Friends:
Please read this in tandem with my earlier post in order to get a more complete sense of the context.
Jonathan Scott Perry’s letter, published in response to the Sun Sentinel editorial on the New College of Florida, is a searing act of truth-telling—and a reminder of what principled faculty leadership looks like in an era of institutional intimidation. Writing not only as an alumnus but as a professor at the University of South Florida Sarasota–Manatee and vice president of the USF Faculty Senate, Jonathan Scott Perry gives voice to the collective grief, anger, and moral clarity that many feel but few are positioned—or willing—to express so plainly.
His account cuts through the propaganda surrounding New College’s takeover, naming it for what it was: not reform, not rescue, but a deliberate political experiment that hollowed out a once “wonderfully weird” public institution under the banner of anti-“woke” theater.
What makes Perry’s commentary so powerful is that he refuses euphemism. He contrasts the scrappy, underfunded but intellectually vibrant New College—where faculty taught with devotion amid “genteel squalor”—with the grotesque spectacle that followed once Ron DeSantis selected the campus as a showcase for national ambition. Perry’s metaphor of “surgeons” who arrive not to heal but to perform ideological experiments is devastating precisely because it is grounded in lived experience and historical memory. In an environment where fear has too often silenced faculty and normalized capitulation, Perry stands out as a model of academic courage. His letter is not only a defense of New College; it is a warning to the rest of the country—and especially to states like Texas—that what happened there is not an aberration, but a preview, unless faculty, students, and the public insist on naming the truth and defending the public mission of higher education.
I'm following this story. More to come.
-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
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| A student goes through books before they are sent to the landfill on the New College of Florida campus in Sarasota, Fla., Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. (Steven Walker/Sarasota Herald-Tribune via AP) |
Truth-telling about New College
Jonathan Scott Perry, Tampa
Thank you for your excellent editorial: “The rest of a sad story at New College.”
It is a welcome antidote to the propaganda pieces the school has sponsored. As a New College alumnus, it makes me cry to see the vultures feasting on the carcass of my school.
It used to be a wonderfully weird, “Hippie, do your own thing,” school (in my father’s words). It absolutely encouraged exploration of whatever interested you. Bright and self-directed people could thrive, and as you noted, it produced outsized results.
It was chronically underfunded and enjoyed a certain neglect that made us “scrappy.”
Art classes were taught in a condemned Army barracks. The school made a virtue of its poverty. It would cite articles from U.S. News & World Report declaring New College one of the best values in public universities — an Ivy League education for the price of a good stereo.
My professors were slightly embarrassed by the thought of being the blue light special of higher education, but they loved teaching even in the genteel squalor.
Enter the surgeons. Gov. Ron DeSantis needed a showcase “anti-woke” project. He showered money on things nobody asked for. It makes me cry to think of how we used to beg for money to repair a roof, but now there are millions for a third-rate baseball program.
Soon the grifters will lose interest. The Legislature will pull the plug on the endless spending and the building contracts will dry up. The surgeons will excuse themselves, declaring the patient was “too woke to live.” The land will end up in the hands of a developer friend of the governor, and the vultures will fly away.
Wonderfully said
Please accept my heartiest congratulations on your wonderful editorial on New College. I hope it will be widely distributed around the state.
Jonathan Scott Perry, Tampa
The writer, speaking individually, is a professor at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee and vice president of the USF Faculty Senate.
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