Boys Deserve Better Than the Command to 'Be a Man,' by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Boys Deserve Better Than the Command to 'Be a Man'

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 9, 2026

Adam Stanaland’s (2025) Scientific American essay, “Our Narrow View of Masculinity Is Hurting Boys,” offers an important intervention in a moment when masculinity is being weaponized in our politics, schools, media, and homes.

His argument is both simple and profound: masculinity itself is not “toxic.” What harms boys is the pressure to perform a narrow, rigid, emotionally constricted version of masculinity—one that tells them not to cry, not to appear vulnerable, not to be “feminine,” not to ask for help, and not to become anything less than dominant.

This matters deeply for educators and parents. Thankfully, research offers helpful evidence-based insights into how gender norms, social pressure, and rigid expectations shape boys’ development, identity, and behavior (Orenstein, 2020; Rudman & Glick, 2021; Stanaland et al., 2021; Stanaland et al., 2024).

In schools, boys are often socialized into silence long before they are invited into self-knowledge. They learn that tenderness is weakness, that anger is more acceptable than grief, and that care work is somehow beneath them. They absorb lessons about manhood not only from parents and peers, but from classrooms, sports culture, social media, churches, political leaders, and the larger society.

Stanaland’s point is that these pressures do not produce strong boys. They produce fragile ones—boys who may feel compelled to prove their manhood through aggression, domination, homophobia, sexism, emotional withdrawal, or contempt for anything coded as feminine. His research with colleagues similarly finds that adolescent boys can respond aggressively when their masculinity feels threatened, especially when they already feel pressure to be conventionally “manly.”

This is not just a family issue. It is a public issue.

When boys are taught that power matters more than connection, that dominance matters more than empathy, and that vulnerability is shameful, democracy itself suffers. A democratic society requires people who can listen, reflect, collaborate, repair harm, and care for others. These are not “soft” skills. They are civic capacities.

This is why the current political attack on so-called “gender ideology” is so harmful—and, frankly, so nonsensical. The phrase itself is vague by design. It turns serious scholarship, honest classroom discussion, and students’ lived experiences into a caricature. It suggests that talking about gender somehow imposes an ideology, when in fact silence about gender is itself ideological. 

The command to “be a man” is gender ideology. 

The shaming of boys for crying is gender ideology. 

The insistence that girls be compliant and boys be dominant is gender ideology. 

The erasure of LGBTQ+ students and families is gender ideology. 

What opponents call “gender ideology” is often simply the attempt to give young people language for understanding themselves, one another, and the unequal world they are inheriting.

The irony is that our society has rightly encouraged girls to enter domains historically coded as masculine—science, leadership, politics, law, medicine, business, athletics. But we have done far less to encourage boys to enter domains coded as feminine: teaching, nursing, caregiving, early childhood education, social work, emotional labor, and peacemaking. We tell girls they can be anything, but too often tell boys they must be one thing.

That is not liberation. It is another cage.

For communities of color, this conversation is especially layered. Black and Brown boys are already too often read through racist lenses of threat, discipline, criminality, and deficit. They do not need more pressure to perform hardness in order to survive. They need schools and communities that recognize their full humanity—their brilliance, tenderness, humor, creativity, grief, anger, cultural knowledge, and capacity for care.

This is where culturally sustaining education matters. Ethnic Studies, gender studies, restorative practices, critical pedagogy, and social-emotional learning do not “weaken” young people. They give them language for their lives. They help students understand how power works, how identities are formed, how harm is reproduced, and how people can choose otherwise.

In today’s culture wars, however, these very forms of education are under attack. The same politics that censor race, gender, sexuality, and history also narrows the emotional and moral vocabulary available to young people. It tells boys that strength means control, that freedom means domination, and that care is weakness. It calls this “tradition,” but it is really a refusal to let children become fully human.

We should reject this.

Boys deserve a wider horizon. They deserve to know that courage can look like telling the truth. Strength can look like asking for help. Leadership can look like listening. Manhood can include tenderness. And masculinity, when freely chosen and rooted in care, responsibility, humility, and justice, need not be toxic at all.

Stanaland’s essay reminds us that the work before us is not to shame boys or men. It is to free them—and all of us—from scripts that are too small for the lives our children deserve.

The question for parents, educators, and policymakers is not simply, “What kind of men are we raising?”

The deeper question is: “What kind of human beings are we allowing boys to become?”

References

Stanaland, A. (2025, March 10). Our narrow view of masculinity is hurting boys. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-narrow-view-of-masculinity-is-hurting-boys/

Stanaland, A., Gaither, S. E., Gassman-Pines, A., Galvez-Cepeda, D., & Cimpian, A. (2024). Adolescent boys’ aggressive responses to perceived threats to their gender typicality. Developmental Science. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39007941/

Stanaland, A., Gaither, S. E., & Gassman-Pines, A. (2021). The role of social pressure in eliciting men’s aggressive cognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33504285/

Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2021). The social psychology of gender: How power and intimacy shape gender relations (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Orenstein, P. (2020). Boys & sex: Young men on hookups, love, porn, consent, and navigating the new masculinity. Harper.

