New era at New College kicks off with contentious meetings, report of death threat

The transformation of New College of Florida being ushered in by Gov. Ron DeSantis got off to a contentious start Wednesday when two controversial new board members addressed the college community for the first time in a meeting that nearly was canceled because of a reported death threat, and featured frequent heckling and pointed questions from the audience.

Board members Christopher Rufo and Eddie Speir fielded questions Wednesday morning from a packed crowd of roughly 200 people at the Mildred Sainer Music and Arts Pavilion, their first public appearance on the college’s Sarasota campus.

Rufo said college administrators wanted to cancel the event – which was billed as a meeting with faculty but also included members of the public – after Speir received a death threat, but the two new board members decided to move forward.

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DeSantis appointed Rufo, Speir and four other new board members to Florida’s public liberal arts college earlier this month in an effort to remake the school, which has long been known as a progressive institution. A DeSantis official said the new model for New College is Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school.

Most of the six new board members appointed by DeSantis are affiliated with conservative institutions.

"We have a mandate from Gov. DeSantis," Rufo said before the meeting. "He gave us a pep talk recently, he said: 'Look, I have an overwhelming mandate from the people of Florida. You are constitutional officers appointed by the governor. You have a political, a moral and a governing mandate to reform this institution.'"

A seventh new board member, Ryan Anderson, was appointed Wednesday by the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system.

Anderson is an author and president of the Ethics & Public Policy Center. His books include, “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing” and “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” according to information posted on the Ethics & Public Policy Center website.

Anderson's appointment means a majority of the 13-member New College board is new.

Rufo is a prominent conservative activist on transgender and racial issues, while Speir is the founder of a Christian school in Bradenton. Both have been outspoken in decrying what they view as a leftist, “woke” culture at New College that they want to dismantle.

"There is a kind of social justice-oriented orthodoxy that has created an echo chamber that has prevented a lot of debates," Rufo said.

DeSantis' effort to transform New College has become a high-profile front in his war on woke, and Wednesday's meeting drew national attention. Reporters from a range of national media outlets were in attendance.

Rufo opened the meeting by arguing that New College is not doing well in various performance metrics. His introductory remarks were interrupted multiple times by audience members disputing his assertions.

Somebody shouted "bullsh**" when Rufo said he was told a Christian student was "mercilessly bullied and pushed off campus." Other audience members shouted "you're a child" and "liar" after various Rufo remarks.

Theatre and Performance Studies Professor Diego Villada questioned the metrics Rufo was using to judge the college.

"If we don't have grades, we don't have departments, we don't have majors, how can some of those metrics be used across all (Florida universities) when we are so different?" Villada said.

Liz Bates, a New College alumnus who works as a psychology technician at the school, questioned Rufo about some of his social media comments, which she said falsely equate "queerness and transness with pedophilia" and other forms of child abuse, and asked if he views the LGBTQ community at the college as a threat.

Rufo has used terms such as "grooming" in his activism on LGBTQ issues. He said "no" in response to Bates' question about whether LGBTQ individuals are a threat, and later added she was "totally misstating my own view."

"My philosophy on this is quite simple: You're going to have students, faculty, staff from a wide variety of backgrounds... we need to have a single common standard... that says we're going to treat everyone equally, everyone has equal human dignity," Rufo said, adding the college shouldn't have "favoritism on the basis of identity groups."

Other faculty members wondered how the new board members would get more financial resources for the college, and how they would approach curriculum issues.

Both Speir and Rufo said the resources would come once DeSantis and the Legislature see that the college is moving in a new direction.

Speir said once the college shows it is open to all students “regardless of their wokeness. Then I think that the coffers will open, definitely. That is the path forward in my mind."

Rufo agreed that more funding is needed to improve facilities.

“The ultimate problem, though, is not money," Rufo said. "The ultimate problem is leadership."

Rufo said before the meeting that a message was directed at Speir that appeared to come from a college account. It said something like "Eddie Speir better be wearing a bulletproof vest," he said.

“Somebody either hijacked or spoofed a communications email at the college and then they sent a threat of violence specifically against Trustee Speir and really implicitly against all of us," Rufo said. "That came in last night. Local law enforcement notified the terrorism task force, they’ve mobilized the swat unit, bomb sniffing dogs, police from three different departments.”

Rufo said he was disappointed with how the college administration handled the death threat, saying it made him think new leadership is needed.

"We're going to be reconsidering leadership here because what I saw demonstrated here was cowardice, not leadership," Rufo said.

Speir confirmed during the meeting and afterward that he was made aware of a death threat, but declined to go into detail when asked about it later by the Herald-Tribune.

Rufo said the communication implied someone was "going to shoot and murder Trustee Speir."

The Sarasota Police Department referred questions about the threat to the campus police, which said to contact the college's communications department.

"New College received what were perceived to be credible threats that are being investigated by the New College Campus Police," Catherine Helean, the college's executive director of communications and marketing, said in an email that didn't provide any details about the nature of the threat.

Law enforcement had a heightened presence at the 10 a.m. meeting.

Rufo said after the meeting that he's "100% confident that the vast majority" of faculty left feeling better than when they arrived.

"We came together to have an open conversation, I think the first open conversation that this university has had for a long time," Rufo said.

Among those in the audience was Sarasota retiree Joan Lerner, who attended the meeting carrying a "We (heart) New College" sign. Lerner said she has no connection to the school, other than living nearby.

"I am opposed to what the governor is doing to New College," she said. "I want to support the New College family. We cannot let this governor take whatever he wants."

Another meeting was held Wednesday afternoon between the two new board members and New College students. It drew about 150 people, including some of the same individuals at the first meeting, despite an email sent out by Provost Suzanne Sherman at 10:25 a.m. urging students not to attend "due to potentially credible threats."

"We have a great deal invested in the education that we expect to receive at New College of Florida and we are very satisfied with the depth of course work that we are able to pursue," Niko Jackson, 18, a second year philosophy student, said at the second meeting, adding: “While New College might not be for everyone, we do have our reasons for choosing this school."

Jackson then quizzed Rufo about his background, asking if he had any "formal study in educational theory or in the administration of institutions of higher learning, and if not how long do you think you should spend understanding the design of Florida's successful university system before you make changes to it's honors college?"

The audience erupted in applause. Rufo defended his qualifications while noting that other new board members have extensive experience with university administration.

“We have a kind of fully-rounded team and we all have strengths and weaknesses,” he said.

Dylan Niner, a 23-year-old biology major who started at New College this week, asked Rufo about his push to change the school's culture, questioning how "you could judge, or even see, what has changed?"

"What is the litmus test of the culture of a campus?" Niner asked.

Rufo said "consultants can come in, they can take the temperature over the course of a few years."

The meeting with students also was contentious and tense at times. It was punctuated with shouting, and applause for confrontational audience comments and questions.

Rufo said beforehand that he welcomed vigorous debate.

"You can talk to me, you can call me, you can argue with me, you can yell at me," Rufo said. "I will listen to you. We have a job to do, we're going do the job. But we're not going to try to suppress your opinion. We're not going to try to stifle debate. We're not going to try to create one orthodoxy in replacement of another."

Staff Writer Melissa Pérez-Carrillo contributed to this report, which also used information from the News Service of Florida.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: New era at New College kicks off with contentious meetings