New College board of trustees taps Corcoran to remain as permanent president

New College of Florida Interim President Richard Corcoran has been voted as the permanent president of the school amid its ongoing turn away from leftist ideologies.

“With the selection of President Corcoran, New College is poised to continue on its path of becoming the best liberal arts institution in the nation,” Board of Trustees Chair Debra A. Jenks said in an Oct. 3 press release.

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Corcoran had been serving as interim president since January, after the board of trustees, six of whom were appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, voted to remove the previous president, Patricia Okker. 

Corcoran, a former Florida House Speaker and Education Commissioner, was recently confirmed as Okker’s permanent replacement by the trustees in a 10-2 vote, beating out two other candidates.

“I think he’s done a great job getting us where we are today. I know we have a lot of work going forward,” Trustee Lance Karp has said of Corcoran. “For the first time now, I’d say there is a lot of positivity.

Despite Corcoran’s background in education, some liberal students are claiming Corcoran lacks credentials. 

“Trustee Grace Keenan, president of the New College student government, said many students who were surveyed about the process thought there was not enough interaction with the candidates,” the AP reported.

“I see that there is value in having someone who has political connections, but that is only one part of what goes into being a college president,” Keenan said.

According to Chistopher Rufo, a conservative investigative journalist and recently appointed trustee of New College, the institution previously maintained a leftist bias that complicated its mission as a liberal arts school.

“As an institution, New College has long known about the problem. A consulting firm hired by the previous university president pointed out that the campus had become an ‘echo chamber,’ with left-wing students creating a hostile political atmosphere and using the college’s online forum to launch polemics against conservative and religious students,” Rufo wrote in a piece in January.

DeSantis’ reorganization of the board of trustees and Corcoran’s election have started to alter campus culture, with the goal of transforming the college into a classical liberal arts institution. In September, Campus Reform reported how New College had implemented a new course on Homer’s Odyssey and had taken steps to eliminating its Gender Studies program.

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Governor DeSantis has made numerous efforts to combat the spread of leftist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in higher education.

“If you look at the way this has actually been implemented across the country, DEI is better viewed as standing for discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination,” DeSantis has said. “And that has no place in our public institutions.”

Campus Reform has reached out to New College for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.