What Florida's Illegitimate "Stop WOKE Act" Ruling means for Texas, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

What Florida's Illegitimate "Stop WOKE Act" Ruling means for Texas

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 18, 2026

The federal courts have now said plainly what many educators, students, civil rights advocates, and defenders of academic freedom have been saying for years: the state cannot turn the university classroom into an ideological command center.

As reported by Politico, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit struck down key higher education provisions of Florida’s so-called Stop WOKE Act, the 2022 law championed by Governor Ron DeSantis to restrict how race, gender, white privilege, systemic racism, sexism, and related concepts could be taught in public colleges and universities. The ruling is a major blow to one of the signature laws in the anti-DEI, anti-“woke,” anti-academic freedom playbook.

The court’s language is striking. Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee, called Florida’s theory a “breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse” in the very classrooms where students are supposed to wrestle with difficult ideas (Atterbury, 2026). The court also stated that, “If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it" (Atterbury, 2026).

That language matters. It refuses the cynical argument that because professors at public universities are paid by the state, their teaching becomes government speech. In other words, the state cannot simply say: “We pay your salary, therefore we own your mind, your syllabus, your interpretation of history, and your professional judgment.”

This is not a small legal technicality. It is a profound defense of the university as a space of inquiry.

The Stop WOKE Act sought to regulate not simply what could be said, but which perspectives could be made available to students. It targeted concepts involving racism, sexism, privilege, unconscious bias, and systemic inequality, while imposing serious institutional and employment penalties. 

The Legal Defense Fund noted that violations carried potentially severe consequences: universities could lose access to state performance funding, while individual instructors could face dismissal. The ACLU’s case describes the law as a classroom censorship measure that severely restricted educators and students from learning and talking about race and gender in higher education classrooms.

This ruling therefore speaks beyond Florida. It speaks to a broader authoritarian impulse in state policy: the effort to use legislative power to chill teaching, narrow curriculum, punish dissent, intimidate faculty, and erase the histories and lived experiences of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, LGBTQIA+, women, immigrant, and other marginalized communities.

For Florida, the decision is a repudiation of a governing strategy that has treated public higher education as a battlefield for culture war politics. The state’s attack on “wokeness” has not been about intellectual openness. It has been about control—control over language, history, curriculum, faculty governance, hiring, student support, and institutional mission.

Florida has become a testing ground for this politics, from the Stop WOKE Act to the hostile takeover of New College of Florida. The goal has been to remake public higher education not as a democratic public good, but as an instrument of state ideology. The Eleventh Circuit ruling interrupts that project and reaffirms that the First Amendment still has something to say when politicians attempt to police the boundaries of knowledge.

For Texas, the ruling should be read carefully.

Texas’ SB 17 is not identical to Florida’s Stop WOKE Act. SB 17 focuses primarily on banning diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, programs, required DEI statements, and certain DEI-related activities at public institutions of higher education. The University of Texas at Austin describes SB 17 as a law that prohibits public institutions from engaging in specified DEI activities, effective January 1, 2024. The enrolled bill itself amends the Texas Education Code to regulate “diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public institutions of higher education.”

Still, the family resemblance is unmistakable. Florida’s law and Texas’ law emerge from the same national movement. Both are premised on the idea that state legislatures should decide which institutional commitments to equity are permissible, which histories may be taught without fear, which student supports may exist, and which words become suspect.

The consequences of SB 17 were already severe within months of its implementation. On May 14, 2024, then–University of Texas System Chancellor J. B. Milliken testified before the Texas Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education that UT institutions had closed 21 DEI offices, eliminated 311 full- and part-time positions that had previously focused on DEI, and canceled 681 contracts, programs, and trainings. Milliken estimated that more than $25 million had been saved or redirected to other university purposes. These figures came from Milliken’s legislative testimony—not from a separate UT System report—and were documented in the official Senate hearing and contemporary reporting by KUT (Fogel, 2026).

The Florida ruling does not automatically invalidate Texas’ SB 17. But it does send an unmistakable warning: when state policy crosses from governance into viewpoint discrimination, when it chills academic speech, when it punishes institutions or educators for making certain ideas available to students, it enters dangerous constitutional territory.

