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The article below presents excerpts from a guest commentary authored by New College President Richard Corcoran that was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on May 27, 2024. The full commentary is available at WSJ.com (pay wall).

It might be customary to have a prominent entrepreneur speak at the commencement of a renowned institution like Princeton or Harvard, but it was a notable honor to have Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, step on stage at New College of Florida. Some students, unfortunately disagreed, interrupting his speech with scattered boos and chants. Nonetheless, civil discourse and free speech will prevail at New College.

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That students intermittently disrupted the proceedings was a disheartening reflection of the prevailing intolerance for diverse viewpoints in today’s society. But that illiberal attitude hasn’t and won’t rule New College.

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The school made meticulous preparations to protect students’ right to enjoy a normal commencement and the speakers’ to address the crowd freely. Commencement organizers made contingency plans for the possibility of protests, deploying law enforcement and surveillance to ensure that disruptions wouldn’t overshadow the event’s significance.

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Mr. Ricketts remained composed as he delivered his address, though a momentary pause betrayed his concern.

“They don’t care,” he confided to me in a brief side discussion, the microphone inadvertently capturing his words, later revealed in video footage of the event. “I hate it, but they really don’t care what I have to say.”

In the aftermath, supporters of the student protesters expressed concerns about potential repercussions for their behavior. I reaffirmed New College’s unwavering commitment to fairness and due process.

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In the final exchange inadvertently captured on the mic, Mr. Ricketts and I acknowledged the broader significance of our actions. It wasn’t merely about New College but about upholding the principles of free speech and civil discourse in an increasingly polarized society.

“We will win, Joe,” I declared.

Mr. Ricketts echoed the sentiment, “You will win.”

In a world often fraught with discord, I believe New College’s unwavering stance can be a beacon of hope—a testament to the inseparability of freedom of expression and the pursuit of truth.

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Here is a question for every humanities teacher: what do we do about Aristophanes, Catullus, Milton, the Earl of Rochester, Byron, Thackeray, Wagner, D. W. Griffith, and other creators of great art but dubious morality? Nobody doubts the cinematic genius and historic technical influence of Griffith, but who can watch the lurid race portrayals of Birth of a Nation without wincing?

It’s a question that educators and arts advocates don’t like to face. When I worked for a few years at the National Endowment for the Arts, I often heard someone say that participating in art as a creator or as a spectator improved a person’s moral character and civic virtue. I heard the same kind of thing down the hall at the National Endowment for the Humanities: studying literature, languages, philosophy, and art history made for better people.

It’s still a common faith. I just picked up the latest issue of a university’s alumni magazine, which had a forum on the school’s renewed investment in the humanities. Two of the contributors explicitly linked the humanities to social justice aims, affirming that such creations foster tolerance and sensitivity. When the humanities decline, the argument goes (enrollments and majors have, indeed, plummeted), so do socially conscious attitudes. Students head to STEM and business fields where enduring questions of humanity, meaning, and purpose go unaddressed.

They’re mostly correct about those other fields, but only partly so about the humanities. The reason is simple. Yes, the novels of Dickens and comedies of Shakespeare encourage thoughtful minds and good conduct. Do Byron’s poems (“Some have accused me of a strange design, / Against the creed and morals of the land”) and Nietzsche’s philosophy (“The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it”) do the same? Can we guarantee that 19-year-olds will read them with a critical eye and not become disciples of those cynical ironists? Byron and Nietzsche are eloquent, witty, worldly talents—that’s what makes them so treacherous.

They’re not the only ones. The tradition is packed with bad influences. The very people who insist on the moral value of art don’t like what these works hand to impressionable minds. More examples:

Aristophanes’ play The Assembly of Women, which dramatizes the ludicrous disaster that follows when women obtain political power.
Paradise Lost, which assigns to Eve a forever inferior position relative to Adam, as is proper according to Milton.
Wagner’s great opera Tristan and Isolde, which trades in the dangerous lie that erotic love can be transcendent and has won fanatical admirers ever since (including Nietzsche, Proust, T. S. Eliot, and Salvador Dali).
And the opening sentence of Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon reads, “Since the days of Adam, there has hardly been a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it.”

Misogyny, misanthropy, bigotry, false hopes, poor role models . . . they’re all over the place. Great literature and art have as many wrong lessons as does human history. In fact, literature and art may be worse than real affairs precisely because of the necessity of invention. André Gide once stated, “It is with good sentiments that bad literature is made” (“C’est avec les beaux sentiments qu’on fait de la mauvaise littèrature”), and he was right.

Again, the question: What do we do with these morally questionable works?

Answer: Teach them. Teach them as you would the morally unquestionable works. The humanities classroom doesn’t favor the benevolent hero of one novel over the anti-hero of another novel. Aesthetic traits come first and last.

If the teacher does have a moral aim, it is to instill disinterestedness, which is the capacity to suspend moral, social, political, and personal judgment of the work of art, to experience it as art, to see and hear and imagine it fully, to enter the mind of Richard III and the cadences of Beethoven’s Fifth, to contemplate the form of a sonnet or the perspective of a painting before you settle on the work’s meaning.