Our Narrow View of Masculinity Is Hurting Boys

Masculinity isn’t “toxic” by itself, but the strain boys feel from society and parents to meet unrealistic expectations is

By Adam Stanaland edited by Megha Satyanarayana | Scientific American | March 10, 2025

Matt Porteous/Getty Images

Each semester, I ask my psychology students to imagine how people would grow up, think and act in a world without societal rules and expectations. This may seem like an easy task, but their initial answers are similar to what you’d expect a fish to say if asked what it’s like to live in water. “What norms?” they ask. This is especially the case for the young men who, like me, had never explicitly questioned messages like, “Boys don’t cry” and “Be a man” before going to college. Amid a resurgence of rigid masculinity—and as a psychologist who studies these issues—I’ve grown increasingly concerned with these unacknowledged pressures that can thwart the healthy development of boys and young men.

This question I pose to my students is based on research I and others did a couple of years ago, looking at how pervasive social norms, especially current views of masculinity, can shape people often in unideal ways. As I’ve noted before in Scientific American, many boys and men report feeling pressured to be stereotypically masculine. This means, for example, pressure to be tough (physical and emotionally), able to fix things and in positions of power – what we call “hegemonic masculinity.” These pressure are often rooted in fundamentally human needs, such as men’s desire to provide for their families, or simply to belong and accepted by others.

Importantly, we’ve found that pressure to be a certain kind of masculine leads to aggressive thoughts and feelings, especially among adolescent boys and young adult men who are in throes of forming an identity. To me, it’s not masculinity that is inherently bad or toxic. Rather, problems arise when rigid masculinity is pressured onto boys and men.

In psychology, pressure is the antithesis of autonomy—or the basic human need to act in line with one’s true self. This is why acting out manliness for pressured reasons leads to “fragile” masculine identities. Instead of a healthy identity rooted in authenticity and autonomy, fragility stems from an insecure need for external validation. As a result, these boys and men feel compelled to prove their manhood to others through stereotypically masculine means. We see the results in the disproportionate rates of men’s gun violence, homophobia, sexual aggression, political bigotry and even anti-environmental behavior, compared to women.

Against this, parents are a critical part of how boys see themselves, and how they understand masculinity. With the rise of a “masculinity” that is increasingly pressuring, parents can help boys develop more expansive identities. This is not about demonizing one idea of masculinity, or boys and men as group, but reducing the pressure to be a narrowly defined man. Genuine and compassionate versions of masculinity exist, and it’s okay for boys to take those paths. Getting there means conversation, modeling desired behavior, and reckoning with our own definitions of what a man is. But it matters, because this pressure to conform to narrow norms is hurting boys.

While we were collecting data on boys’ aggression, we also surveyed their parents, asking them to agree or disagree with statements relating to current beliefs about masculinity. Some of these items had to do with relatively benign beliefs—like, whether men should be handy—and some were more consequential, such as beliefs about homophobia and gender inequality.

We found that parents’ beliefs about hegemonic masculinity related to pressure their sons reported to be stereotypically masculine; that is, parents who simply believed that men should have status and power over others had sons (some as young as 10) who reported feeling pressured to be manly. It’s no surprise, then, that these were the boys who responded aggressively when we challenged their manhood, especially when they were already in the throes of puberty.

These results tell us there is a consequence to raising boys in a man’s world: living up to these expectations is stressing them out. We know this because they report being bullied, or shut out of peer groups. They tell us they have low self-esteem. In their book on the psychology of gender relations between women and men, Laurie Rudman and Peter Glick propose that we are powerfully shaped by how societies are structured—with men most often at the top and women (and people of other genders) situated below them. For proof, look no further than government and business in the U.S. where only 27 percent of federal lawmakers, 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and 0 percent of presidents are women.

Immediately, we think about what these disparities mean for girls, and we should, but to the extent that girls receive messages that they can’t get to the top, many boys are hearing that they must get to the top. It’s certainly a double-edged sword. Boys and men are afforded power and privilege, yet many are also pressured to earn and maintain it.


AleksandarNakic/Getty Images

We’ve made great strides in inspiring girls to achieve just as well as boys (and even better)—though there is still much work to do here—yet we’ve so far failed to encourage boys to aspire toward culturally feminized work and communal careers in fields such as nursing, child care and early-childhood education. Instead, in many capitalist cultures across the world, we continue to push and pressure our boys away from anything remotely feminine—away from the innate nurturing and caring tendencies that they demonstrate in childhood—and toward the pinnacles of what we (as societies) have defined as success.

Redefining masculinity starts with you. Not every expression or experiment in masculinity will be safe for your child to pursue, especially in certain areas of the world. (For example, we found that parents in conservative parts of the U.S. put significant pressure on their sons to be masculine, which may be rooted in a fear of openly challenging masculinity norms.) But, as psychologist Onnie Rogers notes, we can encourage boys to “run with intentionality in the opposite direction, against the grain, and more importantly, toward [their] full humanity,” and this means that ideas around masculinity are worth talking about.

As you talk to, play with, observe and guide your sons along their paths, here are some ideas to consider, what I think of as “four Rs” to get you started:

Realize that you can have these hard conversations; that you can intervene and guide. Although you might feel like your sons will develop in ways beyond your control, you do have a significant effect on your children’s core beliefs, values and worldviews. Psychologist Sylvia Perry recently wrote in this very column about how children and young adults can handle hard conversations about race. They can understand complex ideas, histories and perspectives about gender, too.