This is especially important because anti-DEI laws rarely operate only through their text. They operate through fear. They invite over-compliance. They encourage administrators to preemptively close programs, cancel events, rename offices, erase webpages, avoid words, discipline faculty, and interpret the law more broadly than required in order to avoid political retaliation.

That is how censorship works in practice. It does not always arrive as a direct order. Sometimes it arrives as a memo, a compliance training, a legislative hearing, a threat to funding, or a phone call from someone who “just wants to make sure” the university understands the political climate.

The Eleventh Circuit’s ruling pushes back against this climate of fear. It reminds us that public universities are not simply agencies of the state. They are institutions with a democratic function: to cultivate inquiry, foster debate, preserve knowledge, produce research, and educate students capable of thinking critically about the world they inherit.

That democratic function is especially urgent in states like Florida and Texas, where demographic change, racial inequality, attacks on public education, and struggles over curriculum are deeply intertwined. The fight over DEI is not only about university bureaucracy or so-called "viewpoint diversity." It is about whether public institutions will tell the truth about our histories and prepare students to build a more just future.

The deeper question is who gets to decide what students are allowed to know?

If politicians can ban disfavored ideas in the name of “anti-discrimination,” then anti-discrimination law itself is turned upside down. Rather than protecting people from exclusion, it becomes a weapon for suppressing conversations about exclusion. Rather than expanding freedom, it narrows the intellectual life of the university.

That is why this ruling matters. It reasserts the university as a place where difficult ideas may be confronted rather than prohibited, where professors exercise professional judgment rather than serve as instruments of the state, and where education prepares students for democratic thought—not political obedience.

For Florida, the ruling is a devastating rebuke to the DeSantis administration’s effort to govern higher education through ideological prohibition.

For Texas, it is a cautionary signal that laws targeting DEI, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, race-conscious inquiry, and academic freedom may face serious constitutional scrutiny when they attempt to control speech, viewpoint, curriculum, or the conditions under which faculty and students pursue knowledge.

And for the rest of us, it is a reminder that higher education must be defended not only as a workplace or a credentialing system, but as one of the remaining public spaces where democracy can still be practiced.

This decision does not end the struggle. Florida may continue to litigate. Texas lawmakers may continue to expand their attacks. Other states may refine their strategies. But the ruling gives educators, students, civil rights groups, faculty organizations, and communities a powerful language of resistance.

A university worthy of the name cannot be built on state-mandated silence.

It must be a place where students can ask hard questions, where faculty can teach with integrity, where histories of racism and resistance are not erased, and where the freedom to learn is understood as inseparable from the freedom to teach.

That is the meaning of this ruling. And that is why it matters far beyond Florida. 

There's a lot more to the policy context, of course, with other bills like SB 12 and SB 37 at play, the former restricting instruction, programming, student support, and educator conduct in K–12 schools, and the latter impacting faculty governance, changing controls curricula and academic programs. The cumulative effect is a vertically integrated system of ideological control stretching from prekindergarten through graduate education.

References

Atterbury, A. (2026, July 7). “Breathtaking assertion of power”: Appeals court slams door on Florida “Stop WOKE” law championed by DeSantis,Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/07/florida-desantis-stop-woke-law-ruling-00988728

Fogel, B. (2024, May 14). Are public universities doing enough to comply with Texas’ DEI ban? Lawmakers will decide, KUT 90.5. https://www.kut.org/education/2024-05-14/are-public-universities-doing-enough-to-comply-with-texas-dei-ban-lawmakers-will-decide

Pernell v. Commissioner of the Florida State Board of Education, Nos. 22-13992, 22-13994 & 23-10616 (11th Cir. July 7, 2026). https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca11/23-10616/23-10616-2026-07-07.html

Texas Legislature. (2025). Senate Bill 12, 89th Legislature, Regular Session: Enrolled version.

Texas Legislature. (2025). Senate Bill 37, 89th Legislature, Regular Session: Enrolled version.

Texas Senate, Subcommittee on Higher Education. (2024, May 14). Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education [Video recording].

‘Breathtaking assertion of power’: Appeals court slams door on Florida ‘Stop Woke’ law championed by DeSantis

The decision from a divided 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit is a devastating, possibly final blow to the so-called Stop WOKE act touted by the DeSantis administration.



