'Hostile takeover': the tiny Florida university targeted by Ron DeSantis

[marmar]

‘Hostile takeover’: the tiny Florida university targeted by Ron DeSantis
Governor’s latest shot in his war on woke is the shock appointment of rightwing trustees to progressive New College


(Guardian UK) New College of Florida started making history from the day it opened its doors to its first incoming class of 101 undergraduate students in 1964. It was the first institution of higher education in Florida – which was once part of the slave-owning Confederacy – to pioneer an open admissions policy committing the school not to discriminate based on “race, creed, national origin, or cultural status”.

The founding principles of the college emphasized freedom of inquiry and the eminent historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee was lured out of retirement to join the fledgling institution’s charter faculty. New College – which became a public institution when it joined Florida’s state university system in 1975 – soon established itself as one of America’s premier liberal arts schools.

Now New College may again be on the verge of making history – but of a very different sort.

Its picturesque seaside campus in the city of Sarasota, Florida, finds itself in the crosshairs of rightwing Republican state governor Ron DeSantis’s latest culture wars crusade, in this instance to destroy its unofficial reputation as a haven for approximately 650 generally progressive-leaning students, about half of whom identify themselves as non-heterosexual.

Widely expected to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican party’s presidential nomination for the 2024 election, DeSantis famously declared “to the woke mob” on the night of his re-election victory last November that “Florida is where woke goes to die.” ...........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/29/ron-desantis-florida-university-new-college-woke-war

[Takket]

1. he's an absolute mad man...........

in some ways he's more terrifying than drumpf because drumpf's own infantile stupidity let him be handled in some ways by White House personnel trying to hold the country together, and drumpf himself was more interested in scamming the country to enrich himself than anything else.

desantis seems to be motivated by literally nothing but destroying any political ideas other than his own, and anything that even acknowledges that people other than white male cisgender neo-cons even exist.

He is terrifying.

[badhair77]

2. Looks like he's hell-bent on doing some damage.

There is nothing redeeming about him.

[Easterncedar]

3. Rage farming

Rile up the mob who would rather be angry than forced to think and ride that angry wave to power. It works.

[EX500rider]

4. I went to school there

The dorms were designed by famous architect
I M Pei, they are more like apartments than dorm rooms they have their own external door and private bathroom and the upstairs ones have balconies.

And the Ringling art museum is right across the street which is neat.

And the classic car museum was right next door that was cool.

[Initech]

5. Fox News ruins everything they touch. Like some sort of reverse King Midas.