New College Of FL President Fired By Newly Conservative Board

SARASOTA, FL — Weeks after Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new conservative members to the liberal New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees, the board voted Tuesday to terminate the contract of the college’s president, Patricia Okker, according to multiple reports.

The trustees also named GOP leader Richard Corcoran, the former Florida House speaker and Florida Commissioner of Education, as the college’s interim president, according to WFLA.

“As sad as I am I also feel gratitude. For that and more I will be forever grateful,” Okker reportedly said after the meeting.

The board also decided to terminate four positions in the schools Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, ABC 7 reported.

Last month, DeSantis announced his plans to reshape the college, which previously operated under a progressive philosophy, as a conservative school focused on the classics.

The governor’s six new appointees to the board are:

• Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist known for challenging critical race theory and gender ideology,
• Matthew Spalding, a professor and dean at Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian college in Michigan,
• Charles R. Kesler, a government professor at Claremont-McKenna College in California, where the conservative movement in America is among his areas of expertise, and the author of several books, including “I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism,”
• Mark Bauerlein, an Emory University English professor who once described himself as an “educational conservative” to Reason magazine,
• Debra Jenks, a New College alumna and attorney, and
• Jason “Eddie” Speir, founder of Inspiration Academy, a private, Christian, sports academy in Bradenton.

New College, a public honors, liberal arts college, touts itself as an institution that educates “free thinkers, risk takers and trailblazers,” according to its website.

It tells prospective students, “Your education. Your way. Discover a public arts and science education driven by your curiosity, career aspirations and individual learning style.”

Each student creates an individualized degree plan with an emphasis on hands-on learning.

But the DeSantis’ administration hopes to eradicate concepts such as diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as critical race theory from the classroom at New College and other higher education institutions.

"It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida's classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the south," Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said in a statement, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

"You cannot ask me to go forward and argue that we are indoctrinating students here. I do not believe it. I understand there’s a difference of opinion about that, but I will be persuasive on this point," said Patricia Okker told ABC Action News. “Our students are not indoctrinated here at New College.”