This is, indeed, an achievement for the student, and it is forced upon the student by objects uncongenial to his sensibility. To exert the labor of understanding first, to get to know a fictional character, a philosophical argument, or a piece of music whose genre is unfamiliar before judging it right or wrong is a worthy habit, a mark of humanitas. It broadens the mind, curbs the kneejerk response, and instills patience and savvy. The dicey works do it as well as do the positive ones. We should mix the hypocritical Tartuffe with the selfless David Copperfield, the irresponsible Pinkerton (Madame Butterfly) with the noble Violetta (La Traviata), the solemn St. Paul with the irreverent Gibbon (in his chapters on the early Christians), knowing that some students may leave class with the wrong ideas.

That’s the risk of good art. It’s why Socrates banished poetry from the city. I like Nietzsche, I like reading him, including the outrageous sallies. I can disagree with the sense and enjoy the expression. Genius sometimes goes wrong and is nonetheless genius.

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Mark Bauerlein is a Trustee at New College of Florida.

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the New College Trustees, faculty or staff. New College of Florida promotes a climate of free expression and tolerant civil discourse according to the principles set forth in the State University System Free Expression Statement and the Board of Governors Civil Discourse Final Report.

Welcome to the new NCF.edu! New College was named the top public liberal arts college in America by Washington Monthly in 2023. Our rigorous classical education and robust environment of student life, intercollegiate athletics, and support systems for college success and career development make New College an ascendant choice for success-driven students. Learn more about your future at New College. Visit NCF.edu/Admissions today!

Dr. Stanley Fish and Dr. Mark Bauerlein addressed an audience of nearly 200 in Sainer Auditorium on April 10, marking the highest attended Socratic Stage Dialogue Series event. You can watch a full recording of the event online.

SARASOTA, Fla. — New College President Richard Corcoran proudly announces that esteemed entrepreneur and philanthropist Joe Ricketts will be the commencement speaker at this year’s graduation ceremony on Friday, May 17, 2024. Ricketts will deliver his address to a valued assembly of graduates and their families amidst the serene backdrop of the Sarasota Bayfront, adjacent to College Hall and the Historic Ringling Mansion.

A titan in the business realm, Ricketts boasts over 35 years of experience in building one of the largest brokerage firms, TD Ameritrade, recently sold to Charles Schwab. His visionary approach to recognizing market opportunities in the deregulated discount securities market, coupled with innovative technologies and distinctive marketing strategies, propelled TD Ameritrade into a global financial juggernaut after its inception as First Omaha Securities in 1975.

Beyond his illustrious business achievements, Ricketts is also celebrated for his family’s ownership of the Chicago Cubs, culminating in the end of the franchise’s century-long title drought with a historic World Series win in 2016. However, his impact extends far beyond the financial sector and realm of sports, as evidenced by his dedication to philanthropy and entrepreneurship.

Earlier this year, Ricketts embarked on a groundbreaking venture in Sarasota, announcing New College as the first institution in the nation to adopt a distance-learning curriculum from Ricketts Great Books College. This innovative initiative enables students worldwide to access a rigorous liberal arts education, with many eligible for scholarships that will allow them to graduate with little to no debt, thanks to Ricketts’ generous philanthropy.

“Joe Ricketts believes in the kind of education we hold dear at New College, a liberal arts education exploring the good, the true, and the beautiful,” Corcoran said. “Graduates of New College leave with the indelible lessons of how to think critically for themselves and not what to think by others. It has been a marvelous experience working with Joe over the last several months to provide a platform for students everywhere to learn timeless lessons from some of history’s greatest thinkers. We are honored to have him address our graduates this May.”

Some of Ricketts’s other notable ventures in entrepreneurship and philanthropy include Opportunity Education Foundation and Quest Forward Learning, The Cloisters on the Platte Foundation, Straight Arrow News, Village PieMaker, High Plains Bison, The Ricketts Conservation Foundation, and The Ricketts Art Foundation.

Ricketts is a native of Omaha, Nebraska, and a graduate of Creighton University. He resides in Little Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with his wife of 60 years, Marlene.

New College’s commencement ceremony remains an exclusive affair, reserved for graduates and their invited guests.

For further insights into the transformative collaboration between New College and Ricketts Great Books College, please visit NCF.edu/Worldwide.

SARASOTA, Fla. — New College of Florida welcomed principals and headmasters from esteemed private and public charter schools on February 22-23 for a transformative two-day engagement centered around the essence of classical liberal arts education. The event served as a platform for meaningful dialogue on the ethos of traditional liberal arts and its significance in shaping future leaders.

The two-day gathering hosted K-12 educational leaders on New College’s Sarasota Bay waterfront campus and embraced discussions on the challenges and opportunities inherent in contemporary learning paradigms and the future of higher education.

“It was a privilege to host academic leaders from diverse educational institutions and showcase firsthand the vibrant intellectual community happening at New College,” remarked President Richard Corcoran. “One of New College’s priorities is to nurture intellectual inquiry and personal growth for our students while preserving the critical thinking that a classical liberal arts education provides.”

The event featured members of the New College administration and guests, including Jeremy Tate, founder of the Classic Learning Test (CLT). Discussions included New College’s academic landscape, its world-class faculty and curriculum in Data Sciences, Marine Mammal Sciences, Economics, and Psychology, along with personalized educational opportunities, financial aid initiatives, and campus enhancements.

Highlighting recent milestones, New College marked its largest incoming class in 2023 and expects to exceed all admissions goals year on year. Additionally, New College is pioneering its distance-learning program and the introduction of a classical great books degree program in collaboration with Ricketts Great Books College. Notably, the Board’s approval of the Master’s of Marine Mammal Science program for 2024/2025 underscores New College’s commitment to excellence in graduate education.