{"id":26062,"date":"2023-08-15T01:32:43","date_gmt":"2023-08-15T01:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/belalcazar.org\/?p=26062"},"modified":"2023-08-15T01:32:43","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T01:32:43","slug":"opinion-at-a-college-targeted-by-desantis-gender-studies-is-out-jocks-are-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/belalcazar.org\/analysis-comment\/opinion-at-a-college-targeted-by-desantis-gender-studies-is-out-jocks-are-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | At a College Targeted by DeSantis, Gender Studies Is Out, Jocks Are In"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

By <\/span>Michelle Goldberg<\/span><\/p>\n

Opinion Columnist<\/p>\n

In two weeks, the new school year will begin at Florida\u2019s New College, the progressive public liberal arts school singled out by Gov. Ron DeSantis for cultural transformation. Returning students will find an institution that is increasingly unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

Over a third of the faculty members have left. Many of last year\u2019s students are continuing their education elsewhere. Hampshire College, a small private liberal arts school in New England, has offered financial aid to New College students so they can transfer without tuition increases. Thirty-five plan to attend Hampshire this fall, and 30 more have inquired about doing so in the spring, a large number, given that last year New College had fewer than 700 students. Last week, New College\u2019s leadership announced that it was moving to abolish the gender studies department. Chris Rufo, the culture warrior whom DeSantis put on New College\u2019s board of trustees, boasted that it would be \u201cthe first public university in America to begin rolling back the encroachment of gender ideology and queer theory on its academic offerings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dismantling of gender studies is striking because of how closely it follows a playbook for the ideological transformation of higher education pioneered by Hungary, which banned gender studies in 2018. Given that Rufo frames the New College takeover as a demonstration project to be repeated by red states nationwide, I\u2019d expect attempts to scrap gender studies to spread. (Already, some Republicans in the Wyoming Legislature have tried, unsuccessfully, to defund such programs.) But having followed the right-wing remaking of New College all year, I think it\u2019s worth paying attention not just to what is being destroyed but also to what is being put in its place.<\/p>\n

Rufo speaks a lot about academic excellence and the virtues of a classical liberal education. But as Steven Walker of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported in a damning July story, the incoming class recruited by the new administration has lower average grades, SAT scores and ACT scores than last year\u2019s class. \u201cMuch of the drop in average scores can be attributed to incoming student-athletes who, despite scoring worse on average, have earned a disproportionate number of the school\u2019s $10,000-per-year merit-based scholarships,\u201d wrote Walker.<\/p>\n

As of July, New College had 328 incoming students, a record for the school. Of the group, 115 are athletes, and 70 were recruited to play baseball, even though, as Walker reported, New College has no real sports facilities and has yet to be accepted into the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. By comparison, the University of Florida\u2019s far more established baseball team has 37 student-athletes.<\/p>\n

The accommodations offered to New College\u2019s new student-athletes will be better than those provided to many existing students. Walker reported that the incoming class will be housed in newer, apartment-style dorms that in the past were reserved for upperclass students. Returning students are being moved to older, more decrepit buildings, two of which recently were declared uninhabitable because of a mold problem. (New College has said it won\u2019t put students in mold-affected rooms.)<\/p>\n

Some new students may well end up immersing themselves in the great works of the Western canon. But last week, New College\u2019s interim president, Richard Corcoran, a longtime Republican politician who served as DeSantis\u2019s education commissioner, sent a memo to faculty members, proposing new majors in finance, communications and sports psychology, \u201cwhich will appeal to many of our newly admitted athletes.\u201d As Amy Reid, a New College professor of French who directs the gender studies department, said when I spoke to her last weekend, \u201cTell me how sports psychology, finance and communications fits with a classical liberal arts model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than reviving some traditional model of academic excellence, then, it looks as though New College leaders are simply trying to replace a culture they find politically hostile with one meant to be more congenial. The end of gender studies and the special treatment given to incoming athletes are part of the same project, masculinizing a place that had been heavily feminist, artsy and queer. When I spoke to Rufo last weekend, he offered several explanations for New College\u2019s new emphasis on sports, including the classical idea that a healthy body sustains a healthy mind. But an important part of the investment in athletics, he said, is that it is a way to make New College more male and, by extension, less left wing.<\/p>\n

In the past, about two-thirds of New College\u2019s students were women. \u201cThis is a wildly out-of-balance student population, and it caused all sorts of cultural problems,\u201d said Rufo. Having so many more women than men, he said, turned New College into \u201cwhat many have called a social justice ghetto.\u201d The new leadership, he said, is \u201crebalancing the ratio of students\u201d in the hopes of ultimately achieving gender parity.<\/p>\n

But gender parity is not necessarily compatible with a pure academic meritocracy, which Rufo claims to prize. Women are outpacing men in education in many parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Hungary, nearly 55 percent of university students are women, leading the government to warn about the \u201cfeminization\u201d of higher education. Selective American colleges tend to have more female than male applicants; to maintain something approaching a gender balance, some have adopted lower standards for men. In other words, it often takes deliberate intervention \u2014 one might call it affirmative action \u2014 to create a student body in which women don\u2019t predominate. New College isn\u2019t jettisoning gender ideology. It\u2019s just adopting a different one.<\/p>\n

The Times is committed to publishing <\/em>a diversity of letters<\/em> to the editor. We\u2019d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some <\/em>tips<\/em>. And here\u2019s our email: <\/em>letters@nytimes.com<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on <\/em>Facebook<\/em>, <\/em>Twitter (@NYTopinion)<\/em> and <\/em>Instagram<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment. @<\/span>michelleinbklyn <\/span><\/p>\n

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By Michelle Goldberg Opinion Columnist In two weeks, the new school year will begin at Florida\u2019s New College, the progressive public liberal arts school singled out by Gov. Ron DeSantis for cultural transformation. Returning students will find an institution that is increasingly unrecognizable. Over a third of the faculty members have left. 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