Florida’s Legislature approved the “anti-woke” legislation touted by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022. The state, though, has been blocked from enforcing the policies ever since. | Lynne Sladky/AP

By Andrew Atterbury

07/07/2026 02:25 PM EDT|Updated: 07/07/2026 05:35 PM EDT

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida’s anti-woke law restricting how lessons on race and gender can be taught in colleges and universities — policies championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — violates the free speech rights of professors, a panel of appeals court judges ruled Tuesday.

The decision from a divided 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit is a devastating, possibly final blow to the so-called Stop WOKE Act touted by the DeSantis administration. The judges affirmed a 2022 decision that labeled Florida’s rules as “positively dystopian,” doubling down by arguing the law is “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse” in the very classroom space where students are supposed to “puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

“If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it,” Judge Britt C. Grant, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in the opinion.

Grant was joined by Judge Charles R. Wilson, a Bill Clinton appointee, in the ruling. But another Trump-appointed judge, Barbara Lagoa — a former Florida Supreme Court judge picked by DeSantis — wrote a striking dissent of the decision, contending the First Amendment “does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement.”

“This panel is not free to rewrite precedent simply because we dislike where it leads,” Lagoa wrote.

Florida’s Republican-led Legislature approved the “anti-woke” legislation, H.B. 7, or the Individual Freedom Act, in 2022. The state, though, has been blocked from enforcing the policies as it has been fighting in court ever since.

Directly inspired by DeSantis, the law expanded Florida’s anti-discrimination laws to prohibit schools and companies from leveling guilt or blame to students and employees based on race or sex. As such, it targets lessons over issues like “white privilege” by creating new protections for students and workers, including that a person should not be instructed to “feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin.

The other portion of Florida’s law restricting what DeSantis called “woke” workplace trainings faced a similar fate after also being rejected by an 11th Circuit panel. And, notably, it was Grant who wrote that opinion, decrying the DeSantis-backed policies as “the greatest First Amendment sin” for penalizing certain viewpoints on the job.

Tuesday’s higher education ruling was triggered by two lawsuits that have been fighting the Stop WOKE law for years. One of the lawsuits was filed by Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit free speech group, on behalf of a University of South Florida professor, student, and student group, while the other was brought by the ACLU, ACLU of Florida and Legal Defense Fund on behalf of students and educators.

Both challenges alleged that the legislation pushed by DeSantis violates their freedom of speech, evidenced by how it could restrict lessons on critical topics, claiming it’s a discriminatory classroom censorship law that severely restricts how race and gender can be taught and talked about in schools.

“This ruling sets a strong precedent that higher education cannot be limited to the whims of politicians,” Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, said in a statement Tuesday.

FIRE, meanwhile, also celebrated the decision and its implications for higher education:

“Today’s important decision means that college remains a place where professors and students are allowed to debate controversial topics — even if politicians disagree with them,” said Greg H. Greubel, FIRE senior attorney.

The DeSantis administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling. State Attorney General James Uthmeier, though, did throw praise at Lagoa.

“Barbara Lagoa may be the best jurist in our country,” Uthmeier said on social media. “She should be on SCOTUS.”

The Theology of Power Behind the Anti-DEI Movement: What Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer Help Us See, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Theology of Power Behind the Anti-DEI Movement:
What Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer Help Us See          

by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 10, 2026

Today's anti-DEI movement does not merely invoke the language of neutrality; it weaponizes it. Its appeals to “colorblind equality,” “individual responsibility,” “viewpoint diversity,” and “freedom from coercion” provide moral cover for a coordinated effort to dismantle the institutional commitments that make multiracial and multiethnic democracy possible.

A Manhattan Institute (2023) policy brief by Christopher Rufo, Ilya Shapiro, and Matt Beienburg makes this clear. The document calls for state legislatures to abolish DEI offices, end mandatory diversity training, prohibit diversity statements, and eliminate identity-conscious policies in public universities. It even supplies model legislative language for states to adopt. In other words, it does not merely criticize DEI. It operationalizes a political project.

What would Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer help us see in this document and in the broader movement from which it emerges? At the risk of oversimplifying the work of these formidable researchers and thinkers—or failing to fully acknowledge the many conceptual overlaps among them—I offer the following reading. Each illuminates a different dimension of the same political project: Stewart helps us understand the religious-nationalist drive for power; MacLean reveals the anti-democratic political economy beneath it; and Mayer follows the money and institutional networks that make such ideas actionable.

Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and God, would
likely urge us not to mistake this for a simple “culture war.” Christian nationalism, in her analysis, is not merely about religious belief. Nor is it reducible to debates over prayer, abortion, sexuality, or school curricula. It is a political movement seeking power over the institutions of democracy. Its aim is not pluralism, but control. From this perspective, attacks on DEI, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, and public education are not side issues. They are part of a larger attempt to define whose knowledge counts, whose histories matter, and whose presence in public institutions is legitimate.

Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, would likely locate this effort within a longer history of anti-democratic political economy. Her work shows how radical-right, neoliberal thinkers and donors have sought to constrain majority rule, weaken public institutions, privatize public goods, and insulate concentrated wealth from democratic accountability. Seen through MacLean’s lens, anti-DEI legislation is not only a cultural backlash. It is also a governance strategy. It

narrows what public universities can do, what faculty can say, what students can learn, and what communities can demand of taxpayer-supported institutions.

Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money, would likely follow the money. She would ask: Who funds the think tanks, advocacy organizations, litigation networks, media campaigns, and policy shops that produce these “model bills”? Who benefits when public institutions are weakened? Who gains when democracy is recast as “coercion,” equity as “orthodoxy,” and civil rights as “preference”? 

Mayer’s work helps us see that ideas rarely move on their own. They are carried, amplified, and institutionalized through networks of wealth, influence, litigation, media, and policy advocacy. In higher education, this influence can become especially consequential when donor support comes with expectations—whether explicit or implicit—that shape curricula, research priorities, faculty appointments, or public-facing programs. When private wealth gains this kind of leverage over academic life, it does more than fund ideas; it helps determine which ideas become legitimate, visible, and powerful. The result is a serious threat to academic freedom, shared governance, and the integrity of universities as public-serving institutions.

Together, these three writers help us understand that the attack on DEI is not simply about administrative offices or training sessions. It is about the future of democracy itself.

John Oliver’s recent and timely Last Week Tonight segment on New College of Florida gives us a concrete glimpse of what this project looks like when theory becomes governance. New College was not merely criticized as “woke”; it was politically captured and remade through state power. 

Board appointments, administrative upheaval, the elimination of gender studies, numerous faculty departures, escalating costs, and an aggressive campaign to rebrand the institution all became part of a larger effort to transform a distinctive honors public liberal arts college into a showcase for ideological control. Put plainly, New College was not simply reformed; it was targeted. Its transformation should be understood as an intentional and orchestrated attack—one that other states, especially those already moving in this direction, should heed as a warning.

Oliver’s satire makes the story accessible, but the implications are grave: New College reveals how appeals to freedom, neutrality, and anti-indoctrination can become instruments for narrowing intellectual life and subordinating public education to political spectacle.

Link to John Oliver's show on New College

What happened at New College of Florida should therefore be read not as an isolated Florida story, but as a warning about a broader national strategy—one that has already taken legislative form in Texas through SB 17 and related efforts to discipline public higher education.

This is especially clear in higher education. Public universities are among the few institutions where young people can still encounter histories, literatures, theories, and communities that challenge inherited hierarchies. They are places where students learn that inequality is not natural, that democracy is unfinished, and that knowledge can serve justice. This is precisely why they have become targets.

The anti-DEI movement tells us that it seeks neutrality. But there is nothing neutral or apolitical about banning the vocabulary of race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, power, privilege, or structural inequality from public life. 

There is nothing neutral or apolitical about using state power to restrict how universities support historically excluded students. There is nothing neutral about turning “colorblindness” into a weapon against the very communities whose labor, taxes, cultures, and struggles built the state.

Nor is there anything Christian, in the deepest moral sense, about denying the dignity of the vulnerable, erasing histories of suffering and resistance, or consolidating power in the hands of the already powerful. The Christianity rooted in justice that many of us recognize speaks to humility, justice, love, mercy, and care for the stranger. Christian nationalism, by contrast, cloaks hierarchy in sacred authority. It baptizes domination. It transforms—and disfigures—a faith tradition into an instrument of political control.

