Shortly after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, New College of Florida, a public liberal arts school in the Gulf Coast city of Sarasota, began encouraging Jewish students to come seek refuge from antisemitism on other campuses.
“Those facing intolerance or physical danger at Harvard should come to New College of Florida, where they can study with free tuition thanks to a newly established scholarship program,” Richard Corcoran, president of New College, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 8, 2023.
“They will find that we prize free speech and condemn violence. Since Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed six new members to our school’s board of trustees in January, we’ve vigorously protected free expression on campus,” Corcoran added. “We have enacted measures to stop ideological gate-keeping and enforce disciplinary actions against violence and threats.”
“We don’t tolerate that here,” David Rancourt, vice provost of enrollment management and of strategic initiatives at the school, told JNS, of Jew-hatred.
“We encourage and foster debate and discussions and even disagreement in a civil, thoughtful way,” he said. “There’s just no place for physical violence in this body politic, and if we can’t figure out how to do that at a small public liberal arts college in Florida, then I don’t know how we can do it anywhere else in this country.”
New College, which is highly ranked in U.S. News & World Report, has nearly 700 students and more than 90 full-time professors on a 110-acre campus.
On Oct. 10, 2023, three days after the attacks, the college stated that it “unequivocally stands with Israel and the Jewish people during this difficult moment in history.”
“We will aggressively uphold our legal obligation to ensure Jewish members of our campus community are protected during this time,” it said.
Despite the school president’s offer to students in the Journal, there did not seem to be any takers, according to Rancourt, a former deputy chief of staff to former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
“Many folks don’t know what we’re doing here,” he told JNS. “It’s hard for me to believe that someone would spend $70,000 to $80,000 to go to a school where people hate you because of your beliefs, and I assure you that does not happen here.”
“You’re going to pay a heck of a lot less than that, about a third of that,” he said.
‘Not going to solve anything by screaming’
Rabbi Stuart Altshuler, of the Conservative synagogue Temple Beth Sholom in Sarasota and a former religion professor at Chapman University in California, plans to join New College in August to teach modern Jewish history.
“David Rancourt and President Corcoran have been interested in bringing Jewish students, especially Jewish students who have been bumped out of the universities on the East Coast, the high names, and try to create a place where Jewish students can come and study,” Altshuler told JNS. “So we’re determined to bring Jewish studies.”
Five years ago, when Altshuler visited the campus, he saw “free Palestine” and LGBT signage everywhere, and “the college was failing,” he told JNS. “They were down about 600 students.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, asked his friend Corcoran to take over, and the new president of the school changed the institution dramatically, according to Altshuler.
“A lot of money has been brought into the college,” the rabbi said. “He got rid of a lot of faculty members who were not teaching with the determination of making this college really the jewel of what higher education should become.”
Rancourt told JNS that the school thinks that diversity, equity and inclusion programs harm students.
“We believe they’re just a continuation of indoctrination, and we believe indoctrination is wrong and is dangerous,” he said. “I believe that we’re consistent on it.”
New College hopes that its students will “have a firm understanding of the values of Western civilization that were the founding principles for the foundation of what I believe, and our college advocates, is the best country in the history of the world,” he said. “That is our country, the United States.”
The college has a “Socratic stage” series in which it hosts public-policy discussions and debates. “Sometimes, it’s a bit of a TED Talk-type thing, but typically it’s a healthy exchange of ideas with people who have varying opinions on different issues,” Rancourt told JNS.
In November 2023, the college hosted a debate between Jason Greenblatt, a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, and Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former Palestinian Authority official.
The debate between the two was “one of the most fascinating dialogues at a time when stress was high,” Rancourt told JNS. “It was an incredible moment and a great example for our students that we can disagree on things, but we don’t have to hate each other to do it.”
“We’re not going to solve anything by screaming at each other,” he added.
Altshuler, who will run the Socratic series, told JNS that he intends to bring speakers like journalist Douglas Murray and to bring back Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. He also aims to invite Israeli scholars to the series and the lecture at the college.
“There’s such a boycott now on Israelis: professors, academics,” he said. “That’s not going to happen at New College.”
“The loudest voices in the room should not win the debate. The best voices, the most articulate voices should win the debate, and usually that involves a modicum of sanity,” Rancourt told JNS. “Higher education in many ways lost its approach, its sanity.”
Rancourt told JNS that New College is scheduled to meet on March 5 with Hillel International to discuss bringing a chapter to the campus. He has also been in contact with the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, he said.
The college also hopes to enlist someone to help students find houses of worship and is building a contemplative center for weddings and other ceremonies, and for students to “pray and think” on campus, according to Rancourt.
“This is a safe space for students of all religions to come and practice,” he told JNS.
New College also aims to add “heft to our religious-studies program,” he said.
Altshuler intends to work with Rancourt and others on outreach to Jewish prospective students.
“We need to generate good publicity so that Jewish students in particular know that they have a real good possibility to study and live a normal Jewish life here without intimidation and antisemitism,” Altshuler said.