Reconsider the messages boys are sent (and not sent), both explicitly and implicitly. Children learn about gender through many pathways—summed up as direct teaching, experiencing and modeling. You might try to directly teach your boys to combat gender stereotypes and even explicitly encourage them to take part in “feminine” activities; but arguably more important is what they learn by watching you and what they experience in their own worlds. What’s vital is that boys be given the space to develop apart from pressures to be masculine or feminine—nothing is inherently wrong with boys liking to play with trucks, and pressuring boys to do more “girly” things against their inclinations defeats the purpose.

Resist in the sense of equipping boys to resist messages about who they should and shouldn’t be. Even the best schoolteachers sometimes fall back on antiquated tropes like gendering pink versus blue pencils. If your son wants to use the pink pencil, why the hell shouldn’t he? A new and exciting area of research is looking at how easy it is for boys to actively resist masculinity norms and what benefits they may get from this.

Recognize that the way that society is right now isn’t how it has to be. You could, for instance, tell boys that even though there has never been a woman U.S. president, anyone can be president, regardless of their gender. Highlight women who are leading companies and, possibly more importantly, men who excel in HEED occupations (health care, early education and domestic roles).

These won’t be easy. It won’t be a onetime thing. But the sooner we can start dismantling gender gaps at all levels of society, the sooner we’ll see boys (and girls) less pressured to meet outdated expectations—and more fulfilled in finding authenticity.

Adam Stanaland is an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of Richmond. He received a joint Ph.D. in psychology and public policy from Duke University, after which he completed postdoctoral training at New York University. Broadly, his research explores the interplay between societal structures and social norms, such as how political and economic systems influence norms, as well as how norms and beliefs shape group-level behavior.More by Adam Stanaland

'Two years since conservatives took over a liberal arts college, what’s been lost—and gained': And Why This is Important to Texas and the U.S.

'Two years since conservatives took over a liberal arts college, what’s been lost — and gained': And Why This is Important to Texas and the U.S.

by

Angela Valenzuela

December 22, 2025

Let’s dispense with the euphemisms. What has happened at New College of Florida is not a “diversification of viewpoints,” a “restoration of balance,” or a principled defense of free speech. It is an ideologically driven takeover—imposed from above, funded lavishly by taxpayers, and justified through a cynical distortion of democratic language.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

Administrators and political operatives insist they are rescuing New College from a so-called “progressive echo chamber,” even as students report syllabi dominated almost exclusively by Hillsdale College and Claremont Institute ideologues. They proclaim devotion to the “marketplace of ideas,” while systematically abolishing entire fields of inquiry—gender studies, race-centered scholarship, critical social analysis—that have long been integral to a liberal arts education. They rail against indoctrination while installing their own.

This is not pluralism. It is replacement. Nor is it supplemental, but supplanting.

Even more galling is the claim that critics are “weaponizing data” when the very metrics that once made New College a nationally respected institution—academic peer reputation, student outcomes, scholarly trajectories—are now collapsing. A nearly 60-spot drop in rankings (also see Moody, 2025). A four-year graduation rate below 50%. Declining faculty resources. These are not abstractions; they are the cumulative effects of governance by fiat rather than by faculty expertise, student need, or institutional mission.

And yet, in the midst of this academic decline, spending per student has exploded—far exceeding that of comparable public institutions in Florida. Taxpayer money has not been invested in teaching, research, or student support, but funneled into rushed athletic expansion, failed modular housing projects, hotel contracts, and symbolic spectacles designed to please political patrons rather than serve students. If this is stewardship, it is stewardship for donors and governors, not for the public.

The rhetoric of democracy rings especially hollow here. Decisions of monumental consequence were made without faculty consent, without student buy-in, and without meaningful public deliberation. Trustees were installed. Presidents were imposed. Programs were eliminated. Mascots were replaced. Statues were proposed. A “compact” drafted by a presidential administration hostile to higher education itself was embraced—not because the campus demanded it, but because ideological loyalty was rewarded with preferential access to power and money.

This is not democratic governance. It is authoritarian management with a populist accent.

The irony, of course, is that the very people accused of silencing dissent—faculty teaching about race, gender, inequality, and power—are the ones now demonstrating what academic courage looks like. Professors who stay. Students who speak. Faculty who refuse to abandon their courses or their commitments. They expose the lie at the heart of this project: that freedom is being expanded when, in fact, it is being selectively granted.

Free speech, it turns out, is protected when it flatters power—and constrained when it challenges it.

New College has become a warning, not a model. A case study in how quickly a public institution can be hollowed out when ideology replaces expertise, when greed replaces care, and when democracy is invoked only to justify its own dismantling.

The tragedy is not merely what has been lost—programs, faculty, trust, academic standing—but what is being normalized: the idea that universities exist to serve political agendas rather than the public good.

That should alarm anyone who believes higher education belongs to students, scholars, and society—not to governors, donors, or culture-war opportunists.

