Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

Associated Press

New College conservative board votes to abolish DEI office

Curt Anderson and Jocelyn Gecker – February 28, 2023

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — Trustees picked by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee New College of Florida voted Tuesday to abolish its small office that handles diversity, equity and inclusion programs targeted by conservatives throughout the state university system.

The trustees voted 9-3 to get rid of the school’s Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, with four full-time staff positions to be transferred elsewhere to vacant jobs. The board also voted to permit interim President Richard Corcoran to consider ending a single online mandatory employee diversity training program that few actually take.

“This is not a very impressive DEI bureaucracy, is what I’m seeing,” said student body president Grace Keenan, who is a trustee and was not appointed by DeSantis. “Any DEI practices we do have here are all about inclusion. We don’t discriminate against anyone here.”

Although they are relatively small programs, some of the seven new trustees at the historically progressive college said it was important to take a stand on issues they believe cause discrimination based on racial, gender, LGBTQ and other group identities rather than focusing on a student, faculty or staff member’s individual merit.

“I think it’s important that we take a position,” said trustee Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist on education issues nationally. “It is essential to say we are taking this mandate seriously.”

The decision comes as DeSantis, widely expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, has said a key goal for Florida’s higher education system is to defund DEI programs so they “whither on the vine” on campuses. DeSantis is backing a measure introduced for the upcoming legislative session to prevent colleges and universities from promoting, supporting or maintaining programs related to DEI or critical race theory.

The trustees’ vote to abolish the New College DEI office and transfer staff to other positions will save about $250,000 a year, according to documents provided at Tuesday’s meeting. Although that amount may seem relatively minor, supporters of the change said it will send a message.

“This is a question of what is being imposed and advocated, supported and funded, by the college,” said trustee Matthew Spalding. “If it’s a minor situation, it should be abolished.”

The trustee meeting drew a crowd of about 300 protesters before it began, holding signs that read, “Our Students Are Not Political Pawns” and, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” among others.

Chai Leffler, a third-year student, said he came from a southern, conservative family where being gay was difficult, but New College changed his life.

“I was taught how to love myself again and to stand up for myself like we all are today,” Leffler said. “I understand we are everything DeSantis hates.”

New College, nestled along Sarasota Bay, has fewer than 1,000 students. It was founded in 1960 as a private school in part by funding from the United Church of Christ, said Rev. John Dorhauer, the church’s president and general minister. Dorhauer gave public testimony at the meeting and spoke to the protesters about the “moral outrage” he feels at the changes being made by the conservative trustees chosen by DeSantis.

“The long arc of history will grind you into dust, and they (students) will win this battle and you will be remembered for the sycophants you are,” he told the trustees.

Anderson reported from St. Petersburg, Florida.

USA Today

Emotional meeting ends with DeSantis’ New College of Florida board abolishing diversity office

Zac Anderson, USA TODAY NETWORK – March 1, 2023

Gov. Ron DeSantis proposes a plan to remove and reform diversity-based education programs

Governor Ron DeSantis plans to remove and reform education programs that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from state universities.

New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees abolished the office handling diversity, equity and inclusion programs during a contentious and emotional meeting Tuesday that included testimony from students worried that a board reshaped by Gov. Ron DeSantis is making the school unwelcoming to minorities.

DeSantis appointed six members to New College’s board on Jan. 6 in an effort to transform the school, putting the small Sarasota institution at the center of the GOP’s nationwide pushback on education policies aimed at supporting historically marginalized groups, including racial minorities and LGBTQ individuals.

DeSantis has emerged as a key national figure in this debate after he pushed through legislation governing how K-12 schools discuss race and gender identity and recently prohibited an Advanced Placement course in African American studies, which caused an uproar. The governor is now taking aim at university programs.

Eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives − which have become a major flashpoint for conservatives and a target of DeSantis throughout Florida’s public university system − is among the first substantive actions by New College’s revamped board, which also fired the former president last month and hired DeSantis ally Richard Corcoran as interim president. Corcoran’s first board meeting was Tuesday.

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A review of DEI programs

Among DeSantis’ New College board appointees is prominent conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who pushed at his first meeting on Jan. 31 to abolish diversity programs.

The board opted to wait until more research could be done. College administrator Brad Thiessen presented the results of his DEI review Tuesday, delving into everything from faculty training to hiring practices and student admissions.

Thiessen said there was little mandatory diversity training and that only recently had prospective faculty been asked to submit a statement in their job application outlining how they would promote diversity.

Additionally, only one of the employees in the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence was primarily focused on DEI programs. The others managed grants, worked on community outreach and performed other activities that aren’t controversial.

That led Trustees Grace Keenan and Matthew Lepinski to question whether the impacts of the DEI programs had been overstated.

“I’m concerned that we’re solving a problem that isn’t serious, or doesn’t really exist,” Lepinski said.

Keenan wondered if the board was spending a lot of time and energy on something that was relatively limited in scope. She suggested that the effort spent weeding out DEI programs was out of proportion to the amount of DEI that actually exists on campus.

