NY Times Attacks DeSantis As Florida College Ditches Gender Studies For Classic Western Literature

The New York Times rolled out another installment of its favorite genre — Ron DeSantis, Destroyer of All That Is Good™ — this time lamenting that New College of Florida, long a leftist sandbox where grades were optional, and gender theory reigned, has been rudely interrupted by a governor who thinks college should actually teach … well … college.

“At the state school, gender studies is out. ‘The Odyssey’ is required reading. A Charlie Kirk statue is coming. Has one ideological bubble replaced another?” the Times hyperventilated.

The Times paints the picture with a heavy brush: gender studies out, Homer’s “Odyssey” in, DEI dismantled, and conservative professors hired. Athletics are expanding, buildings are being repaired, enrollment is rising — but to the Times, the real scandal is that the ideological monopoly of the Left is no longer protected turf. The narrative is clear: New College used to be an enlightened paradise of “nonconformists,” until Florida Republican Gov. DeSantis staged a “conservative takeover” and imposed a curriculum centered on the Western canon.

The outlet breathlessly notes that some faculty and students bailed, others grumbled that freshmen are being forced to read a 3,000-year-old epic, and professors wonder whether there will still be “room for people like them.” The Times frames the reforms not as an attempt to restore academic rigor, but as a right-wing project creeping toward total control — repeatedly warning that the college is “moving toward the ideological right.”

Yet, enrollment is up. Faculty hiring is up. State investment is stabilizing the school. Buildings once covered in mold are now being brought back into use. In other words, the place was collapsing, and DeSantis did something about it.

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So DeSantis answered — bluntly — on X. Conservatives have complained about universities for years, he noted, but Florida actually acted. His overhaul “re-centered the college on merit, free speech, classical learning and the pursuit of truth,” ensuring New College becomes the premier public liberal arts college in America. No apologies. No hedging.

Conservatives have complained for years about leftist control of universities, but never actually did anything about it.

Our overhaul of New College in Sarasota re-centered the college on the solid intellectual foundations of merit, free speech, classical learning and the… pic.twitter.com/6q6P7E2TCX

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) December 29, 2025

This is part of a broader pattern. DeSantis, re-elected in a landslide, has systematically pushed back on woke orthodoxy in education, requiring civic literacy, mandating intellectual-freedom surveys, and refusing to let classrooms become indoctrination centers. New College even began accepting the Classic Learning Test, signaling that classical education is welcome again.

To the Times, this is dangerous. To DeSantis, it’s called doing his job.

And while critics cry “authoritarianism,” the numbers tell another story: students are enrolling, the faculty has grown, and parents now have a publicly-funded option that doesn’t sneer at Western civilization. The panic isn’t about academic decline — it’s about leftists losing their monopoly.

Homer replaces ideology. Debate replaces dogma. And that, apparently, is the crime.