Republicans and conservatives have been, among other worthy efforts, trying to remove the "woke" scourge from our nation's schools and college campuses. This trend in higher education, along with the assorted Underwater Ethnic Gender Dog-Polishing classes and degree programs, do nothing to serve the purpose of any educational institution: Producing young adults with marketable skills.
Red state governors and the Trump administration have been clamping down on this nonsense, and their efforts are bearing fruit. But some institutions seem determined to comply only on paper, while still enabling all manner of woke horse squeeze.
Which brings me to New College, in Sarasota, Florida. City Journal's Colin Wright has brought us an example from New College of just this kind of deceptive noncompliance.
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledged to rein in “woke indoctrination” in public education, he wasn’t bluffing. Over the last several years, he and the legislature have pursued an aggressive legal and governance strategy to push far-left ideology out of taxpayer-funded institutions. The justification is straightforward: the people have the right to demand that public universities not become subsidized activist factories.
Laws can close academic departments and impose subject-area bans on paper, but campuses are still run day-to-day by faculty and administrators who may not be interested in what voters want. When progressive activists dominate a university, they will inevitably try to circumvent the law.
I would argue that in this case, at least one of these activists isn't just circumventing the law so much as outright flouting the law. Here are those details:
Consider a 2025 undergraduate thesis covering the “Evolution of Gender” in drama and fashion. Nova Myhill, a professor of English and Theater, Dance & Performance Studies at New College, sponsored the thesis, which explicitly lists “Gender Studies” as its “Area of Concentration.”
At a glance, the thesis appears to be a broad, benign survey of gender-expression conventions through fashion in the context of theater. But it quickly advances to extreme activist views of sex and biology. The opening section, titled “Our Idea of Sex,” portrays sex in humans not as “concrete” or “permanent” but as something “closer to being reflections of societal preconceptions than anything based only on ‘biology.’” It claims that the idea that humans have two sexes became widespread only “around the mid-1700s” due to “changing values of what was important within identity, class and gender beginning to take the utmost importance when using clothing as a symbol or sign of identity.” It even asserts that “there was a time when we conceived of the human race as only ‘one-sex’,” and that our “re-envisioning of the sexes” during the Enlightenment into two categories—male and female—actually “led to the differentiation and specific designation of reproductive organs; the penis, testicles, ovaries, and uterus.”
Mr. Wright presents several more examples, just from New College.
Read More: What's the Real Value of College?
Is America's Volatile Leftist Powder Keg Now About to Ignite?
So here's my question: What possible value could "academic" work like this have in the post-college years of these young skulls full of mush? The obvious and correct answer is "none."
In my own undergraduate college years, I studied Biology, with a strong emphasis in behavior and field zoology, which you can probably see in any of my posts about animals and the natural world. At the time, I harbored notions of being a wildlife biologist, and I would have been admirably prepared for that - but I discovered what wildlife biologists typically pull in annual income, so I went the industry route instead. And even there, working for decades in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and biotech, my education proved useful. While in college, I did do a one-year-long research project on the behavior of whitetailed deer, and I was in the field for many, many happy hours working on that project, which might have helped me land the poorly-paying job I craved back then, had I pursued it.
So, my education proved useful. A STEM degree, or an education in nursing, or any other number of degrees and certificates, can lead to prosperous careers. But the lunacy being cranked out at New College? The only thing a young skull of mush so inculcated will be good for after they graduate is asking the famous question, "Can I supersize that for you?"
Again, our systems of education, at all levels, have but one purpose: To equip young adults with marketable skills. New College is utterly failing these kids, and they are breaking Florida law in so doing - in spirit if not in fact.
These wackadoodle leftist "educators" aren't about to give up easily. There's a simple and obvious answer: Divorce higher education from any and all government funding, and require universities and colleges to be co-signers on any and all student loans. Strip away the easy money that feeds this stupidity. Make colleges and universities follow the undying law of business: If they cannot produce a product for which people (in this case, employers) are willing to pay, then let them fail. If the students so inculcated with horse squeeze can't pay off their student loans, which at present are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, then put the colleges and universities on the hook. Let them pay up. That will eliminate all the woke tomfoolery from our educational institutions, and fast.
Our system of higher education is badly broken, and it will remain so until the woke horse squeeze is stripped out, root and branch. Stripping out the money is the fastest way to do that.
