibly converting it to a conservative paradise, DeSantis creates a perfect example of what he wants to do to education on a nationwide scale.
The 6 new board members appointed are:
- Christopher Rufo
- Matthew Spalding
- Charles Kesler
- Mark Bauerlein
- Debra Jenks
- Eddie Speir
Here is some info on each of them:
Christopher Rufo
Rufo has been called the leader of the "critical race theory" movement, which scares unknowing parents into believing that their kids are being taught to be racist in primary education. As you should expect from anything conservatives say, this is complete bullshit. Critical race theory is a course taught in upper level college courses, and talks about how laws, politics, and social movements are effected by concepts of race and ethnicity.
Rufo regularly posts to his nearly half-million Twitter followers about how young schoolkids are being brainwashed by "radical gender theory" and writes that parents should have "good reason" to worry about "grooming in public schools". "Grooming" and "groomer" are conservative dog whistles referring to a homophobic and transphobic conspiracy theory that "[implies] that the LGBTQ community, their allies, and liberals more generally are pedophiles or pedophile-enablers" [from Vox].
Matthew Spalding
Spalding is a professor of Constitutional Government at Hillsdale College, as well as the dean of a separate graduate school at Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., campus. Hillsdale is a private conservative Christian college that uses various legal tactics to skirt the US government's anti-discrimination requirements.
Charles Kesler
Kesler was a member of Donald Trump's 1776 Commission. This 18-person commission (which consisted of no historians) published one report, which laid out goals to change United States history education to a more "patriotic education". This report called progressive politics "challenges to America's principles", while likening them to "communism", "slavery", and "fascism". The report also criticized the civil rights movement and feminist movements.
This report was widely condemned by historians as "partisan politics" and "outright lies".
Mark Bauerlein
Bauerlein is an English professor at Emory University. I started looking into his history, and decided that all I really need to show are some of his tweets.
"We took from teens a belief in God, a coherent and meritorious past, a stable economy, pleasant neighborhoods, patriotism, and a positive pop culture, and we are shocked at the current appeal of Woke, trans-, climate, etc. to the young." [source]
"Students object to prof citing n-word in class while teaching James Baldwin, yet the n-word is everywhere in the music they listen to outside of class." [source]
"When anyone begins arguing in such vague, bloated, abstract, melodramatic terms as "voting rights," "save democracy," "women's rights," and "systemic racism," you know that something else is going on." [source]
Debra Jenks
Jenks is the only New College graduate among this list. She is an attorney with, according to her website, experience in "financial institutions, wirehouses, insurance companies and investment professionals, as well as insured broker-dealers, officers and directors, and financial advisers in retail, industry and employment disputes as well as in regulatory matters".
Eddie Speir
Spier is a founder of Inspiration Academy, a Christian school in Bradenton. There is little I can find about him online, but a quick look at his Twitter account @EddieSpeir shows that he frequently posts misinformation related to climate change, claims that COVID vaccines are part of a conspiracy to cull global population, claims that vaccines cause cancer, and lots of other vaccine misinformation. [Archive of @EddieSpeir]