For the first time in the school’s history, New College is offering a course in “wokeness.”
The ‘Woke’ Movement — offered as a one-month independent study in January — paints the movement as “a kind of cult” that’s methods are “essentially illiberal” and whose members “are capable of the most dehumanizing behavior,” according to the course description emailed to students Sunday evening.
The class comes amidst a statewide movement to push diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives out of state-run institutions. Two years ago Gov. Ron Desantis overhauled the school’s board of trustees in a move to push the public honors college in a conservative direction.
The class will be led by comedian and conservative commentator Andrew Doyle, an Oxford-trained historian best known for his satirical X persona Titania McGrath, and features readings from activist and New College trustee Christopher Rufo and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Students will also read passages from historian and author Ibram X. Kendi and legal scholar Robin DiAngelo, according to the course description. Both scholars helped popularize critical race theory and have become frequent targets of some free speech activists.
In interviews and in his recent book, “The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World,” Doyle speaks to his own experience losing friends and followers for his pushback on what he calls “a new censorial and identity-obsessed brand of social justice activism.”
Doyle did not respond to multiple requests for comment. New College spokesperson Nate March also did not provide a comment in time for publication.
The course offering came as a surprise to New College faculty union co-president Nova Myhill. Courses proposed by employees who are not members of any academic division’s faculty are typically brought to the relevant division for review and approval — including Doyle’s previous course covering Shakespeare’s tragedies, but Monday morning was the first she’d heard of Doyle’s class on the “woke” movement.
The one-month January term is designed to allow students to pursue independent interests, but also includes group projects that are organized as intensive courses for students who want more structure, Myhill said. Other offerings this year include “the evolution of media and its impact on religious practices” and “investigating brevetoxins in Sarasota Bay fish and sharks.”
It’s not the first time that independent study classes have made headlines. New College dean David Rancourt garnered criticism last year after making off-color jokes about sexual assault during a class on comedy.
Doyle’s course may not have received the same oversight as other offerings because he serves as a presidential scholar — hand selected by New College president Richard Corcoran — and is not subject to the same academic review as traditional faculty.
Doyle is one of a handful of new faculty and staff hired by Corcoran’s office with a connection to right-wing media, The Guardian recently reported. Other presidential scholars include the controversial political scientist Bruce Gilly and literary theorist Stanley Fish.
Doyle’s comedy has veered in recent years from smirking parodies of progressive posturing to urgent warnings of social threat posed by “wokeness” during appearances on Tucker Carlson and Jordan B Peterson’s podcast.
“More and more people are finding themselves increasingly frustrated and confused by the impact of wokeness on their everyday lives… Good people feel unable to speak their minds for fear of being misinterpreted or mischaracterized, willfully or otherwise,” according to the course description.
“It’s unbelievably hypocritical,” said Dylan Hogan, an alumnus who was targeted by New College administrators last year after disrupting the school’s graduation ceremony with chants of “Free Palestine.”
Hogan and five other student protesters were forced to write apology letters to commencement speak Joe Ricketts after the school threatened to withhold their transcripts over the infraction.
“They accuse us of being closeminded, triggered by opposing viewpoints and a threat to diversity,” he said. “If you want a demonstration in illiberalism, look at what the school did to me.”
