Credit: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/11/new-college-of-florida-rightwing-takeover

With Trump returning to power, rightwingers may seek to replicate New College of Florida’s experience across US

New College of Florida, which has been the subject of a rightwing takeover that has reversed its previous reputation as a liberal arts school, has hired ideologically aligned rightwing faculty and staff for a range of positions, in a process that an internal open letter said “often replaced faculty expertise with administrative fiat”.

New College of Florida (NCF) was targeted by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who made transforming the liberal institution into a conservative one a centerpiece of his ill-fated presidential campaign that sought to take on liberal causes. Its board of trustees is now dominated by DeSantis allies, triggering campus turmoil and the exodus of some staff.

Some in the Republican party see the effort to transform New College as a model in a wider battle to take on American higher education, which the rightwing sees as dominated by left-leaning institutions and leaders. With Donald Trump returning to power after winning the presidential election last week, many rightwing activists could seek to replicate what has happened to New College across the US.

The Guardian has identified several faculty members who have a history of connections with rightwing media, far-right thinktanks and the so-called “New Right”. The hires are of a piece with the hard-right drift at the college since DeSantis appointed new members to the governing board of trustees including the culture warrior Christopher Rufo, which in turn appointed a new administration led by Richard Corcoran, a longtime Republican activist and former political candidate in Florida.

In an internally circulated open letter to Corcoran written by the chairs of a key committee, staff members have complained that hiring processes now involved the “arbitrary replacement of searches in specific fields with open-field searches, searches with no requirement for a PhD in the field, insertion of candidates with no rationale, and job offers made without a recommendation from the search committee”.

The Guardian emailed NCF for comment but received no response.

Rightwing hires

New College has appointed a raft of faculty and staff with a history in rightwing politics since Corcoran assumed control.

The most prominent appointments – previously reported on by local news media and the college’s Catalyst student newspaper – are the new presidential scholars in residence, which are visiting appointments made at Corcoran’s direct discretion.

One, Bruce Gilley, is a political scientist on sabbatical from Portland State University.

In 2017, he published a paper entitled “The Case for Colonialism” in Third World Quarterly, which touched off a firestorm of controversy by arguing that western colonialism was largely beneficial for colonised nations, and that colonial rule often provided better governance than indigenous alternatives.

Following that publication, 15 members of the journal’s editorial board resigned, alleging that the article did not undergo proper peer review and calling for its retraction. Critics argued that the article ignored the vast body of scholarship documenting colonialism’s brutality, ongoing impacts and the racist ideologies that underpinned it.

Beyond that controversy, Gilley has embraced a rightwing non-profit seeking to push conservative ideology in higher education. He serves on the national board of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), and leads the subsidiary Oregon Association of Scholars.

NAS is a partner organization in Project 2025, the policy blueprint for a prospective Trump administration spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation. Its funders include the conservative mega-donors the Scaife and Bradley foundations, and Thomas Klingenstein, who also serves on the NAS board and as chair of the rightwing Claremont Institute.

Gilley also regularly ventilates controversial rightwing opinions on X, formerly Twitter.

In recent days, Gilley has claimed that “Dems want illegal immigration … to import votes”, echoing the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. He also described Chile’s former president Michelle Bachelet as a “diversity hire”.

Employment records obtained by the Guardian indicate that New College is paying Gilley $130,000 for his yearlong residency. According to Florida state salary records, that puts him among the highest-paid faculty members at NCF in 2024, with most other faculty earning less than $100,000.

Emails first obtained by American Oversight show that Gilley was first recommended to Corcoran not long after his appointment by “yacht lawyer” Robert Allen, an New College alumnus, former board of trustees member, and Republican operative who has claimed credit for encouraging DeSantis to move on the college’s board.

In January 2020, after being re-elected on an “anti-woke” platform, DeSantis appointed a clutch of rightwingers with no Florida connections to the governing board of trustees, including Rufo, the retired academic Mark Bauerlain, Hillsdale College’s Matthew Spaulding, and Ryan T Anderson, a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation, who was previously best known for anti-LGBTQ+ activism.

The Heritage Foundation has recently become better known as the principal architect of Project 2025. Last month, NCF trumpeted on its website that Heritage had issued a report rating New College as a “great option” for conservative students and parents.

In a 23 April 2023 email, just weeks after the previous college president, Patricia Okker, was fired and Corcoran appointed as interim head, Allen wrote to Corcoran: “Has anyone mentioned Bruce Gilley, MA Oxford, PhD Princeton, teaches at Portland State to you, as a potential prof?”

Corcoran replied: “Haven’t heard about Gilley.”

Other presidential scholars include Andrew Doyle, an “anti-woke” writer and broadcaster from the UK who associated with rightwing media outlets there including Spiked Online and GB News.

Another, Joseph Loconte, a conservative academic and former Heritage Foundation director. According to Florida salary records, Loconte is being paid $165,000 for his residency.

The Guardian emailed Gilley for comment on his Portland State University address. He responded: “Fuck you, you ideological midwit. And please quote me.”

Nathan Allen

Earlier in the same April 2023 email exchange, Allen linked Corcoran to a Medium post, adding: “We need to find the author … I will send you another one by him shortly.”

Corcoran replied: “We’ve been talking and he’s helping. Great guy. Just emailing with him this afternoon again.”

The man they were talking about, Nathan Allen, is New College’s VP of strategy and special projects. Allen has little online presence other than his ideologically charged Medium blog, where he lets loose his own broadsides at the left, American universities and other institutions, and other perceived enemies.

Some of those posts include full-throated, conspiracy-minded attacks on the academics Allen now helps to administer.

In a June 2020 post, Allen wrote: “These Marxists and their affiliated majors don’t exist because students actually major in them”, adding “They are the thought police – on campus and nationally. They burn the books, tear down the statues, purge the faculties of thought crimes, assign value, and control the narrative.”