“This is not a very impressive DEI bureaucracy,” Keenan said.

Keenan, Lipinski and Trustee Mary Ruiz voted against eliminating the diversity office.

Conservative appointee Christopher Rufo: DEI efforts discriminatory

Rufo conceded that DEI isn’t as deeply embedded in the college’s practices as he expected, but said it was still important to remove it on “principle.” Rufo and Trustee Matthew Spalding both suggested it is discriminatory to take race into account when setting the college’s priorities.

“It treats people differently on the basis of their skin color,” Rufo said.

“This is discrimination, it should be gone,” Spalding added.

The majority of trustees voted to have Corcoran move forward with eliminating the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence, which handles DEI programs. The Office’s four employees will be offered other jobs.

Trustees also voted to eliminate the diversity statement when hiring faculty and to direct Corcoran to consider adopting a prohibition on diversity training for employees.

Additionally, the board voted to have Corcoran create a school policy that prohibits spending money on any DEI efforts.

Under the new regulation, DEI will be defined to include “any effort to manipulate or otherwise influence the composition of the faculty or student body with reference to race, sex, color, or ethnicity.”

The definition of DEI also would include: “Any effort to promote as the official position of the administration, the college, or any administrative unit thereof, a particular, widely contested opinion referencing unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, group marginalization, anti-racism, systemic oppression, social justice, intersectionality, neo-pronouns, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender theory, racial or sexual privilege, or any related formulation of these concepts.”

The rollback of New College’s diversity programs came at the end of a 3-1/2-hour meeting that featured emotional testimony for students, parents and others. About 200 people attended the meeting.

Where is New College of Florida?

New College of Florida is in Sarasota, in the central part of the state just south of Tampa on the Gulf Coast. The college bills itself as a community of “Free Thinkers, Risk Takers and Trailblazers,” and invites prospective New College students to “discover a public arts and science education driven by your curiosity, career aspirations, and individual learning style.”

Parents, students decry abolishing diversity programs

Economics and finance student Joshua Epstein, 17, said he graduates next year and plans to become a corporate lawyer or banker.

“Folks, I am so far from woke,” Epstein said.

Yet Epstein argued that the school’s diversity programs are important. Epstein said his grandparents on his father’s side survived the Holocaust and his grandfather on his mother’s side was a tank commander in the Israeli Army “where he fought for the survival of a Jewish state to fight to have a place where I’d be safe from persecution if people ever saw Jews as less than human again.”

“Today I fear that other groups of people are being seen as less than human; today I fear that we may eliminate the office that ensures that the composition of our classrooms resemble that of our great nation,” Esptein added.

The concerns raised by the public extended beyond eliminating diversity programs to DeSantis’ broader effort to reshape the school, Corcoran’s $699,000 base salary and other issues.

Corcoran thanked DeSantis during his first public remarks as interim president, saying the governor has “a heartfelt desire to have New College be a leader” in liberal arts education.

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Students vow continued resistance

Earlier in the day students joined religious and political leaders in a large protest before the board meeting.

About 300 people gathered in front of the Hamilton Center on New College’s Sarasota campus to again criticize DeSantis’ conservative takeover of the school and vow continued resistance. Many of the speakers were minority students who criticized the push to eliminate the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence.

DeSantis has targeted DEI programs across all of Florida’s public universities, and New College is first in line.

Lianna Paton, a minority student in her first year at New College, said targeting DEI programs is an attempt to suppress and “erase students of color.”

“You do not get to say diversity is divisive when its very existence is what makes communities like my own feel welcome and safe,” Paton said.

Members of the crowd held up signs saying “Black history is American history” and “Jesus was/is woke.”

Chai Leffler, 21, a gay third year New College student, said he struggled with his sexuality growing up and went through a dark time in high school. He went to a youth center in Sarasota where he met New College students who made him feel welcome.

“There’s one thing they cannot change,” Leffler said. “Us. We the students of New College are the spirit of New College and we will not let that be taken away from us.

Church leader accuses DeSantis’ of prioritizing presidential ambitions

Rev. Dr. John C. Dorhauer leads the church that helped found New College as a private school in 1960 before it became part of the state university system. He said he is outraged by what DeSantis is doing to the school.

“I want to express my moral outrage at Gov. DeSantis willing to compromise and sacrifice the future, the vision, the hopes, the dreams and the safety of the students on this campus for his aspirations to serve as president,” Dorhauer said.

Dorhauer’s United Church of Crist provided funding to create New College and church members were active in the school during its early days.

Dorhauer also spoke at the board meeting, where he told trustees that their actions will be judged harshly by history.

“The long arc of history will grind you into dust and… you will be remembered for the sycophants that you are,” he said. “That’s what history does.”

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Yahoo! Life

‘Trans people go to dances and find joy and are whole’: A mom’s viral photos of her daughter send a powerful message

Beth Greenfield, Senior Editor – February 28, 2023

Rebekah Bruesehoff may only be 16 years old, but she’s spent almost half her life publicly fighting for her rights as a transgender person.