Reference

Moody, J. (2025, Oct. 1). Spending soars, rankings fall at New College of Florida: Student outcomes and rankings are slipping at the liberal arts college while spending is up. Critics believe the college is at risk of implosion, and some are calling for privatization, Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/state-oversight/2025/10/01/spending-soars-rankings-fall-new-college-florida

Two years since conservatives took over a liberal arts college, what’s been lost — and gained

Dec. 11, 2025


New College of Florida student Alexandra Levy is concerned about the changes at her school. She poses for a portrait on the campus on Nov. 12. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

By Juliet Schulman-Hall | JSchulman-Hall@masslive.com | MassLive | Dec. 11, 2025

This is the second article in a two-part series by Shulman-Hall examining higher education under the Trump administration. Read the first here.

A wave of anger hit Alexandra Levy by the third class in one of her political science courses. As she flipped through the syllabus readings, she began searching the authors online — one after another, after another.

Every reading was from Hillsdale College, a private Christian school, or The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.

Wearing a bright pink scarf and a sweater on a “cold” 60-degree November day in Sarasota, Florida, Levy described the class as one of multiple she has encountered at New College where newly-hired conservative professors have shaped what she is taught.

“I just never experienced only showing one opinion or disguising that opinion as fact,” she said.

Levy began at New College of Florida in 2023, the year Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis transformed the Honors College into an increasingly politically conservative institution through leadership and programmatic changes. The changes were modeled after Hillsdale College’s conservative education.

Read more: How a small Florida college became Trump’s blueprint to threaten higher ed in Mass.

For many higher education leaders, the overhaul of New College has been seen as a blueprint for the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on higher education, including threats and demands toward Harvard University.

They worry that the changes at New College could be coming to their own schools.

Since 2023, New College has dropped nearly 60 spots in national liberal arts rankings, and a recently released report shows that spending per student at the college is more than triple most other publicly-supported colleges in Florida.

A view of the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla. on Nov. 12. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

The college has also experienced a declining four-year graduation rate, dropping to 47.4% for the class of 2024.

However, to Richard Corcoran, president of New College of Florida, the transformation of the institution embodies more than what some datasets reveal. He argues the college is going in a positive direction despite data that has been “weaponized” by critics without context.

“The old New College is gone. The new New College is rising. The people trying hardest to tear it down are the ones who understand that we are succeeding,” Corcoran wrote in an op-ed last month.

Corcoran said New College hasn’t become a conservative college, but a place with a diversity of perspectives.

“If colleges and universities are not the marketplace of ideas, if they’re not the place to have have every possible debate, idea, discussion, then we fail as a country. And that’s all we’re trying to create here. If we do that, and we do it well, we’ll be the best liberal arts college in the country, Just like we were in the ’70s,” Corcoran told MassLive.

A drop in academic stature at New College

Mimi Fuller, a marine biology student who works as a teacher’s assistant, said she has noticed more students struggling in introductory classes.

“The amount of people that are failing Foundations of Biology is ridiculous. This is the easiest biology class you can take,” Fuller said. “It’s rare that I grade an exam that has an A. It’s so rare.”

But that wasn’t what New College used to be like, according to Benjamin Brown.

Brown, who graduated in 2009, remembers New College as a place where students once went on to earn advanced degrees, many of whom became Fulbright scholars.

Mimi Fuller, second from left, and her friends hang out between classes at New College of Florida on Nov. 12. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

New College was on a positive path between 2021 and 2023, under its first female president. The college’s four-year graduation rate and the number of students with a high school GPA of 4.0 or higher were increasing. And yet, the college had continued to grapple with enrollment declines for several years.

Brown was critical of the previous New College presidencies and excited for a fresh set of eyes and values during the overhaul of the New College administration in 2023. He became the college’s alumni association chair that year.

His positivity quickly waned as he watched his alma mater become a “disaster,” he said.

“We’re not achieving anymore,” Brown said. “We’ve fallen by 59 places in the relevant U.S. News ranking that we look to. We used to have a lot of students on track to go into Ph.D. programs, get Fulbright scholarships and also some Goldwater scholarships. You’re not really doing that anymore. There are still some who entered the program before Corcoran came in who were achieving that, but it’s clearly coming to an end.”

The nearly 60-spot drop in New College’s rankings over the past two years is largely due to the academic peer assessment score. The score measures the perception of institutional quality among presidents, provosts and deans at peer liberal arts colleges, according to Eric Brooks, U.S. News’ director of education data analysis. The faculty resource measures also declined, he said.

What’s being taught at New College — and what isn’t

The academic achievement of New College students is one metric, but Mary Churchill, an associate dean at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, has a separate concern about what is being taught.

Churchill has heard from New College faculty who are worried about being punished or caught teaching material that the administration might disagree with.

“If the goal in your classroom is dialogue across difference — to debate ideas, to debate pros and cons of any subject — and you are constrained in only being able to present one side, your ability to support your students in their growth of thinking critically and having critical discourse is really limited,” Churchill said.

There has been a censorship issue not only at New College, but across many institutions in predominantly red states, such as Texas or Georgia, that are abolishing gender studies or conversations about race, she said. Academics as far away as France have approached her with concerns about the changes at New College, she said.

“I think you can be academically rigorous within an environment where you have multiple viewpoints, conservative and progressive. But in either situation, when you’re trying to silence the opposite point of view, I do think you are impacting academic excellence,” Churchill said.

While some programs, like gender studies, were abolished under Corcoran’s leadership, others have been emphasized. For instance, New College has focused on the classical liberal arts by requiring all first-year students to take a class on Homer’s The Odyssey.

