Next month, New College of Florida will welcome activist and writer Steve Sailer, a ‘proponent of scientific racism’
New College of Florida (NCF) will host the extremist writer Steve Sailer, who has been described as a “white supremacist” and a “proponent of scientific racism”, at a college-branded public event next month.
New College has made headlines since January 2023, when the rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, vowed to transform it from a university known for liberal values into a conservative institution, and installed a new board of trustees including the rightwing culture warrior Christopher Rufo. That board in turn appointed DeSantis’s “close ally” Richard Corcoran as the new college president, in which role he makes a $699,000 salary.
DeSantis’s lieutenants’ actions at New College – like abolishing disciplines, removing bathroom signage and denying professors tenure – have seen the departure of more than a third of the faculty, and given rise to myriad legal actions.
New College WAS a school where kids sort of designed their own major, did a project or thesis and defended it. The Veggie Bus that ran on used oil from McDonald’s fryers was a New College project. It was good for hyper achievers who didn’t fit into a canned curriculum. I don’t know that I’d call it “liberal” but it was progressive and challenging.
This apparently annoyed the fuck out of the governor for some reason. Maybe he just doesn’t like the idea of smart weirdos. But it’s those people who move us forward, the smart ones who don’t fit in.
This reeks of “cool guy in high school gets mocked in college by the smart, nerdy (liberal) kids for saying something idiotic, then never stops ‘seeking revenge’ for it.” Meanwhile, the people who mocked him probably don’t even live in the state anymore and have no memory of the incident.