DeSantis to transform New College of Florida into "Hillsdale of the South"

[kaysixteen]

Your analysis is good, but I am also forced to recall that the Deep South and adjacent areas are, amongst other things, the 'buckle of the Bible belt'.   Most whites there profess to be some sort of evangelical/ evangelical-adjacent Christians, and yet, well, the conditions you describe persist, esp in Mississippi, for instance, where in Jackson, they literally refuse to pay for needed repairs to the public water supply system.  After all, it is only the black folks who would have to drink said water....   Why do you think this stuff persists there, and what are they hearing in their (still overwhelmingly) segregated churches?

[apl68]

Your analysis is good, but I am also forced to recall that the Deep South and adjacent areas are, amongst other things, the 'buckle of the Bible belt'.   Most whites there profess to be some sort of evangelical/ evangelical-adjacent Christians, and yet, well, the conditions you describe persist, esp in Mississippi, for instance, where in Jackson, they literally refuse to pay for needed repairs to the public water supply system.  After all, it is only the black folks who would have to drink said water....   Why do you think this stuff persists there, and what are they hearing in their (still overwhelmingly) segregated churches?

They hear a great deal about the Great Commission from Jesus to evangelize the world, but persuade themselves that somehow it is somebody else's responsibility and not theirs.  Or as Jesus himself put it, "In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:  You will hear and not understand, and see and not perceive, for this people's heart has grown fat, and their ears are dull, and their eyes are closed, or else they would see and hear and understand in their hearts, and I would heal them." 

The main message of American society--of any society, really--is that life is all about hanging out with the people you like to hang out with, and building a comfortable niche for yourself--that is a good life, and you are a good person for pursuing it.  The Christian message is that we've all sinned and come short of God's standard, and that we gain salvation by turning our lives over to Jesus and making our lives all about following his example from then on.  Jesus' example is not a naturally easy one to follow, and so Christians of all stripes like to find ways of persuading themselves that they don't really have to devote their lives to following it.  Profess faith, attend worship, give a bit of money and time, signal virtue on whatever your particular sect likes to emphasize signaling virtue on--it varies depending on whether one is "evangelical" or "Catholic" or "progressive"--and you can call yourself a Christian and enjoy the comforts of the faith while mostly living like everybody else around you.

And the great tragedy of it is that while they're congratulating themselves on being good Christians of whatever type, the poor and the hopeless aren't hearing the words of life.  And many of these professing Christians are going along with injustice, whether it's racial and economic injustice, or the murder of the unborn, or the destruction of our society by the delusion that freedom of sexual expression is the end-all and be-all.  And many of them will come to the final judgement and hear the Lord Jesus say "Depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of lawlessness." 

Some parts of our country still have a lot of "visible church," for whatever reason.  No part of the country has a very large population of actual followers of Jesus.  But Jesus' invitation is still open to anybody who gets well and truly tired of being a part of the corrupt world system we live in.  Being a follower of Jesus isn't really about fixing the world, because only God can do that.  It's more like "living in truth," as Vaclav Havel would put it.  People who do that will learn to love each other, even if their skins aren't all alike, and they don't all speak the same language or make the same amount of money.  Again, among those who have actually come to understand these things, I've seen some fantastically transformed lives.

[jimbogumbo]

From the Washington Monthly, an analysis of New College outcomes contrasted with DeSantis's seven reasons for the proposed restructuring. I especially like the discussion related to reason seven.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/02/15/why-does-ron-desantis-want-to-fix-a-high-ranking-college/

[apl68]

From the Washington Monthly, an analysis of New College outcomes contrasted with DeSantis's seven reasons for the proposed restructuring. I especially like the discussion related to reason seven.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/02/15/why-does-ron-desantis-want-to-fix-a-high-ranking-college/

Definitely sounds like an effort to fix something that's not (for the most part, at least) broken.  You really have to feel bad for what is likely to happen to many of their faculty and staff.  Ambitious politicians really do have a way of blighting everything they touch.

[mythbuster]

What a laughably naïve analysis. DeSantis could care less how New College compares to places like Smith College. It also totally overlooks how DeSantis is using the performance metric funding system to cherry pick data points to "justify" this overhaul. This is where the arguments over jobs, graduation  rate etc. are coming from. New College has never fared well in the Metrics, as the metrics are constructed to keep UF and FSU at the top. So to succeed, they need to have same stats as UF Gainesville.
It also confuses schools in the State University System (SUS), with those in the Florida State College system. Florida State College in Jacksonville is not part of the SUS system, and so is subject to very different rules and expectations. It's essentially a community college with a few 4 year degree programs.

[jimbogumbo]

i know desalts doesn't care. i thought the graduation outcomes compared to more selective national liberal arts colleges, especially compared to cost, was really interesting.

