New College Board Denies Tenure for Five Professors

SARASOTA – In yet another jarring yet perhaps unsurprising move in the ongoing effort of political appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis to "transform" a small liberal arts honors college in Sarasota, the newly seated board of trustees at New College of Florida declined to grant tenure to five veteran faculty members last week.

The action is believed to have been largely inspired by a memo issued by the school’s interim president, Richard Corcoran. Corcoran, a DeSantis ally, is also a former Republican Speaker of theHouse and former Florida Education Commissioner. Corcoran was awarded the interim position of president by the college’s board of trustees after DeSantis stacked the board’s deck with handpicked hard-right conservatives.

Closely following DeSantis’ appointment of six trustees to the board, the new trustees began their effort to follow the governor’s vision of reshaping the college and promptly ousted then-president Patricia Okker and replaced her with Corcoran with a $400,000 pay hike compared to that of his predecessor.

A memo issued by Corcoran earlier this monththat urged the newly-seated board to deny the applications for tenure was criticized as inappropriate interference by the interim president into the board's upcoming deliberations. The faculty members had already received prior approval by the college’s former interim provost in Feb., but despite the previous approval, Corcoran’s memo suggested the trustees deny the request and additionally encouraged the faculty members to withdraw their applications.

The denials for tenure came from a nearly three-hour meeting of the board of trustees which was perhaps more contentious than it was long. The meeting procedures were interrupted with shouts of "shame on you" from students of the school and the public who attended to watch the proceedings. More than 50 individuals addressed the trustees during the meeting’s public comment time, each speaking in support of the professors. Intermittent calls could be heard from the audience as they implored the board to "give them tenure."

Ignoring the voices of those advocating for the five professors, the trustees denied tenure with the Desantis appointees using their board majority to repeat a 6-4 vote against granting tenure, five times. One existing trustee remaining from prior to DeSantis’ appointments–New College professor Matthew Lepinski–unexpectedly announced his departure from the school and board immediately following the votes.

"I’m very concerned about the direction this board is going and the destabilization of its academic program... This is my last board meeting. I’m leaving the college," Lepinski told his colleagues.

Lepinski has a Ph.D. from MIT and is a professorin the college’s computer science department. He is the second professor from the department to announce their departure in recent weeks.

Tenured professors are provided job security and can typically only be dismissed under specific circumstances such as misconduct or a school's financial distress. The five professors who were denied tenure last week are Rebecca Black and Lin Jiang, who both teach organic chemistry; Nassima Neggaz, history and religion with a focus on Islam; coastal and marine science professor Gerardo Toro-Farmer; and Hugo Viera-Vargas, whose specialty is Caribbean/Latin American studies and music.

DeSantis has regularly touted the forced changes he brought upon New College as just another necessary strike against public education in his war against "woke indoctrination." The governor has stated his intention at New College is to transform the small liberal arts college into a "classical" institution modeled after Hillsdale College, a private Christian institution located in Michigan with a history of ties to Republican politics.

The governor’s actions upon New College–and those of his appointees–have increasingly been described by many of the college’s existing students, faculty, and staff, and by proponents of academic freedom nationwide, as a "hostile political takeover." Some have argued that the takeover of New College is mainly a political stunt intended to build upon the governor's far-right credentials for his likely future bid for the Republican primary in the 2024 presidential election.