This year, David Harvey, the dean of the Center for the Study of Western Civilization, signed up to teach an introductory class on The Odyssey, in part to see how freshmen were doing academically. While he saw some concerning statistics about the academic performance of students in 2023, he said the college has bounced back — and is paving a brighter future forward.

“By and large, I’ve been pleased at how they’re doing. Most of the students are engaged; they’re learning what I want them to learn,” Harvey said.

David Harvey, dean of the Center for the Study of Western Civilization, poses for a portrait on
the campus of New College of Florida. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

Harvey believed New College was becoming a “progressive echochamber” before 2023 and was academically declining, despite its prowess in prior years. The Corcoran administration has been dedicated to restoring political balance on the campus, Harvey said.

“The common refrain, which I actually strongly agree with, is that we want to teach students how to think, not what to think. And by and large, I found that to be true. If you look across our campus, we’ve got a range of courses, programs, a range of opinions. Nobody’s being disciplined for their political views or told what they can and can’t teach,” said Harvey, who has taught at the college for 25 years.

Sarah Hernandez, an associate professor of Sociology and Caribbean and Latin American Studies, has weathered the changes at New College as others left or transferred.

Despite disagreeing with many of the priorities of Corcoran’s administration, Hernandez didn’t want to leave her students, especially those who couldn’t uproot their lives to transfer to places like Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts.

She had left her home once before, moving away from her family in Mexico to study in the U.S., and didn’t want to repeat the experience.

“At some point, one gets done with running,” Hernandez said.

Sarah Hernandez is a professor of Sociology and Caribbean nd Latin American
Studies at the New College of Florida. (Juliet Schulman-Hall/MassLive)

Covering an entire wall of Hernandez’s office is a raised relief map of Mexico. It was a gift from Mary Elmendorf, an anthropologist who studied Mayan women in Mexico, who was also the wife of a former New College president.

The map isn’t just decoration; Hernandez said her attachment to it reflects a broader commitment she has to bringing diverse cultural perspectives to the classroom.

Hernandez has continued to teach courses such as the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity amid the changes at New College.

This differs from approaches taken by some professors at Harvard, who have stopped teaching courses focused on race and gender in the wake of pressures from the Trump administration.

“I’m not afraid. It’s like, if you want to fire me, let’s have it and see. Because you claim that you are for freedom of academia, freedom of speech,” Hernandez said.

Receiving — and spending — more taxpayer money

Brown, a former alumni association chair, watched in frustration as his dreams for New College’s academic revival fizzled out and DeSantis and New College administrators went on to “take Florida taxpayer money and light it on fire.”

“The impression they were giving is this is going to be a serious college with a more conservative flavor, better matching the public attitudes about this in Florida. But what’s been delivered is a financial disaster,” said Brown, who resigned from his alumni chair position in March over financial concerns.

After years of underfunding, New College faced significant issues of deferred maintenance, such as mold, water leaks and structural issues in buildings. The college received nearly double the amount of state appropriations — jumping from $35.5 million in 2021 to $66.5 million in 2023, according to Suncoast Searchlight.

Some of the school’s funding has gone toward demolishing old buildings. Still, remnants of deteriorating structures remain on campus, with bright green algae or mold coating the windows of old dormitories, obstructing the view of the twin beds and bedframes still inside.

Brown felt like funding was being prioritized for uses that weren’t immediately necessary, such as the beautification of campus or building sizable athletic teams quickly.

A recent report from the Florida State University System shows that New College of Florida has been struggling compared to other Florida institutions. That includes the percentage of students graduating in any year, the cost to produce a degree and operating expenses per student at the college in 2024.

Corcoran refutes a lot of that data.

Some of New College’s issues were inherited from previous administrations, such as the millions of dollars in deferred maintenance that needed to be addressed and graduation and employment metrics, Corcoran said in his op-ed.

He also said the Florida State University System report is simplistic, making graphs look outrageous because of how small New College is compared to large Florida institutions.

Corcoran argued that because New College is required to be a residential college, its costs are higher than other Florida institutions that don’t have as many students living on campus. Expanding the college requires investment, he said.

“Less than three years ago (January 2023), New College wasn’t struggling; it was in a death spiral,” Corcoran wrote in his op-ed.

However, many campus community members have complained about overspending at the college, citing a drastic increase in athlete recruitment without adequate housing.

Corcoran has been in hot water for using $3 million to buy modular housing that was plagued by mold and destroyed by a hurricane and nearly $4 million for hotel contracts between 2024 and 2025 due to a lack of housing on campus, according to the Herald-Tribune. Hotels are still being used.

Are New College athletics to blame?

Part of what has changed the culture — but improved the enrollment — at New College was the creation of collegiate athletic teams.

Athletes have been blamed for disturbing the artsy, alternative culture at New College. In the words of one board of trustees member, recruiting athletes would begin to “rebalance the hormones and the politics on campus.”

Critics also claim New College has overspent on athletics and accepted student athletes without as much regard to their academic merit — to boost enrollment.

On the campus on a November morning, different languages could be heard as groups of athletes shouted at each other across walkways and blasted music out of a portable speaker.

Pickup games of soccer across a green lawn and beach volleyball between a few friends permeated the sunny, palm-tree-heavy campus.

