Students at New College of Florida offered escape from DeSantis takeover to Massachusetts
Jeremiah Poff
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A small Massachusetts liberal arts college is offering students at the New College of Florida an easy path to transfer after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) stacked the college’s board of trustees with conservative activists and intellectuals.
Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, offered admission to all New College students and said the college would match New College’s current tuition rates for students that wished to transfer.
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“After consulting with the student organizers rallying to preserve New College’s distinctive approach to undergraduate education, Hampshire College is proud to stand with students who crave a progressive education,” the college said in a press release. “Hampshire will provide a welcoming environment for all who want the freedom to study and act on the urgent challenges of our time, without ideological limits imposed by the state.”
Long known as a bastion of liberal education, New College has been the source of national headlines after DeSantis appointed several well-known conservatives, including anti-critical race theory activist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, to the school’s board of trustees.
Rufo and the other new trustees have vowed to remake the school as a conservative liberal arts college in the mold of Hillsdale College in Michigan and have taken several steps toward that goal. Shortly after taking their seats on the board, the new trustees acted swiftly to fire the college’s president and abolish diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts from the college.
The shift toward a conservative direction is a stark reversal for the New College, which has previously been recognized as among the most liberal colleges in the United States and was consistently rated as among the most “gay-friendly” schools in the nation. The environment cultivated a certain reputation for the school, which has struggled to attract students in recent years. Last month, the New Yorker reported that consultants typically associated the words “politically correct,” “druggies,” and “weirdos” with the culture and student body of the college.
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“What is happening at New College of Florida is merely the most radical example of increasingly aggressive efforts to suppress meaningful examination of the realities of our society and curb the advancement of democratic ideals, aspirations that should be the mission of higher education,” Hampshire College said in its press release. “Increasingly, public institutions are a target for those trying to censor discussions of racism, white supremacy, gender identity, structural barriers to equity, and the reproduction of oppressive hierarchies. This doesn’t serve the students, it doesn’t serve democracy, and it certainly doesn’t serve the world those students seek to improve.”
For New College students looking to transfer to Hampshire College, they need only provide a transcript and a copy of their financial aid awards and they could be off to a new school in the Northeast for the 2023-2024 school year. Hampshire has vowed to match every New College student’s current tuition cost.