It’s why her supportive, activist mom Jamie took a moment this week to tweet a joyous photo of Rebekah in a green gown and holding white flowers, primped and ready to attend a high school dance — an update to one that went viral in 2017, of Rebekah at a rally holding a sign that read, cheekily, “I’m the scary transgender person the media warned you about.” That image appears alongside the new one.

“There’s this juxtaposition,” Jamie tells Yahoo Life, referring both to the two photos and her daughter’s life. “The photo from six years ago popped up in my memories, and I was struck: It feels so long ago and like it was just yesterday.” When the photo came up, she says, she was at a nail salon with Rebekah, who was getting a manicure before her sophomore cotillion. Sharing both photos, Jamie explains, felt like an opportunity to show a more well-rounded view of her teen, who plays field hockey and loves musical theater.

“She’s spent six years fighting publicly — but she’s also just a teen going to a fun dance,” she says. “That’s so much of what the Twitter thread was about… that trans people go to dances and find joy and are whole people, and that trans people are more than just their fights for rights and for life.”

The original photo of Rebekah, then 10, holding the sign inspired by a story she had found online, was snapped just before a protest in Jersey City, N.J., over the Trump administration rescinding federal support for transgender students. The tween was asked to speak in front of the crowd of 200, which she agreed to, and then her mom posted the image to Facebook, where it “went crazy viral.”

Looking back now, says Jamie, “It’s certainly not what any of us had planned. But what was really powerful was to see her use her voice and say, ‘I deserve a safe school.’ But even more impactful for her was she heard the voices of the other people… trans kids who were not supported, trans adults… it was the first time, at 10 years old, that she realized how good she had it and how much work we had to do.”

That idea, of work left to do, is especially important now, says Jaime on Twitter: “In ways, things are worse than I could have imagined 6 years ago… and yet she continues to resist with advocacy, speaking and education. She resists with her joy, she resists by growing into this beautiful young woman that so many wish she wouldn’t have the chance to become.”

She’s referring to the unprecedented number of anti-trans and anti-gay bills popping up across the country: Just two months into 2023, LGBTQ-rights organization the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is tracking 340 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced at state levels, 150 of which would specifically restrict the rights of transgender people, 90 of which would prevent trans youth from being able to access gender-affirming medical care; two have become law, in Utah and South Dakota.

“Things are pretty awful right now,” Jaime tells Yahoo Life. “We live in New Jersey … so there’s some privilege and some level of safety that comes with that — and also, you’re not safe anywhere, we know that. My heart breaks for all transgender young people. Their identities are being used as a political football.”

Because Rebekah is an athlete — and luckily having a “really positive experience” on her hockey team — her family “really jumped into” having public conversations supporting transgender athletes, only to see “attacks on health care getting worse by the day,” she says, adding “it’s become very clear” that the anti-trans fight “is not about protecting children. It never has been. It’s about political power and removing transgender people from public life.

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But even in New Jersey, where there are some protections in place — like state’s LGBTQ-inclusive school curriculum and the Babs Siperstien Law, which allows people to change their gender identity on their birth certificate without “proof of surgery” — there’s no way to fully escape the national rhetoric.

“What people don’t understand is that young people are impacted by these messages … They are seeing what’s happening, watching their identity be banned from public conversations in schools,” she says. “People, even in states like New Jersey and New York, know what’s going on. And for a young person to see their identity being debated on every front? That’s exhausting.”

Luckily, the mom notes of her daughter, “Rebekah is a big joy-as-resistance kind of person. She focuses on the positive, has friends, loves to laugh. It’s how she, I think, sustains herself.” She also recognizes her relative privilege: “She’s white, she exists within the gender expectations people have for girls and she has supportive parents who have been behind her and who have resources.”

Rebekah’s glowing spirit, her mom says, has powerfully influenced the entire family — including her “super-supportive” brothers, ages 8 and 13, and her father, a Lutheran pastor who, Jaime says, “preaches the gospel … that calls for us to work towards justice.” She adds that “he preaches the message of inclusion and of celebration of LGBTQ+ people.

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But it’s Jamie, who identifies as “queer” and uses “she/they” pronouns (including on her website and social media profiles), who might be most influenced by her teen’s courage.

“I’m bisexual,” she tells Yahoo Life. “I came out more publicly in 2018. I think there was some part of doing this work, of advocating for my daughter to show up in all her authenticity, that started to feel inauthentic for me not to share.” As for her use of she/they, which is new as of about a year, Jamie adds, it’s one way she is “continuing to break down those boxes of gender, and understand myself in the fullness of who I am. ‘They’ feels really great.

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Jamie, who has written a book due out in September — Raising Kids Beyond the Binary: Celebrating God’s Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children, meant to fill a gap wherein there is no guidance about raising “gender expansive kids in faith, when we know it’s people of faith who are doing the most harm” — adds that coming out has been powerful.

“I think with me sharing my identity as a bisexual person and my identity not as nonbinary, but as someone who feels constrained by the gender binary, and I think watching Rebekah live her life as who she knows herself to be and the positive impact it’s had,” she says, “I know that showing up as ourself changes the world.”