Matthew Spalding, dean of Hillsdale’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government, accepted a position on the board of trustees at the New College of Florida. Appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Jan. 6, Spalding will advise the college on its transformation into a classical liberal arts school.

“I have known Governor DeSantis since he was a congressman and have been working with the Florida Department of Education on his civic literacy initiative,” Spalding said. “I was honored by the appointment.”

Spalding, the former vice president of American Studies at the Heritage Foundation and founding director of its B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, is one of six board members DeSantis appointed this month to remove political ideology from public education. Spalding is serving on the board in a personal capacity and will remain at Hillsdale.

Since becoming governor, DeSantis has commissioned the Board of Trustees to execute education reforms, opposed transgender ideology and critical race theory, and supported parental rights in education. “Florida is where woke goes to die,” the governor said in November.

Also appointed to the board was Hillsdale’s spring 2022 Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute best known for his education activism.

Labeled a partisan “leadership overhaul,” media outlets like the New York Times and Politico have decried the appointments to be a “hostile takeover of a liberal college,” according to the New York Times. Spalding rejects the criticism — and said that the board aims not to make New College a carbon copy of Hillsdale but reclaim its position as Florida’s central liberal arts institution.

“The claim that this a ‘hostile takeover’ of New College is not correct,” Spalding said. “The intent is to renew New College and return it to its liberal arts mission. The significance of doing that in this moment at a public university within a major state system is historic, not only for Florida but as a model for a nation where governors and legislature have the responsibility over public education.”

A member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts College, the New College admitted its first class in 1964 as a private nonsectarian liberal arts school. Chairman of the first Board of Trustees Philip H. Hess said in a 1964 New York Times article that “the college would stress freedom of inquiry and the responsibility of the individual student for his own education.” 

When the school fell into debt in 1975, the board sold it to the University of Southern Florida. In 2021, it was absorbed into the State University System of Florida, where it remains as the state’s honors college.

DeSantis, who has jurisdiction over the state’s public university system, said on Tuesday that a strong board of trustees might save New College from being “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.” Spalding echoed the governor’s efforts.

“The liberal arts are the study of the great works of great thinkers who ask timeless questions about the most important things—What is truth? How should we live our lives? Is there a higher meaning and purpose outside of ourselves?—in pursuit of the highest truths of human existence,” Spalding said. “This is the approach to education at Hillsdale or any college that pursues the liberal arts as properly understood. This must be contrasted with modern education, which is more often than not a smorgasbord of dogmatic relativism that nevertheless insists on whatever is academically in vogue. Students are hungering for this approach. Enrollment and applications are surging at Hillsdale and institutions like it.”

National college enrollment has decreased 13% over the last decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Admissions rates have skyrocketed at some liberal arts colleges, such as Thomas Aquinas College, Benedictine College, and Florida’s Ave Maria University. Hillsdale’s application rate jumped 53% last year.  

James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ governor’s chief of staff, said the administration hopes the New College will be like a “Hillsdale of the South.” Although Spalding called the comparison to Hillsdale “flattering,” he said the board aims to renew New College as a unique institution.

“Hillsdale College is the best and most important liberal arts college in America and is the north star that guides those pursuing truth despite the disordered universe of higher education,” Spalding said. “This effort is not about trying to transform New College into something that it is not, but about strengthening its distinctive mission as the liberal arts honors college in the Florida public university system.”

During the board’s first meeting on Tuesday night, the trustees voted to terminate New College President Patricia Okker and promised to subject tenured professors to employee reviews.

Spalding proposed that Okker be replaced by Richard Corcoran, Florida’s former education commissioner and Florida House speaker. Corcoran, who delivered a speech on the state of American education at Hillsdale in May 2021, will act as interim president beginning in March.

“This is not how I thought I was going to go,” Okker, who negotiated a severance package before she was terminated, said at the meeting.

“There are some people who think you have a right to have taxpayer institutions with no accountability that they should be able to do whatever they want,” DeSantis said in a press conference on Tuesday. “That is not happening in the state of Florida. We’re going to hold people accountable.” 

The trustees also announced their intent to dismantle the college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion offices on Tuesday. The governor has allocated $15 million for hiring new faculty and developing new scholarships.

“In Florida, we will build off of our higher education reforms by aligning core curriculum to the values of liberty and the Western tradition, eliminating politicized bureaucracies like DEI, increasing the amount of research dollars for programs that will feed key industries with talented Florida students, and empowering presidents and boards of trustees to recruit and hire new faculty, including by dedicating record resources for faculty salaries,” DeSantis said in a press release.

Spalding’s former student Josh Barker said the new trustee’s wealth of experience will aid Florida’s education system.

“The core focus of Dr. Spalding’s class was on prudence,” Barker said. “How does a statesman, but even more broadly, a person facing a tough decision, know what to do? I’m sure he’ll bring all the wisdom that he has gleaned in his studies and shared with us to this new role and serve the state of Florida and the students at New College very well.”