WHY THE TRUMPISTS HATE IT:

The tiny New College of Florida is hardly a household name, but it has a lot of heart--so much that students there once rescued the rising star of the white nationalist movement from his bigotry.

R. Derek Black, the son of the founder of Stormfront and the godson of David Duke, was widely considered the heir to the movement, speaking at white nationalist conferences through his childhood and co-hosting a radio show with his father. He lived a secret double life while he attended New College--until he was outed on a student-wide email thread.

Instead of ostracizing Black, some of the students tried to change his mind. And in a fascinating turn of events, chronicled in detail by Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow, they succeeded. Black renounced his former ideology and now speaks out publicly against it. He's now a doctoral student at the University of Chicago researching proto-racism in early medieval intellectual history. [...]

Among DeSantis' six new appointees to the 13-member board are writers and editors for right-wing publications and academics associated with the ultraconservative Hillsdale College. The most famous appointee is Christopher Rufo, a vocal transphobe who has supported DeSantis' anti-LGBTQ policies, blasted queer people as "groomers," and rallied the outcry against "critical race theory." On Jan. 4, Rufo tweeted, "Gov. DeSantis is going to lay siege to university 'diversity, equity and inclusion' programs." The new board members have made it clear they plan on turning New College into a new Hillsdale. DeSantis' communications director told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune they are there to combat "trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning" and Rufo said they plan to make it into a "classical liberal arts institution," and to "create an institution where academics can thrive, without self-censorship."

To make sense of DeSantis' campaign to remake such a small and progressive school and how its students and alumni are processing the news on a more personal level, Slate spoke with one of its most strangely notable graduates. This interview, which was conducted Monday, has been condensed and edited for clarity. [...]

There's literally a whole book written about this, but can you briefly explain what your experience was like as a student there?

I thought I could have these two lives. I spent the first semester there slowly realizing what a cataclysm it was going to be once people recognized my background. Students were deeply invested in the idea that this was going to be a space where you don't leave anyone out or let anybody feel threatened. And so once my white nationalist identity became known, it was going to become this deeply, deeply upsetting thing to everybody on campus.

And that's ultimately what happened. While I was studying abroad my second semester, an upper year student identified me on the student forum. This became this massive discussion thread with thousands of posts among the students. I came back to school that next fall essentially a pariah. But I also rejoined this community that I'd already spent a lot of time in. I felt like I had betrayed a lot of people I'd gotten close to by not sharing that part of who I was with them and having them discover this through a big campus discussion. I ultimately came to recognize the harm and really engage on an intellectual level with articles and statistics about race and immigration. Ultimately, I condemned white nationalism at the end of my experience there and created an enormous rift from my own family that was never closed.

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