FREE SCREENING / Q+A with Director Patrick Bresnan
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stages a coup at New College, the state’s beloved public honors college, students and professors confront a new reality: their campus is ground zero in an unprecedented nationwide assault on academic freedom and diversity.
FIRST THEY CAME FOR MY COLLEGE tells the inside story of the right-wing campaign to “reconquer” higher education in America. New College of Florida was the first public college to be transformed by a political coup—a blueprint for our new era of unprecedented censorship and political interference in academia. By embedding with the student newspaper, an outspoken professor, and students from all sides of the political spectrum, this verité feature reveals a microcosm of America’s culture wars, and serves as an essential document for students today grappling with their moment in history.
Through the eyes of students, the documentary opens with the shocking “hostile takeover” of New College, which begins on January 6, 2023, in the run-up to Ron DeSantis’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis appoints six ultraconservatives to the school’s Board of Trustees, including Christopher Rufo, the right-wing activist behind attacks on Critical Race Theory, and Matthew Spalding, who would go on to play a leading role in Project 2025.
But conquering a school is not the same as running it. The college community mounts a fierce resistance, exposing what they see as the new administration’s cruelty, incompetence, and corruption. Meanwhile, the administration enacts policies meant to transform the culture and the campus, and the college begins to change before our eyes. As the tension mounts, students and faculty battle to preserve the school’s unique character and the integrity of the academic program — all the while warning the rest of the nation, “Your school is next.” At a raucous performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, students sing “Don’t dream it, be it,” but we fear they are doing the Time Warp on the deck of the Titanic. New College has withstood hurricanes, but none like the culture warriors now seeking to take over higher education.