This is why Stewart’s analysis matters. She helps us see how religious language can be marshaled to justify anti-democratic power. This is why MacLean’s analysis matters. She helps us see how democracy is weakened not always by dramatic coups, but by slow institutional redesign. And this is why Mayer’s analysis matters. She helps us see how concentrated wealth builds the infrastructure that makes these transformations possible.

The struggle over DEI, then, is not a narrow dispute over campus bureaucracy. It is a struggle over whether public institutions will continue to serve a multiracial democracy or whether they will be remade to protect hierarchy under the banner of freedom.

For those of us in Texas, this is not abstract. Under SB 17, we have seen how anti-DEI laws chill speech, restructure universities, eliminate offices, threaten programs, and place entire fields of study under suspicion. We have seen how Mexican American Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and other knowledge traditions become vulnerable when political leaders decide that democracy itself has become too diverse, too demanding, and too honest.

The answer is not despair. It is clarity.

We should name the movement accurately. We should refuse the false innocence of its language. We should defend academic freedom, shared governance, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, civil rights, and public education as essential democratic goods. 

And we should insist that pluralism is not a threat to democracy. Pluralism is democracy.

The future being offered by Christian nationalism and its allied political networks is a narrowed one: fewer rights, fewer histories, fewer voices, fewer protections, fewer public goods. The future we must defend is broader, deeper, and more humane: a democracy capacious enough to tell the truth, educate all children, honor all communities, and build institutions worthy of the public trust.

That is the real choice before us.

Reference

Last Week Tonight. (2026, June 8). New College of Florida: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFMc07F1UUU

Manhattan Institute. (2023, January 18). New issue brief: Abolish DEI bureaucracies and restore colorblind equality in public universities [Press release]. https://manhattan.institute/article/new-issue-brief-abolish-dei-bureaucracies-and-restore-colorblind-equality-in-public-universities

MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in chains: The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America. Penguin Press.

Mayer, J. (2016). Dark money: The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Anchor.

Stewart, K. (2020). The power worshippers: Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury Publishing.

John Oliver Takes Aim at New College of Florida

John Oliver’s segment on New College of Florida is both hilarious and devastating because it captures, with painful clarity, what happens when higher education becomes a staging ground for ideological conquest. What has unfolded there is not reform, but a political takeover that has driven away faculty, destabilized students, dismantled programs, and turned a once-distinctive public honors college into a warning for the nation. The lesson is clear for us here in Texas and beyond: when political power is used to control universities, the result is not educational improvement, but the erosion of academic freedom, institutional integrity, and student well-being.

-Angela Valenzuela

John Oliver Takes Aim at New College of Florida
“It’s not going great,” the late-night host said of the political takeover and institutional upheaval that have transformed New College’s campus since 2023.

By Kendall Southworth June 8, 2026

John Oliver turned his satirical lens on New College of Florida in a blistering 28-minute segment on Sunday, June 7. Image: Courtesy HBO

If you happened to be scrolling through channels late Sunday night, you might have stumbled across an unexpected but familiar sight: the bayfront views of the original winter home of circus magnate Charles Ringling—now known as College Hall, the academic and administrative building of New College of Florida. For the last several years, the tiny Sarasota enclave has occupied a persistent, polarizing place in headlines big and small—and on Sunday night, that long-running conflict landed onto one of television’s biggest stages.

In a blistering 28-minute segment on Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver turned his satirical lens toward the local liberal arts college that became ground zero for the conservative movement’s efforts to reshape higher education. Backed by months of research and interviews with current and former students, faculty and alumni—including the independent alumni organization Novo Collegian Alliance—the segment traced the political takeover and institutional upheaval that have transformed the campus since 2023.

For former and current New College students who have borne close witness to watching what Oliver called a “political theater” reshape where they live and learn, seeing the story broadcast to millions across platforms felt surreal.

“We’ve watched this destruction of a great educational program for the last three and a half years. Seeing it brought to national attention is both hard to see but also cathartic,” says Brian Cody, secretary of the Novo Collegian Alliance. “Seeing his face next to the null set [the college’s beloved former mascot, which Oliver described as ‘the single dorkiest thing’ he had ever heard] is just crazy.”