In the afternoon, athletic teams congregated across the campus, from the women’s beach volleyball team warming up on sand courts next to the Sarasota Bay to the baseball and softball teams tightly sharing a field. (Many athletic facilities have been built since 2023, including a million-dollar baseball field, which has been in the works.)

For many of the New College athletes MassLive spoke with, it wasn’t until they arrived that they learned of the college’s contentious overhaul.

The New College of Florida softball team practices on campus. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

Sweaty from an evening of a pickup basketball game, Alexis Monero, a New College baseball recruit, said the college was a unique opportunity for him to get playing time, even if the college has a large baseball team.

Student athletes make up around 30% of the college’s population, but additional students come to New College interested in joining the teams, according to the school.

Since arriving at New College, Monero has noticed a clear divide, in the cafeteria or at parties, between those who are athletes and those he calls “narps” or non-athletic regular people. 

Part of that happens naturally from taking part in time-intensive sports, but he has also seen it as a result of non-athletes unfairly blaming athletes for changes at their school.

“We really didn’t want to ruin their school or anything,” Monero said. “We really just came to play college sports. Because right now, college sports is so saturated. Any opportunity you can get, you’re going to take it as an athlete.”



Both Hernandez and Fuller said some athletes at New College have needed more academic support than their non-athlete peers.

Data from 2023 shows that incoming student-athletes had lower high school GPAs and average SAT scores compared to non-athletes accepted at the college as freshmen, according to a records request obtained by MassLive.

The average GPA for admitted first-time-in-college athletes in 2023 was 3.64, compared to 4.05 for non-athletes. Meanwhile, the average SAT score for admitted students was more than 100 points higher for non-athletes, regardless of whether they were freshmen or transfer students.

The college has been improving its SAT scores for freshman students. That upward trend may be in part because New College changed the academic threshold athletes must meet to be recruited, according to one coach. 

‘A political spotlight’

Jackson Dawson, a basketball recruit, said there is a misconception about athletes’ academics. He defies it with his 4.0 high school GPA.

However, he has contributed to the newly visible conservative culture on campus.

Sitting in a white lawn chair eyeing the pelicans diving into the water, Dawson crossed his arms over a baby blue quarter zip sweater that read “Trump International Golf Club.”

Weeks earlier, he was standing in a similar spot on campus with about 80 New College community members for a vigil honoring conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September. It was an event run by the Turning Point USA chapter at New College, where Dawson is the founder and president.

“We just shared what Charlie meant to us and his impact that he had on the world. I was fortunate to meet Charlie five times, I believe. So I always tell people other than my parents, he probably had the biggest impact on my life so far,” Dawson said.

Part of the way Dawson was able to interact with Kirk was through Dawson’s work at the White House and during President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Dawson took on a variety of roles in several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security. He went on trips with Vice President J.D. Vance to Boston, hikes in Montana and attended the NATO Summit in the Netherlands.

He did that work while taking classes at New College. Dawson spoke with his professors through email, Zoom or phone to discuss what was covered in class. And, he wrote essays and completed assignments from afar.

“I was lucky enough to be able to go to New College and have the opportunity to do that because at most schools you’re not allowed to dismiss basically a semester of school. But I was able to do school and work nonstop,” Dawson said.

New College student athlete Jackson Dawson founded the school's Turning Point USA chapter and interned at Donald Trump's White House. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

In the three years Dawson has attended New College, the Turning Point chapter has grown from about a dozen students to 106 — more than 10% of the student body. He said their work isn’t trying to tell people what to think but rather trying to create a community that values free speech and limited government.

That message echoes what the New College administration has claimed the institution is like: a place that doesn’t indoctrinate students, but exposes students to all viewpoints. However, the college has contradicted that mission through some politically conservative moves, according to some college community members.

For instance, New College announced it was planning to erect a statue of Kirk and volunteered to be the first college to sign the Trump administration’s “compact.”

The compact requires institutions to adopt definitions of biological sex, cap international undergraduate student populations to 15% and abolish departments that “purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” among other standards.

If signed, the school would receive preference for funding from the federal government.

Over 14% of New College’s undergraduate population were international students in 2024, with the most coming from Brazil. Athletic recruiting has helped bring more of that diversity to campus.

Spectators watch a scrimmage by the New College of Florida softball team on campus in Sarasota, Fla. on Nov. 12. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

In opposition to the compact, New College’s faculty passed a resolution in November asking Corcoran to decline the Trump administration’s compact for preferential federal funding.

In a large auditorium with dozens of faculty members seated on folding chairs on a November afternoon, some faculty expressed concern about not being consulted by the New College administration and whether the Trump administration could restrict their ability to speak openly about certain topics. Only one faculty member spoke in opposition to the faculty’s resolution.

New College administrators wanted to sign up for the compact because the school has already implemented many of the principles laid out in the compact, they said.

However, many of those principles were what drew over a hundred educators and students away in 2023, including Matthew Lepinski, a former faculty member of New College who abruptly resigned from the Board of Trustees that April.

He saw the campus “thrust into the middle of this education culture wars” under politically conservative leadership, ultimately not benefiting students. Those changes were part of DeSantis trying to build his brand for his presidential campaign, Lepinski said.

“[New College] used to be kind of a secluded, out-of-the-way campus, and now it’s gotten a political spotlight shown on it. And I don’t think that benefits students who are just there to learn,” Lepinski said.

