How Ron DeSantis Is Using Baseball To Blow Up Academia
EPISODE 50: The new New College.
It seems obvious, nine days into 2024, that the most contested front in America’s culture war remains the college campus.
Just last week, Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, became the latest university leader to be effectively ousted by conservative strategists. And amid some objectively real allegations of academic misconduct against her — as well as some outright racism from the key strategists doing the alleging — one unambiguous reminder emerged: Every university president is now a wartime president. (Click here for some of my other takeaways, on MSNBC.)
But the most radical campaign designed by these same strategists, it turns out, is not happening at Harvard. It’s underway at New College, once the crown jewel of Florida’s public education system, under the direction of Governor Ron DeSantis — who, leading into next week’s Iowa Caucuses and tomorrow’s presidential debate, has been running on a platform of FREEDOM FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.
And to be clear: these education campaigns, these academic Great Replacements, do not rely on DeSantis becoming president. (He won’t be, this time.) They’re already taking over.
And as PTFO correspondent Jeb Lund reports, DeSantis and these strategists are doing it by demographically — and religiously, and ideologically — bombing New College. With no less than 73 (!) newly arrived baseball players, among many others. And many promises.
DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERTS:
FORMER NEW COLLEGE ADMISSIONS OFFICIAL: "People operating ... through DeSantis went and pressured our admissions team to lie to athletic students, lie to students in general, to increase the amount of enrollment that we had at the college to the level that he wanted, no matter what."
NEW COLLEGE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR: "I'd love to see this be the blueprint for all universities going forward. I think this is the blueprint. We have people from all sides coming in together, being a merit-based place where people can come in and grow and learn and serve together in a place of civil discourse."
Go Null Set,
Pablo