Higher Education

John Oliver Puts New College Takeover in National Spotlight

Alumni organization praises Last Week Tonight segment while warning: what’s happening on the Sarasota campus is no laughing matter.

New College of Florida got the Last Week Tonight treatment Sunday night—and the alumni group fighting to preserve the school’s legacy is grateful for the spotlight, even as they insist the reality behind the punchlines is devastating.

• The Novo Collegian Alliance, the independent 501(c)(3) founded by and for the New College community, issued a statement Monday applauding host John Oliver and his team for bringing national attention to what the organization calls the ongoing political takeover of the small Sarasota liberal arts school.

What Oliver Said

The June 7 segment highlighted the staggering financial costs of the overhaul, including a state audit finding that the public cost to produce a degree at New College had ballooned in 2024 to nearly $500,000—dwarfing per-student spending at any other Florida public university. Oliver also flagged the salary of college President Richard Corcoran, which he said tops $1 million per year when perks and bonuses are included—the highest per-student presidential salary in Florida’s university system.

Oliver called the situation “the exact sort of smash and grab we’re seeing in so many places right now, from public health to newspapers to broadcast news. Ideologues capturing something that they hate, claiming that they want to fix it, and then destroying it instead.”

Oliver took particular aim at the contrast between rhetoric about classical education and the actual results: faculty departures, books dismissed as trash, and the assembly of what he called a “veritable Avengers of D-list conservatives, celebrities, creeps, and weirdos.”

Closer to Home: The UWF Parallel

The pattern playing out at New College isn’t isolated to Sarasota. Northwest Florida has its own version unfolding at the University of West Florida in Pensacola.

Former UWF President Martha Saunders resigned in May 2025 after a board member raised objections to old social media posts from the university—a departure that came after DeSantis had publicly called for “big changes” at UWF. The board then voted to install Manny Diaz Jr.—DeSantis’s former state education commissioner and a Republican ex-legislator—as interim president, over the objections of two trustees who raised transparency concerns and said the selection process was rushed.

What followed raised further alarms. In July 2025, UWF General Counsel Susan Woolf was fired the same day she sent a memo to the full Board of Trustees warning that a DeSantis-linked law firm Diaz wanted to hire—Lawson Huck Gonzalez—lacked higher education search experience and that cheaper, more qualified alternatives were available. Hours after her written objection reached trustees, Diaz terminated her. The firm was hired.

“It was inappropriate for the general counsel to have been fired for a simple recommendation to the board, and that seems like what it was,” said Domani Turner-Ward, a student activist with the Save UWF movement. “Many believe that Manny Diaz will be the permanent president of UWF, and I’ve heard some people complain that this whole presidential search is just a show and a waste of money.”

Those concerns proved prescient. Diaz emerged as the sole finalist in November 2025 and was confirmed as permanent president in January 2026, with a starting salary of $950,000. Search criteria were reportedly adjusted to accommodate the fact that Diaz holds no doctoral degree.

• The parallels to New College are hard to miss: a sitting president pushed out, a DeSantis ally installed through a process critics called preordained, a top attorney fired for raising procedural objections, and a board remade with politically connected figures. New College simply got there first—and Oliver’s cameras caught up with it first.

Alumni Group: Laughs Are Fine—the Damage Is Real

William Rosenberg, president of the Novo Collegian Alliance, welcomed the segment’s reach while drawing a clear line between the comedy and the consequences.

“John Oliver has a rare gift for making people laugh without letting them look away. We appreciate the care his team brought to this story. But as funny as the segment may have been, what is happening at New College is no laughing matter for the current students, faculty, and staff living through it every day.”

The Novo Collegian Alliance formed in 2023, the same year Governor Ron DeSantis appointed a new trustee majority that set off a rapid restructuring of the college. What followed, according to the organization:

• Elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs
• Elimination of the gender studies program
• Mass faculty departures
• Dismantling of long-standing campus traditions
• Escalating concerns about academic freedom and shared governance

A Resource for Anyone Tracking the Story

The NCA pointed journalists, researchers, and members of the public to WhatHappenedToNewCollege.org, a public documentation site the organization maintains. The site includes an interactive timeline of key events since January 2023, a searchable database of news coverage, and contextual background on the school’s transformation.

Rosenberg closed with a defense of the institution’s founding premise: “New College was never just a place. It was, and remains, a radical educational idea: that students can be trusted to pursue rigorous, self-directed inquiry in a community built on intellectual freedom. That idea is worth defending.”

Media inquiries to the Novo Collegian Alliance may be directed to contact@novocollegian.org 

Support Our Journalism

If you like our reporting, consider buying us a cup of coffee – here. Your donation will help broaden our reporting. Thank you.