Oliver opened the segment by introducing viewers to the New College generations of Sarasotans have known since the ’60s: a small public honors college known for attracting unusually intellectual students, self-directed study and narrative evaluations instead of traditional grades and a reputation for attracting unusually intellectual students—or, as Oliver affectionately put it, being “a rare haven for gentle nerds.” He highlighted the school’s academic track record, including a 2018 report showing that 80 percent of graduates attended graduate school within five years and that New College ranked third nationally among public and private institutions for producing graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees.

Oliver then revisited Gov. Ron DeSantis’ early 2023 appointment of six conservative allies to the college’s board of trustees. He described the takeover not merely as an effort to “recapture an institution,” but to “provide a model for red states to then replicate.”

That national ambition was openly shared by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, one of the newly appointed trustees. At the time of his appointment, Oliver pointed out, Rufo tweeted, “We are now over the wall and ready to transform higher education from within.” He doubled down on this language later in his foreword to Storming the Ivory Tower, a book written by New College president and former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran. In it, Rufo praised Corcoran for implementing “the vision of Governor Ron DeSantis,” adding: “He fought the press—and won. Florida has become the blueprint for red-state governance.”

Much of the segment focused on those efforts by Corcoran. Oliver highlighted what he framed as a tension between promises of restored academic rigor and the realities of the college’s recent trajectory. He pointed to faculty departures, Corcoran’s nearly $700,000 annual salary (the highest per-student compensation of any public university president in Florida, with perks and bonuses pushing total compensation above $1 million), and the dismantling of longstanding programs and campus traditions.

He also highlighted a series of controversial hires, including vice provost David Rancourt, a former lobbyist with no prior experience in higher education. Oliver claimed that “the most noteworthy thing” Rancourt had done since his appointment was participate in a stand-up comedy night in which he described an incident from childhood in which he exposed his genitalia to a child the same age, referring to her as a “little b—-.” Ironically, Oliver also pointed to former communications director Fred Piccolo to make his point, whose tenure ended after multiple charges of indecent exposure became public.

The segment also examined one of the administration’s most frequently cited achievements: enrollment growth.

While incoming classes have increased since the takeover, Oliver argued that the gains come with important caveats. He cited reports from former admissions employees who alleged that academic standards had been lowered, and he spent several minutes on the college’s expanded recruitment of athletes, including roughly 70 baseball players the first year, when there were no athletic facilities. He also noted reporting that student-athletes have received a disproportionately large share of merit-based scholarships despite, on average, holding weaker academic credentials than other applicants.

For Cody, it was affirming to see these points surface on a national stage, but he noted there is even more to the story, saying that “they keep bringing in these big classes, but last year they only grew by 22 students compared to the year prior. They’re coming in to play sports but are leaving after a year or two. They’re wasting money recruiting people, but not keeping them.”

Oliver scrutinized the financial implications of the changes, citing a state audit that found New College’s public cost per degree had risen to nearly $500,000—far higher than other institutions in Florida’s university system. Cody added that, in the wake of a recent move by lawmakers to slash the college’s operating budget by 40 percent, the consequences of that spending trajectory may soon become more acute.

A state audit found New College’s public cost per degree had risen to nearly $500,000—far higher than other institutions in Florida’s university system.

Image: Courtesy Florida State University Efficiency Study

Throughout the piece, Oliver argued that New College had become a vehicle for political performance rather than educational reform, a view echoed by one current student who described the changes as disorienting and personal. “It feels like New College has become a political playground for what these people want the country to be,” she said. “I’m upset—this is my education.” Another student in his final year described being moved out of his campus housing by administration to make room for incoming athletes.

 “Depressingly,” said Oliver in closing, “this is the exact sort of smash-and-grab we’re seeing in so many places right now, from public health to newspapers to broadcast news. Ideologues capture something they dislike, claim they want to fix it, and then proceed to dismantle it. But seldom has that been more blatant than watching people talk about great debates and classical education, only to drive away faculty, dismiss books as trash, and assemble a veritable Avengers of D-list conservatives, celebrities, creeps and weirdos—all so they can lecture the world’s single largest baseball team.”

