First They Came for My College

ERIC SAYS The documentary team behind Pahokee and Naked Gardens returns with another immersive look at an aspect of contemporary Floridian life—this time turning their lens on an urgent culture-war battlefield with national ramifications. The far right has made significant inroads in winning over impressionable youth via the internet and podcasts, but here we see them aggressively staking out new and unexpected terrain: the state-run liberal-arts college New College in Sarasota, Florida. For decades a bastion of diversity, inclusion, and progressive thought, First They Came for My College documents Ron DeSantis and his minions’ hellbent efforts to make a safe space decidedly less so—severely overhauling the college’s popular administration and faculty, creating jock-friendly scholarships for athletic teams that don’t exist, and purging library books in a manner so cruel that burning them would almost feel kinder.

Whatever your political stripes, a fascistic takeover of an institution of higher learning doesn’t make for a pretty picture. And yet, as Bresnan’s camera patiently captures, there are limits to what DeSantis can control—and this is one progressive campus that isn’t going down without a fight. First They Came for My College shows us that the notion “it can’t happen here” was always wishful thinking—and dramatically alerts the viewer to a cynical new power play for the hearts and minds of young Americans.