Records from New College of Florida Offer Glimpse into Hiring of Politically Connected Administrators

Records obtained by American Oversight and reported on by Inside Higher Ed provide new details about the hiring and recruitment practices at New College of Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis and allies have instituted several controversial measures aimed at reshaping the public liberal arts college into a conservative institution.

New College has experienced a dramatic administrative overhaul this year, beginning with DeSantis’ appointment of a new board of trustees made up of conservative allies in January. According to Inside Higher Ed’s reporting, since February, 77 school employees have left, while 87 new full-time and 31 part-time employees have been hired. 

As Inside Higher Ed’s Josh Moody reports, many of the school’s top new hires have no prior experience working in higher education — but they do have close ties to DeSantis allies or conservative politics. Critics have complained that New College has focused on recruiting from religious schools, and have raised concerns about whether proper searches were conducted. “Indeed, just how some new hires came about remains a mystery,” Moody wrote. “But public records shared by American Oversight … shed some light on certain hiring decisions.”

The records contain emails exchanged in March of this year by Robert Allen, a New College graduate who has claimed to be behind DeSantis’ overhaul of the school, and Bruce Abramson, who later became the director of new students and graduate admissions. Allen previously served as a New College board trustee and was a member of the college’s presidential search committee. Abramson is a founder of the American Restoration Institute, which has frequently posted about the dangers of “progressives” and “Islamists.” 

In March, Abramson emailed Allen to propose a course titled “Information Integrity & Propaganda Defense: Survival Skills for the Information Age,” which, according to the proposal, would teach students how to “diagnose and defend against propaganda” and “how to recognize the difference between informed expert opinion and bombastic, exploitative pronouncements.”

Two days later, Abramson wrote again to Allen, this time suggesting that it would likely “be easier to bring people into administration than onto faculty.” He continued, “If so, the ideal way to bring me in would be to head a new Office of New Initiatives. Whether such an appointment would use a VP, Director, Dean, or other title would depend upon by-laws and institutional structure, but it should be doable with minimal red tape. From such a position, I can certainly engage in teaching — and the job would obviously involve working with existing programs and faculty.”

Later that month, Allen emailed interim college president Richard Corcoran (a former Republican state lawmaker and an ally to DeSantis) urging Corcoran to consider Abramson for a role. Allen wrote that Abramson was “keenly interested in institutional transformation” and was “willing to teach and to help with administrative matters,” and added that Abramson was a “regular attendee of lectures sponsored by the Palm Beach Freedom Institute,” a conservative education policy group chaired by Allen. 

The records also show that in April, Allen recommended that Corcoran hire Bruce Gilley, a political science professor who in 2017 published a paper titled “The Case for Colonialism.” The records do not indicate whether Gilley was considered for hire.

American Oversight is continuing to investigate right-wing attacks on education in Florida and across the country. Recently, records we obtained from the Florida Board of Education’s review of the proposed AP African American Studies curriculum were reported on by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times. Read more about our ongoing investigations here.