Corcoran didn’t reply to a request for a phone interview but released a statement to Sarasota Magazine, referencing “record enrollment growth, rising academic achievement, significant philanthropic investment, historic growth in foundation support and endowment assets, [and] the recruitment of exceptional faculty.” Despite the show’s focus on campus upheaval, Corcoran maintained that the administration’s efforts have ultimately resulted in “a strengthened campus culture rooted in intellectual freedom, civil discourse, and academic freedom.” He added that the college had repeatedly invited John Oliver to visit campus, meet with students and faculty, film on site or participate in an open conversation on its Socratic Stage, noting that the invitation “was declined” but “remains open.”

 William Rosenberg—president of the Novo Collegian Alliance—on the other hand, praised the segment, saying, “John Oliver has a rare gift for making people laugh without letting them look away.” He added that while as humorous as the segment may have been, “what is happening at New College is no laughing matter for the students, faculty and staff living through it every day.”

To watch Last Week Tonight’s segment on New College of Florida, click here. 

ANNOUNCEMENT: "First They Came for My College" Documentary

A new documentary, First They Came for My College, is drawing national attention for its powerful portrayal of the transformation of New College of Florida. As it premieres at major film festivals across the country, the film invites us to reflect on a pressing question: What happens when political forces reshape the mission, governance, and everyday life of a public university?

-Angela Valenzuela

Dear friend,

First They Came for My College, our feature-length documentary about the “hostile takeover” of New College of Florida, just had its world premiere at the True/False Film Festival, followed by SXSW. And it’s getting rave reviews. The Guardian calls it “gripping” and “a cautionary tale.” This week, the film will have its Florida premiere in competition at the Florida Film Festival, before playing six more festivals, including the San Francisco International Film Festival (see below for more festivals and screening info). We’re constantly updating our website, NewCollegeFilm.com, where you can find details about our upcoming screenings, request a screening near you, see recent media coverage, and donate to help us bring this important film to campuses and communities around the U.S.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our three-minute trailer:

After three years of intense effort, this is a dream come true for all of us who worked on and appear in the film and for the vast network of alums who have supported us every step of the way.

For this inaugural issue of our newsletter to supporters—and as neat trick to outwit spam blockers—we’d be grateful if you’d take just one minute to write us back with what you think is the biggest threat facing higher education today OR, if you’ve seen the film, one scene that stuck with you. We’d love to hear from our audience!

At True/False, we sold out theaters as large as 1,200 seats and got standing ovations at every screening—sometimes two standing ovations. Dr. Pat Okker, the first woman president of New College, who was ignominiously fired by the junta appointed by Ron DeSantis, graciously introduced the documentary, saying,

This is a film that documents the history that could have easily been lost. Back in January 2023, there were a lot of people telling us things like, well, that could never happen on our campus. Is anybody saying that these days? Nobody's saying that anymore.

At the film’s premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas, a leader of the American Association of University Professors praised the film as “a master class in organizing.” Check out the photos of Dr. Okker, our team, our protagonists, and some of our student filmmakers on stage!

We hope you’ll join us at a screening at one of five major festivals in April (with more festival announcements coming soon):

-the San Francisco International Film Festival (April 27);
-the Independent Film Festival in Boston (April 23), where we’ll be screening in the 840-seat Sommerville Theater; 

-the Florida Film Festival near Orlando (April 11 (sold out) and 16); 

-the River Run Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (April 23); and
-the Ashland Independent Film Festival in Oregon (April 23, 25, 26).

Professors, students, and regular folks from around the country have written to ask for screenings near them using our “request a screening” form on the “screenings” page of our website. All of this information, and more, can be found on our website or socials linked in the footer of this email.

Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, recently told the Citations Needed podcast, “As goes higher education, so goes democracy.” And in a recent report, America’s Censored Campuses, former New College professor Amy Reid and her colleagues at PEN America described what’s happening in colleges and universities as “a catastrophe.” These publications and more media coverage of the film can be found on our “Press” tab on our website.

But the enthusiastic reception to First They Came for My College has convinced us that Americans understand the stakes and are ready to build a powerful movement to defend the freedom to teach and learn free of government censorship, a movement to defend universities as bastions of truth-telling and inclusion.

If you can help us in this urgent work, we hope you’ll support this project and spread the word. We look forward to seeing you at a screening soon!

Sincerely,

Holly, Patrick, Harry, and the whole film team

P.S. If you’re getting this email, it’s because you’ve signed up on our website, NewCollegeFilm.com, or because we know you’re a supporter of this important film. We’ll only send these newsletters occasionally.

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