The power and influence of education—whether that be in classrooms or what we learn from each other when we join together in struggle—resists finite definitions.
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As an educator for over 20 years and a proud alum (1993-1997) of the New College of Florida, I’ve grappled with a lot of emotions as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated the “conservative takeover” of the only public small liberal arts college in the state as a part of his “war on woke.”
Now in the wake of the baffling reelection of a convicted felon to the U.S. presidency who espouses similar aims, I see that same sadness, anger and disgust on so many faces. Many of us have intense concern about what this will mean for our students, our curricula and the future of the important work of thinking, teaching and learning about difference, inequities and generative possibilities in its aftermath.
Yet my experience in higher education has shown me that the power and influence of education—whether that be in classrooms or what we learn from each other when we join together in struggle—resists finite definitions. Rather it functions in rhizomatic ways, creating networks of stems and shoots that produce new growth. This is nonlinear and benefits from its multiple pathways where each node is distinct but also remains connected. This is how I envision the students who curated the initial collection of materials that grew over 30 years into the Gender and Diversity Center (GDC) at New College of Florida (NCF).
You might have read about NCF draconian transformation from a bastion of non-conformity and progressive ideals to a “Hillsdale of the South” and the unceremonious dismantling of the GDC that resulted in hundreds of books on gender, sexuality, women’s history, race and ethnic studies, and Jewish studies strewn in dumpsters outside the library.
This telling homage to Hillsdale College refers to a private, conservative Christian school in Michigan that prides itself on not accepting federal aid for students, which allows it to dispense with federal rules like following Title IX guidance on cases of sexual discrimination. The new NCF now advocates for abolishing any remnant of educational programs that encourage students to grapple with the racialized, gendered and colonial truths that undergird power structures, including those in higher education.
As conservative-pundit-turned-trustee Christopher Rufo quipped on Twitter: “We abolished the gender studies program. Now we’re taking out the trash.”
NCF’s Gender Studies program has a storied history that is deeply connected to rhizomatic activism discussed here. It emerged from collaborations among faculty and students in the early 1990s, leading to the establishment of an interdisciplinary academic program in 1995, supported by faculty from across the humanities, social sciences and natural Sciences. Intentionally simple in its moniker, it encompassed a broad range of related fields including women’s and feminist studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer and trans studies, and masculinity studies, and highlighted intersections with other interdisciplinary fields including cultural, ethnic, Judaica and Africana studies.
The cohort of students involved in this work during the early 90s was a diverse group—racially, ethnically, religiously—who all brought their life experiences to our collective. Members challenged each other to broaden our feminist ideals and think in intersectional ways about power and injustice, particularly the ways that systematic oppressions overlap and intersect for those who are marginalized in multiple ways.
Because there weren’t many classes offered in gender studies at that time, we often worked collaboratively to concoct reading lists for self-directed tutorials sponsored by faculty who were eventually able to launch the gender studies program. We were engaged in heady conversations, reading classics by Gloria Anzaldúa, Mary Daly, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Chandra Mohanty, Cherríe Moraga, Adrienne Rich and the Combahee River Collective alongside contemporary feminist fiction like Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), about a woman navigating her African and American identities, Ellen Galford’s satirical exploration of contemporary Judaism The Dyke and the Dybbuk (1993) and Ginu Kamani’s playful and irreverent short stories in Junglee Girl (1995), a Gujarati phrase to describe an untamable, uncontrollable woman.
We also recognized the importance of having space for those conversations outside of the traditional classroom, as well as resources that were curated by and for students interested in discussions about the intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, colonial encounters and other axes of oppression. Those self- and collectively-designed tutorials were what inspired me to become a professor, in the hopes of engaging students in the same kinds of nuanced, consequential, challenging dialogues—which feel particularly important during the conservative turn we are seeing in U.S. politics (and beyond).
The tutorial format—which brought us together to explore and challenge each other—was also what motivated the curation of a collection that we installed in a small room of New College’s library. We gathered books that had been left by previous students; we donated copies of the books we read in those early tutorials and created an archive of the reading lists we compiled individually and collectively. The space was vandalized early on with epithets like “Dyke” and “Feminazi” scrawled across walls and materials, but students in the collective quickly came to clean and make the space one where gender-diverse students felt safe exploring topics they often couldn’t find in the library’s collection.
As we continue to educate, build communities and remain passionate about our network of ‘roots’ and manifold ‘shoots’ that continue to emphasize the lessons we learned together, our rhizomatic influence continues to grow.
In 1996, the Gender Studies Collection joined the Judaica Collection and the Alternative Media Collection in a space outside the library that offered more room for meetings and tutorials, as well as more autonomy as a student-run resource center. Members of the collective held regular hours when students could visit, and keys were made available to check out from the “Cop Shop” (campus security). Eventually, the collections moved back to the library, into a larger space, merging with several other student-curated collections to become the Gender and Diversity Center—which was subsequently scrapped, leading to the images of books in dumpsters that circulated online earlier this year, is no more.
But what has become of this visionary collective from the 1990s? And by extension, what could become of the young people currently gaining critical skills to be thoughtful citizens that will spearhead the direction of our country in future years? Through social media connections and some casual internet snooping, I was able to reconstruct the rhizomatic nature of our collective’s continued networks. Of the roughly 25 of us whose names appear on syllabi, events and other ephemera I have from that time, we are now spread across four different countries and 18 U.S. states. Several of us were among the first gender studies and women’s studies majors at New College.
What is most impressive to me about this group is the varied, but equally fulfilling and impactful, paths we have taken since leaving New College in the 1990s. Most of us pursued advanced degrees. Many have made families with various configurations of partners, children and chosen kin. Most are educators and/or creators in some form. We have pursued careers in higher education, healthcare, law, social work, the judiciary, publishing and politics, among other areas. Many are creatives—both full-time and alongside other pursuits—contributing award-winning work in ceramics, crochet and creative writing. Collectively, we have published over 35 books, and our writing continues to reach broad audiences in news media like Time, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and the Miami Herald, as well as venues like AlterNet, the Chronicle of Higher Education, ColorLines, Curve, the Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Society Pages, The Feminist Wire, and, of course, Ms. magazine.
As we continue to educate, build communities and remain passionate about our network of “roots” and manifold “shoots” that continue to emphasize the lessons we learned together, our rhizomatic influence continues to grow. As I look to my undergraduate students, and my own children who will be voting age in the 2028 election, I see opportunities for those same kinds of rhizomatic growth, change and possibility.
This is in direct contrast to conservatives’ affinity for metaphors like that of the Hydra, the serpentine, regenerative, many-headed monster of Greek and Roman mythology whose poisonous breath and blood were so toxic that even their scent was deadly. Trump’s former regional campaign manager Luke Meyer conjured this image in response to being unmasked as his online persona Alberto Barbarossa, who regularly spouts white nationalist rhetoric: “Like the Hydra, you can cut off my head and hold it up for the world to see, but two more will quietly appear and be working in the shadows.” Unlike those seeking destruction and toxicity, a rhizomatic network thrives on connection and abundance.
So to those who delight in purging books, academic programs and institutions that aim to create more welcoming and affirming spaces: Where you fail is that those of us educated in spaces like NCF remain tenacious, and we proliferate in manifold and hybrid forms. This rhizomatic activist work remains persistent because there is no beginning or end to its reach, and its nodes remain interconnected and draw support from those connections in the face of adversity. The primary function of a rhizome, in the biological sense, is to store nutrients until the plant requires them to grow new shoots. That is exactly what I envision playing out in the years and decades to come.
