According to Michelle Goldberg, DeSantis has opened yet another new front in the culture wars by replacing the Board of Trustees of New College with a number of right-wing luminaries for the purpose of turning a famously progressive institution into a bastion of the right, similar to Hillsdale College. Professors and students who don’t like the new direction will be encouraged to leave.
The idea behind this presumably is to create a template for universities all over the country. Can it work?
Just limiting the focus of the discussion to New College itself, possibly, although collective bargaining agreements will make the immediate defenestration of the existing faculty difficult. On a more global scale, no, for the following reasons:
- As I’ve noted before, academics are predominantly left of center for the same reasons that corporate CEOs are right of center: self-selection. There aren’t enough right-wing professors in this country to fill all of the jobs in academia even if you include thousands of opportunists.
- The right has already lost Gen Z. How many students are going to flock to New Hillsdale to learn that climate change is a hoax, institutional racism is a myth, and the country needs more tax cuts for the wealthy?
The bottom line is that DeSantis and his ilk don’t really have the ability to transform higher education; they can only wreck it. They may be satisfied with that, but the country needs to resist it.