Announcing
AltLiberalArts

Alt New College, a nonprofit education initiative formed in response to challenges to academic freedom in subjects such as black history and gender studies, announces a name change to AltLiberalArts.  

Mary Ruiz, a spokesperson for AltLiberalArts and former Chair of New College of Florida Board of Trustees, said: “We wish to avoid any confusion between our collaboration and any of the many institutions in Florida, California, Arizona, England and elsewhere called ‘New College.’ AltLiberalArts better reflects our mission of supporting subjects and scholars challenged by censorship and self-censorship in Florida and across the United States.”

AltLiberalArts offers alternative and online learning platforms to fill gaps created by bans, censorship, and threats that result in self-censorship in college and early college studies. Its first lecture featured Massa Gessen and Judith Butler on “Authoritarian Attacks on Gender Studies.” The second talk with David Hogg, a Parkland High School survivor, and other youth leaders was entitled: “Young People Can Change America: Youth Voting and Political Power.”  Future offerings will focus on academic freedom in studies such as race, gender, scientific reason, student activism and civic engagement.

 Planned programming includes: Neil Gaiman on writing; Jonathan Friedman of PEN America on Academic Freedom; Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University on the politics of science; Maya Wiley of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights on race and political attacks on Critical Race Theory; and president of the American University of Bulgaria Margee Ensign (New College of Florida ‘73) and Open Society University Network Vice Chancellor Jonathan Becker on the civic role of universities.

 AltLiberalArts works with support from Bard College and the Open Society University Network. Jonathan Becker, Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bard College and Vice Chancellor of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) stated: “We are supporting AltLiberalArts because Bard and OSUN are committed to supporting students and faculty across the globe whose freedom to teach and learn is contracting. We are particularly supportive of liberal arts institutions, which are increasingly targets of governments across the globe. We believe it is important to support academic freedom of faculty and students in the United States, just as we have done in Afghanistan, Hungary, Myanmar and Ukraine, and Russia.”

 AltLiberalArts has drawn lessons from “Invisible Colleges” created by dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, now reborn for places like Ukraine, Russia and Myanmar. It is particularly concerned about liberal arts institutions, which are more and more under threat across the globe.

 AltLiberalArts is retiring the name Alt New College and its associated website and social media accounts to focus on its educational mission.  Ruiz said: “We are far more interested in expanding dialogue and discussion in the public sphere than in debating names.”

For further information, go to altliberalarts.org or write to info@altliberalarts.org 

https://www.altliberalarts.org