By Rich Kozlovich
As regular readers know I've decided to feature the theme "Fixing Education in America is Job One" in P&D throughout this coming year. In line with that I published a piece from Francis Menton who publishes the Manhattan Contrarian, who gave me permission to publish his work some time back. He's published some great information on global warming, alternative energy, etc. He recently published this piece, Some Suggestions For Christopher Rufo And Company To Fix New College Of Florida, (I recommend reading the whole piece) saying:
Over the past several years, Republicans have very gradually acquired some backbone in pushing back against progressive idiocy. But a glaring example of failure to push back remains in the state university systems, very much including those of the red states. In essentially all of those states, Republican governors and legislatures have allowed the very worst of Marxist and racist monoculture to fester and metastasize not only without opposition, but with ever-increasing taxpayer funding.
Well, count on Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida to be the one to finally step up and do something about it. On January 6, DeSantis announced the appointment of six new trustees to the board of a unit of the Florida state university system called New College of Florida. New College, located in Sarasota, is supposed to be a “top-ranked public liberal arts college” and the “Honors College” of the Florida state university system, with special programs for the very best students. But in recent years it has become, in the words of the Tampa Bay Times, “one of the most progressive higher-education institutions in the state” — in other words, it has been taken over by the extreme progressive Left.
Well, Governor DeSantis has decided to put this to a halt and appointed six new Trustees to the Board, and these leftists resent it and will do anything they can to stop their efforts, including stopping any and all public discourse over this. He sent me a link to this John Hinderaker article, Standing Up to the Leftist Mob, saying:
Several years ago, I saw a cartoon that
went something like this: a liberal college administrator tells a
conservative speaker that his event is being canceled because there have
been threats of violence. The conservative asks, who are the threats
coming from? and the liberal administrator answers, “Us.”
This is, in fact, one of the Left’s favorite ploys to shut down
conservative speech. It happened at Florida’s New College last week. As
we wrote here,
New College of Florida is a tiny, failing far-left public school that
Governor DeSantis has set out to save by appointing Christopher Rufo and
other conservatives to the school’s board of trustees, with a view
toward making New College the “Hillsdale of the South.” You can imagine
how the college’s far-left administrators and faculty feel about that.
A meeting open to all is anathema to the Left, so the inevitable death threats followed.
The Federalist has the story, via
InstaPundit.
The climactic moment came when New College’s Provost, Suzanne Sherman,
demanded that the event be shut down and encouraged students not to
attend. The excuse was a “credible” death threat against conservative
trustee Eddie Speir, who of course wanted to go forward. Rufo has the
tape:
Here is the exchange between Rufo, the new board of Trustees, and the administration, who don't seem to understand, they're not in charge of the Trustees. Leftist arrogance has no boundaries, and they need to be taught an important lesson. They're hired help!
I think the
suggestions by Francis Menton makes it clear the best way to drive home that message in as strong of terms as possible is to fire them! Not just a few of them, fire all of them! Not only administrators, professors also. Leave no contamination behind to reinfect that institution.
