SARASOTA, Fla. — New College of Florida has hired Bruce Gilley, Ph.D as a Presidential Scholar in Residence for the 2024-2025 academic year. Gilley is a distinguished professor of political science who will be on sabbatical from Portland State University in Oregon. He is one of the foremost scholars of democracy, political legitimacy, public policy, and global politics.
“Students have the opportunity to learn from some of the most brilliant minds in their fields when they attend New College,” said Richard Corcoran, President of New College. “Dr. Gilley’s scholarship in political science and public policy is exemplary, and his willingness to engage challenging and controversial topics in his work is welcome in the academic environment of free speech and civil discourse at New College.”
“New College’s commitment to academic freedom, free speech and civil discourse is exciting,” said Gilley. “I’m looking forward to joining New College and setting the example for how higher education can and should work in America.”
An author of four university-press books and dozens of scholarly articles, Gilley is perhaps best known for writing ‘The case for colonialism” in 2017. Originally published in Third World Quarterly, the publication later withdrew the article after hostile feedback that included threats of violence against the publication’s editor. It was republished the Spring 2018 issue of the National Association of Scholars’ journal Academic Questions.
Gilley was a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford while earning his master’s degree and a Woodrow Wilson Scholar while completing his doctorate at Princeton.
New College is rapidly expanding its faculty hiring ahead of the 2024-2025 academic year to meet the demand of growing student enrollment. This new contingent of faculty will join what is already an excellent assembly of top-flight professors in implementing the Logos | Techne curriculum and carrying on the tradition of exceptionally individualized education offered at New College. Initiatives that began this year, like the first-year course in Homer’s Odyssey and the distance-learning great-books program will grow and flourish as well.