I'm not in Florida, and feel the pain of anyone who is.

[pondering]

i know desalts doesn't care. i thought the graduation outcomes compared to more selective national liberal arts colleges, especially compared to cost, was really interesting.

I'm not in Florida, and feel the pain of anyone who is.

Your sympathy is appreciated (I mean that sincerely). It's an unsettling time to work in higher education in this state. Oddly, many colleagues are almost hoping that DeSantis wins the Republican presidential nomination ASAP, just so he will stop using us as a punching bag to gin up support with the MAGA faithful.

[Parasaurolophus]

The text of HB999 has been released. The highlights (via Paul Campos):

(1) Can't spend any money on anything espousing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

(2) Right wing narrative regarding America's founding is a required element of all core courses.

(3) Women's Studies and Gender Studies majors will be illegal. No major is permitted if it's found to be "derivative" of of Critical Race Theory.

(4) All faculty hiring will be done by the university board or president—who *may not delegate* any aspect of any hiring decision or any hiring authority to any group of faculty however constituted. They are "not required to consider recommendations or opinions of faculty."

(5) Post-tenure review of any tenured faculty member can be initiated at any time.

Also, "Courses based on unproven, theoretical, or exploratory content" can no longer be part of gen ed. So... that's a lot, including all of philosophy (not that anyone cares) and religion (lol). I imagine that doesn't leave a whole lot of gen ed in place.

[mythbuster]

It's also all of science. Since even gravity is "only a theory". Sigh.

[dismalist]

It's also all of science. Since even gravity is "only a theory". Sigh.

Some theories are falsifiable, some are not. The theory of gravity is actually wrong, by the way, but only by a bit. If one jumps off my 25th story balcony, it's close enough. Any derivatives of Marxism, such as CRT, cannot be tested for their truth even in principle, hence useless except in politics as religion. Thus, the only test is their survival, and we know how that's gone so far. :-)

[jimbogumbo]

It's also all of science. Since even gravity is "only a theory". Sigh.

Some theories are falsifiable, some are not. The theory of gravity is actually wrong, by the way, but only by a bit. If one jumps off my 25th story balcony, it's close enough. Any derivatives of Marxism, such as CRT, cannot be tested for their truth even in principle, hence useless except in politics as religion. Thus, the only test is their survival, and we know how that's gone so far. :-)

False. It is merely a special case of something larger. If you are referring to an "original" version, it is, like many theories, a first iteration.

[dismalist]

It's also all of science. Since even gravity is "only a theory". Sigh.

Some theories are falsifiable, some are not. The theory of gravity is actually wrong, by the way, but only by a bit. If one jumps off my 25th story balcony, it's close enough. Any derivatives of Marxism, such as CRT, cannot be tested for their truth even in principle, hence useless except in politics as religion. Thus, the only test is their survival, and we know how that's gone so far. :-)

False. It is merely a special case of something larger. If you are referring to an "original" version, it is, like many theories, a first iteration.

I'm not worried about the evolution of the theories of gravity, jimbo, all of which are falsifiable. "Special case" attests to the greater generality  of the new theory, not the old.  I'm also not worried about the evolution of derivatives of Marxism, none of which are falsifiable. Which is why I'm not worried about deSantis! It's a competition of religions, like pre-1555 Peace of Augsburg -- you get your religion, I get mine.

[Parasaurolophus]

The falsifiability criterion is rather more complex and contentious than it seems, and the discussion around it is ongoing, although my sense is that most philosophers of science nowadays think it's neither necessary nor sufficient, especially given how assumptions and theories nest across the sciences. One good counterexample, from Kuhn, is that astrology is plenty falsifiable--and much of it is plenty accurate, too. And yet...

I doubt DeSantis and his toadies are deploying a very sophisticated understanding of 'theory', though. What matters is probably whether that word occurs in the name.

[jimbogumbo]

I doubt DeSantis and his toadies are deploying a very sophisticated understanding of 'theory', though. What matters is probably whether that word occurs in the name.

Yeah. So I'm guessing any mention of "graph theory" is now out of any gen ed math class. Coming after any mention of hypothesis next.

[Parasaurolophus]

I doubt DeSantis and his toadies are deploying a very sophisticated understanding of 'theory', though. What matters is probably whether that word occurs in the name.

Yeah. So I'm guessing any mention of "graph theory" is now out of any gen ed math class. Coming after any mention of hypothesis next.

Yeah, stats is surely out too. And anything that relies on induction will be on shaky ground.

'course, when they discover that the incompleteness of mathematics entails it's unprovability (so to speak), they're not going to distinguish between Peano arithmetic+ and the rest!

Someone in Philosophy recently speculated that the requirement of a return to 'classics' might mean a boom in ancient philosophy. But that won't survive the discovery of all the gay and adult-child sex in Plato...