Levy, a New College student, has seen a conservative switch on campus firsthand as a student.

She has felt like other student groups, like Turning Point USA, are favored and treated differently than, for instance, the chapter of the League of Women Voters, where she is president.

Levy has heard of some students being invited to events that she wasn’t, and has felt like there has been a difference in what kinds of free speech are protected, such as signing people up for voting versus talking about gun rights.

“You get rewarded for being the kind of student they want,” Levy said.

Levy’s frustration with New College’s campus culture is one shared by Harvey, the chair of the faculty, though he comes to it from a different point of view.

He believes in the direction the New College administration has taken to restore political balance on campus. At the same time, he said the Kirk statue and the compact could be wrapped up in “conservative virtue signaling,” where the college’s administration has attempted to show the state or potential donors that it is going in the right direction.

“One of the things that has been frustrating to me is that a lot of the traditional supporters of the college, a lot of the alumni have been alienated by some of the rhetoric and the virtue signaling that’s taken place,” Harvey said. “Whereas, from my point of view, the things that they loved about the old New College are all still here.”

A metaphor in New College’s mascot

As the sunset cast red and purple hues across the Sarasota Bay on an abnormally cold November evening, Hernandez, a faculty member at New College, clenched her dark blue water bottle in one hand. She walked toward the rose-colored marble mansion, a former home of circus mogul Charles Ringling.

Hernandez’s office was previously in the building, but Corcoran’s arrival forced her and other academics into the more modest facility next door.

A banyan tree cast its shadow across the top of the mansion as the faint resort-style music echoed from neighboring electric fire pits and sand volleyball courts, formerly home to dozens of trees.

In 2023, as the overhaul of New College took shape, the college removed its mascot, the Null Set — once a placeholder that had been reenvisioned into a mathematical sign representing its academic focus.

Corcoran’s administration changed the mascot to the Mighty Banyans. It was chosen because of how big they are and their ability to live for centuries.

The Mighty Banyans logo hangs from a necklace on the dugout of the New College of Florida softball team. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

Banyan trees, also known as “strangler figs,” begin to grow when birds or other animals spread seeds onto other trees. As the seeds grow, the banyan tree sends down roots, strangling the host tree until only the banyan tree, with its networks of trunks, can survive and spread. 

To Hernandez, the mascot is an apt metaphor for the overhaul that has taken place over the past two years — a representation of authoritarian decisions without community buy-in.

DeSantis’s installation of Corcoran and other conservative leadership was the seed that ultimately grew to kill what the college once was, according to some students.

What is left is the “Mighty Banyan” of New College, an utterly changed version of the school they loved.

A banyan tree in front of College Hall on the campus of New College of Florida. (Thomas Simonetti for MassLive)

Walking past the tree, Hernandez stood under a covered passageway lined with arches connecting her new and old office buildings.

Looking toward Corcoran’s office, Hernandez expressed hope that other institutions now being politically pressured to make changes would stand up for their principles more than New College was able to, pointing to Harvard’s federal lawsuits against the Trump administration.

“You’re not alone,” she said.



LEARN MORE
About the Authors

Juliet Schulman-Hall is MassLive's Higher Education Reporter. You can reach her at jschulman-hall@masslive.com or on X at @JSchulmanHall.

Texas A&M president resigns after instructor’s firing over gender teachings, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Washington Post

Friends:

Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III has announced his resignation barely a week after a viral video set off a storm of political outrage that ended with the firing of senior lecturer Melissa McCoul and the removal of both a dean and department head.

The controversy began in Professor McCoul’s children’s literature course when a student objected to her teaching of Jude Saves the World, a novel whose main character is nonbinary. The student insisted the lesson was “illegal” and against religious belief. McCoul, who had successfully taught the text in previous semesters, maintained that her teaching was both lawful and academically appropriate. 

For the record, it's not illegal since anti-DEI, Senate Bill 17 allows us as faculty to continue to teach and conduct research. The moment was nevertheless secretly recorded, uploaded to social media, and swiftly seized upon by political figures eager to weaponize it.

Welsh—a retired four-star general and former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—soon found himself under heavy fire from state leaders including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Rep. Brian Harrison, who demanded his ouster and the dismantling of all so-called “DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination” in Texas universities. His attempt to appease critics by firing McCoul and demoting administrators did not silence the uproar. In the end, he stepped aside.

Now, faculty and students at Texas A&M face an unsettling reality: a campus climate increasingly shaped by political dictates rather than academic judgment. McCoul, by all accounts a respected instructor with more than a decade of teaching experience, is fighting her termination through an appeal.

From what I have gathered about Welsh’s own defense of academic freedom—including a thoughtful LinkedIn post shared by Dr. Leonard Bright—I cannot help but wonder if his willingness to stand by this principle hastened his exit. It is sobering to realize that one of our state’s largest and most prestigious public university could not shield its president from partisan attack when he appeared to affirm what is, after all, a constitutional right.

As assaults on higher education escalate across the nation, Welsh’s resignation is a stark warning. It signals not only the erosion of academic freedom but also the weakening of democratic norms. The question we face is urgent: Will Texas universities defend the right of professors to teach and students to learn without fear, or will they surrender to political interference? The future of higher education in this state—and the public it serves—depends on the answer.

