An academic at the publicly-funded New College of Florida has announced his very public resignation and declared he would burn its buildings “to the ground” in response to conservative trustees appointing a new president.
Aaron Hillegass, founder of the Big Nerd Ranch technology company, served as New College’s interim director of data science before taking to social media to tell over 350,000 people that he will not be renewing his contract when it expires in August. He claims conservative officials in Florida refusing to allow the college to teach far-left curriculum is “fascism”.
“If I were more patriotic, I would burn the college’s buildings to the ground,” he threatened in a statement, adding that only the “soft spot in my heart for the students and faculty who remain prevents this.”
I was hired at New College of Florida (my alma mater) immediately before Governor Desantis replaced the trustees and president in an effort to make it "The Hillsdale of the South". I just gave notice. pic.twitter.com/8mMZoK8uoA
— Aaron Hillegass (@AaronHillegass) April 8, 2023
Railing against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s stated aim of turning the New College of Florida into a “Hillsdale of the South” — a reference to Hillsdale College — Hillegass denounced the Christian, classical liberal arts college as “bad for America.”
“[Hillsdale College] cultivates prejudice against immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, minorities, and non-christians [sic],” Hillegass ludicrously claimed, further alleging that the Michigan-based institution “pushes a nativist and nationalistic agenda that would isolate the US from other nations.”
Indeed, the claims that trying to make New College m0re like Hillsdale is outright “fascism” — perhaps not “shocking Kristallnacht-style fascism,” but at least “the banal fascism which always precedes it.”
“The nation is watching this experiment,” Hillegass said of the efforts to change the culture at New College – perhaps overestimating the American people’s level of interest in the smallest state university in Florida.
While Hillegass says he will respond to the supposedly terrifying transformation of New College by declining to renew his contract in August it is possible the university’s leadership will move to part way with him rather sooner, given his statement also expresses his hope that the school “fails miserably and conspicuously” and that, moreover, he harbors a desire to physically destroy it.
Perhaps sensing he went too far, a later post on his Twitter page claims that this was a mere “poetic flourish” — and a still later post uploaded on Easter wails: “Can start to come together again as a nation today? We must find a middle ground.”
For the record: I would never burn a building down. Nor should anyone else. That was a poetic flourish that sounded cool until it showed up in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
— Aaron Hillegass (@AaronHillegass) April 8, 2023
“We have been pushed apart by people and organizations who profit off our outrage,” he adds, without a hint of irony.
