Amy Reid has worked at New College of Florida for more than 30 years as a professor of French and founder and director of the gender studies program. Her relatively stable job as a tenured professor emboldened her to become one of the most outspoken critics of conservative efforts to transform NCF into the “Hillsdale College of the South,” led by then-interim Chancellor Richard Corcoran, who was hired by a slate of conservative trustees appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023.
That same year, Reed was elected faculty representative to the Board of Trustees. She voted against the appointment of Cochrane as the college’s permanent president and opposed several policies, including the administration’s efforts to use the college to help enforce gendered bathroom laws.
Last month, Cochran rejected a recommendation from the New School provost to grant Reed emeritus status, citing Reed’s advocacy of faculty and academic freedom, which he called “exaggerated alarmism and unnecessary obstruction.” In response, the New School Alumni Association Board of Directors named Reed an honorary alumnus.
Since taking unpaid leave in August 2024 and retiring a year later, Reed has brought her talents and advocacy passion to PEN America, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting censorship in education and protecting press freedom.
Inside higher education spoke with Reed via Zoom about her experience as a faculty representative on the new University Board of Trustees, the transformation of public liberal arts colleges and Florida conservatives’ efforts to expand censorship of faculty speech.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Before you became a faculty representative on the New School Board of Trustees, the previous representative resigned in protest. What prompted you to pursue this role? What do you hope to do with it?
one: Things on campus have always been controversial. Frankly, that’s an understatement. When new board members were appointed in January of the same year [2023]who used military language to describe their arrival on campus as a “siege.” So I began organizing with other faculty and staff and providing support to students so they could respond to the rapid changes on campus, including the immediate firing of our president [Patricia Okker]and then, over the next few weeks, some key leaders; censored student speech and chalk records on campus; and refused to grant tenure to some highly qualified faculty.
I started hosting weekly tea parties for students to give them a place to ask questions, make comments and enjoy cookies. So working with colleagues and supporting students are two things I really want to do.
As a senior faculty member and director of the gender studies program, I feel I have a special responsibility to be a voice on campus. I know that my colleagues who are not tenured can’t necessarily do that, so I try to be a voice for my community. After Matt Lipinski resigned from the board and faculty [after the board denied tenure to five professors]who actually reached out and asked me to run for faculty chair because of my ongoing work with others through the union and because of my outspokenness as director of the gender studies program. So after discussing with other colleagues, I agreed to run for office together with two other colleagues.
Q: What was the initial reaction from the board when you joined?
one: In fact, what I do remember is the genuine support I received from colleagues, students, and alumni. So, yes, there was a degree of tension with certain members of the board. I do have people on the board who have contacted me in a friendly and professional way—saying hi at meetings and stuff like that—but I actually have a lot of support from faculty, alumni, and students, and that’s what’s important.
Q: Do you think you have been successful in your role as a teacher representative?
one: This is indeed a challenging question, depending on what metric you want to use. I think I do a good job of raising serious questions and concerns at trustee meetings, even if my vote isn’t often on the winning side. I always carry my integrity with me, which is very important to me as an educator. I think I’m able to help the faculty unite around the various policy proposals we come up with because my job is not just on the board, but also in stewardship of the faculty, which means having multiple meetings a week about budgets and other administrative issues.
There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to support teachers, support the curriculum, and advocate for students in many ways. I know students, faculty, and alumni feel they can express their concerns to me, and they know I will listen and respond. When people speak at board meetings, I pay attention and take note of everyone who comes to speak. In that way, I think I was effective, but frankly the votes on the board were stacked.
Q: When you resigned, you said “The New School, where you once taught, no longer exists.” Was there a specific moment that made your confidence in the New School’s leadership dwindle?
one: This is not actually a loss of confidence in the new leadership. Richard Cochran offered a series of ideas about how he wanted to change the campus, changing what one trustee called “the hormonal and political balance on campus.” Cochrane followed suit. I want to start by noting that a number of valuable and dedicated campus leaders have been fired, including Chancellor Patricia Okker, the Dean of Diversity, and the campus research librarian. [I can also point to] Six highly qualified and effective faculty were denied tenure, expelling more than 30 percent of the faculty and approximately 100 students—a true record in the first eight months of this administration.
Then you repaint student art on campus, replace grass with artificial turf, and uproot hundreds of trees along the Gulf Coast. You’re wasting millions of dollars in state funds on bloated administrative salaries and portable dormitories that will become uninhabitable in three months due to mold. Eliminate the gender studies program in the summer of 2023, eliminate our budget, and expel us from our campus offices in December 2023. A rigorous and limited core curriculum will be mandated in the spring of 2024. The diplomas of a group of students were seized in May 2024, and the student-led Gender and Diversity Center was massively destroyed in August 2024. It was a student-led space that housed books. The work that the students had been planning for over 30 years was thrown into the trash.
So not one moment, but many moments. But even today, I remain a firm believer in the determination of students and alumni to pursue an education that embodies academic freedom, which I understand is the right of students to pursue an education free from government censorship. And, I have every confidence in the faculty who remain, who support the academic mission of The New School and do their best to support our students day in and day out.
Q: Were you surprised when Cochrane rejected the dean’s suggestion that you be awarded an honorary degree?
one: Not really. I’d say that’s a no-brainer, but I was surprised by how candid he was about his reasons. In his statement, he noted that despite my achievements as a teacher and researcher, the issue was my support for the academy — and my opposition to him. So now that his remarks are clearly documented as punitive, it’s shocking.
What happened to me was just a small incident, but it reflects a type of censorship on campus that needs to be stopped. But more importantly at this moment, I really want to thank my colleagues who nominated me for honorary membership, and the New School alumni who embraced me as one of their own. It makes sense and I’m so grateful.
Q: As a journalist, I spend a lot of time reading and writing about bad news, but I see the same types of attacks on faculty speech and academic freedom happening at The New School happening at other institutions in Florida and elsewhere. Do you think these current attacks on teachers’ speech are unprecedented?
one: Many people think this is unprecedented, but what I see is the culmination of a pattern of censorship that we are seeing at the state level across the country. In 2022, Florida passed House Bill 233, which would allow or encourage students to secretly record teachers if they intend to file a complaint against them.
In fact, since then, the state has been tightening restrictions on teachers’ speech in various ways. Just in the past few months, we have seen numerous faculty members sanctioned, including even an Emeritus Professor [University of Florida] Lost status due to complaints about his social media posts. So what’s happening now may be unprecedented, but it’s part of a pattern that we’re seeing now, not just in Florida but across the country, where about 50 faculty and staff have been sanctioned or fired for their comments or social media posts since the beginning of September.
Since 2021, PEN America has been actively tracking speech censorship efforts in college and university classrooms across the country, and we have seen a real increase in the number of bills proposed to censor speech and the number of bills being passed; 2025 is truly going to be a banner year for censorship in higher education in this country. A record number of gag orders have been passed nationwide, with 10 bills explicitly limiting speech in college and university classrooms.
There are other restrictions aimed at silencing faculty speech—limitations on tenure or curriculum control bills, and let us also remember those bills proposed or passed to limit student protests on campus. All of these things are done to make people afraid to speak up and question things on campus. It’s not good for our education system, and it’s not good for our democracy. Currently, about 40% of the U.S. population lives in a state with at least one state-level law restricting classroom speech at colleges and universities. Is this acceptable to us as a country? Do we really think our First Amendment rights are interchangeable?