—Angela Valenzuela

Texas A&M president resigns after instructor’s firing over gender teachings

President Mark A. Welsh III is stepping down after a video of a student accusing an instructor of illegally teaching “gender ideology” led to the instructor’s firing.

Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III (Mark Felix/For The 

Washington Post)

Molly Hennessy-Fiske | Washington Post | September 19, 2025

HOUSTON — The president of Texas A&M University’s flagship campus is stepping down a little over a week after a viral video of a student accusing an instructor of illegally teaching “gender ideology” led to the instructor’s firing, the removal of a dean and department head, as well as calls for investigations — including by the Justice Department.

President Mark A. Welsh III is a retired four-star general who trained as a fighter pilot and later served as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has also held roles including associate director for military affairs at the CIA, commandant of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy and dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at A&M.

Welsh took over at Texas A&M two years ago after M. Katherine Banks retired as university president in the wake of a scandal involving the botched hiring of journalism professor Kathleen McElroy. That job offer provoked backlash from the Texas GOP because of McElroy’s work on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which Texas has since banned.

Welsh will step down Friday, according to a statement released by Texas A&M late Thursday.

“Today, President Welsh has submitted his resignation, and both the Board of Regents and I agree that this is the right moment for change,” Texas A&M Chancellor Glenn Hegar said in a separate statement posted on X.

Hegar, a former GOP state lawmaker, thanked Welsh for his service and contributions to the university. He said the nine-member Board of Regents — appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) — will conduct a nationwide search for Welsh’s successor and appoint an interim president “to guide the university during this transition.”

On Friday, Welsh posted a statement that shed little light on why he decided to resign, apart from the recent controversy.

“When I was first appointed as President of Texas A&M University, I told then Chancellor John Sharp and our Board of Regents that I would serve as well as I possibly could until it was time for someone else to take over. Over the past few days, it’s become clear that now is that time,” Welsh wrote.

“It was the right decision for him to do for himself, the university, students, and faculty,” said Leonard Bright, a professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, in a text message. “Now, we look to the university and (board of regents) to conduct an earnest search for a replacement who will fully support the values of academic freedom and protect the university from political interference in our classrooms.”

State Rep. Brian Harrison (R), who posted the viral video and audio recordings of Welsh while repeatedly demanding his ouster, celebrated his resignation Thursday on X.

“As the first elected official to call for him to be fired, this news is welcome, although overdue,” Harrison wrote. “Now … END ALL DEI AND LGBTQ INDOCTRINATION IN TEXAS!!”

The video excerpt that contributed to Welsh stepping down was shared by Harrison on Sept. 8. It was filmed on July 29 during a children’s literature class, but neither the student — whom Harrison declined to identify because they had requested anonymity — nor instructor Melissa McCoul appear on camera.

In a statement emailed to The Washington Post by her attorney this week, McCoul said the class was on the second of three days reading a middle-grade contemporary fiction novel called “Jude Saves the World” that she had taught in “several previous iterations” of the class.

“The main character, Jude, is nonbinary. The plot largely deals with Jude’s difficulties with ADHD in school, their relationship with their friends, mother, and grandparents, and their friend group’s attempt to build an LGBTQ-accepting social club in their town,” she said.

McCoul said that on the first day, she had provided “contextual background information on sex, sexuality and gender as they applied to children’s literature, as well as the ways things like toys and clothing are often gendered,” and was recapping those points when the video was filmed.

The footage begins as the student interrupts to insist the lesson is “not legal, and I don’t want to promote something that is against our president’s laws.”

“According to our president, there’s only two genders,” the student says, alleging that the instruction “very much goes against, not only myself, but a lot of people’s religious beliefs.”

In response, McCoul can be heard telling the student that “if you are uncomfortable in this class, you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal.”

She then referred the student to a department head, noting that officials were aware of the concerns. “I’m not convinced that your proposal will be effective in stopping me from teaching things that are biologically true, because I do have the legal and ethical authority, professional expertise in this classroom,” McCoul said, before telling the student to leave.

A day later, McCoul was fired. Her attorney Amanda Reichek, a Democratic former Texas judge, has released a statement calling McCoul “a highly regarded senior lecturer,” noting that she had “over a decade of teaching experience under her belt when she was summarily terminated” and is appealing her firing.

After the video went viral, Welsh also removed McCoul’s dean and department head, but that did not satisfy Harrison or Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), a staunch ally of President Donald Trump.

“His ambivalence on the issue and his dismissal of the student’s concerns by immediately taking the side of the professor is unacceptable,” Patrick posted on X last week.

Abbott had already threatened to fire Welsh in January after the university’s business school invited doctoral students and faculty to a conference designed to promote classroom diversity. Welsh responded by pulling the university out of the conference.

Several other presidents of major U.S. universities have also been forced out or resigned under pressure in recent years, as elected officials and conservative activists — including in the Trump administration — increasingly scrutinize campus culture and decisions.

Trump and his administration have this year attacked Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia. Texas A&M, with an enrollment of more than 79,000, is the largest state school to face such backlash and is among the largest universities in the country.

Texas GOP leaders have passed laws this year strengthening their control over university curriculums, hiring and protests.


Susan Svrluga contributed to this report from Washington.