Are the New College, Jefferson County, and Rufo grifts already converging?

Academica, named in the Jefferson grand jury subpoena, has an "alliance" with New College's new on-line liberal arts "content" provider, which comes to the college via petulant has-been Chris Rufo.

For those students looking to move beyond high school, I am in the process of creating a “great books” college-level program. — Billionaire Joe Ricketts, Dec. 12, 2022.

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The darkly hilarious grift formerly known as New College is planning to launch an online version of its liberal arts degree (which would include 1-year “certificate” and 2-year AA options) this spring. It is aiming for a global audience.

New College doesn’t have a curriculum — much less a product — for this online course of study; and they don’t know who will teach it. But they have identified a content collaborator: the “Ricketts Great Book College.”

Intriguingly, I don’t see any evidence that the “Ricketts Great Book College” actually exists — in the sense that one can buy ready-made materials or trained faculty or course of study to plug into some functioning on-line platform for students.

The Ricketts “college” has no web presence that my Google skills can find — other than what I quoted above from education-dabbling, cartoon villain billionaire Joe Ricketts. He wrote on his foundation website last December that he was “in the process” of creating the great books curriculum.

Is that process complete?

If so, it would appear that the grift formerly known as New College is the first customer and/or guinea pig for Ricketts’ personal great books playlist. I’ve got a note into Nathan March, the New College flack, trying to confirm this. I haven’t heard back yet.

What you would expect

If you want to research the Ricketts nepotism dynasty; go ahead. It’s what you would expect. He gave his kids the Chicago Cubs as a present; and then he gave one son a Nebraska U.S. Senate seat. He hates libs. He’s Chris Rufo’s “friend,” at least according to Rufo. And he has lots of billionaire-type thoughts on what everyone else does wrong in education. He’s got a shiny foundation, of course, dedicated to grifting public education out of existence with the soothing language of opportunity. He’s a Betsy DeVos-type figure. At this point, he is as banal and familiar as a type as he is rich.

You can see for yourself most of what I’ve summarized about the New College Ricketts “collaboration” in this video of the Dec. 11 former New College Board of Trustees. The “discussion” starts about 56:00. If you need further evidence of how silly and lazy the supposed evil geniuses who took over New College really are, watch them at “work” in this overcrowded conference room.

Sadly, these folks can grift and loot New College into non-existence; but they’re much too incompetent and focused on “anti-woke” vaudeville to build anything. They won’t even succeed even in transforming New College into a sustainable, mid-tier Bible college with a bad baseball team. This grift will end badly for everyone who takes it seriously. Even Florida right wingers are starting to circle — and the one-sided Trump-DeSantis civil war may go badly for the New College takeover, which is very much a DeSantis project.

Mostly, this will all end badly because building even a right wing utopia requires actual work. Actual work has never been on New College president Richard Corcoran’s agenda. It is not on Chris Rufo’s agenda.

Grifters grift so they can avoid doing honest, institution-building work. It’s a fundamental aspect of grifter character; and it’s why nothing they ever do actually functions, even as evil. They destroy things and replace them with nothing. It’s why institutional grifts — like New College — tend to end in grand juries.

And that brings us to Jefferson County, Corcoran’s last grift, which, of course, ended in an active federal grand jury.

I predicted long ago that Jefferson and New College would converge eventually as grifts and stories. And, well …

Will Ricketts Great Books College work with its “alliance” partner Academica in New College’s on-line offering?

This is where things get stranger — and even funnier.

A couple days ago, I received a curious comment on my last article about the DoE/Jefferson scandal. Any regular readers of mine know that hilariously overpaid ($1.3 million for roughy 1000 students) Corcoran was the political and administrative driving force of the multi-year DoE/Jefferson charter schools failure and scandal during his term of Speaker of the Florida House and Commissioner of Education.

“Academica” is the for-profit college, on-line education, and charter school company at the heart of the scandal Corcoran oversaw in Jefferson County. Academica employed current Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz during all the Jefferson County skulduggery and failure. So you can imagine my interest upon reading this:

Too make a very long and weird story short:

“NMarch” is the operator of a clever parody of a New College Substack site. Go check it out. I find it hilariously insightful and detail-focused in its understanding of the psychology of the actual New College people who might have created such a thing. It’s a brilliant, satirical mimic of what it might look like. But it’s not a real New College publication.

It genuinely had me going for a lot of reasons, not worth explaining here. But to be clear, “NMarch” is not “Nathan March,” as both Nathan March and the unknown parodist made clear to me. It was in asking actual Nathan March, the actual New College flack, about Academica and on-line offerings that the actual March referred me to the Trustees meeting and discussion I cited above. That’s where I found out about Ricketts and the new on-line offering.

In learning about Ricketts, I learned about his foundation’s “alliance” with Academica. You can read about that here. Again, here is Ricketts’ approving blurb:

I’ve learned from various sources that New College campus gossip suggests Academica will have a role in the Ricketts Great Book College on-line offering. But I have not been able to lock down anything official. Nathan March told me he is “not familiar with Academica” when I asked him.

But the general concept the New College trustees discussed is right up Academica’s alley. Check out their digital/virtual offerings.

Anyone at New College is welcome to say yay or nay on Academica. I will happily publish an official response.

“SHUT UP!!” waning influencer Rufo yells at female colleagues to demonstrate classical western manhood

Meanwhile, I want bring your attention to Chris Rufo’s “anti-woke” minstrel show at the Dec. 11 meeting. I’ve posted a brief clip above.

Apparently, he does some version of this at every meeting, targeting the only two serious people on the Board of Trustees, both of whom are women: Student Representative Grace Keenan and Faculty Representative Dr. Amy Reid.

As I understand it, a big part of “great books” and “classical education” grift is a focus on traditional manhood values and gender sex roles. Behold Chris Rufo living them.

If you watch, you’ll see Rufo kick-off a trustee bro gang-up by responding to a bland statement of concern about conflict of interest from Amy Reid. He tells her to make a specific allegation or “shut up.” Check out his face as he performs and ask yourself how many times he’s rehearsed that look in a mirror by himself. He could have played the bad Ken in “Barbie” as well as Gosling did.

Then another trustee, somebody named “Bauerlein,” jumps in to yell at Reid and demand to know if she thinks he has a conflict (guessing he might?, LOL). And then, finally, Richard Corcoran himself threatens to retaliate against Reid for her mild concern of expression, implying that he and the board can remove her.

When Reid attempts to address demands that she answer the bros with specific allegations of conflicts of interest, the Board chair cuts her off.

Bada-boom, that’s the act.

As predictable and tired as Ricketts — but not as rich and probably grosser

You can go Google Rufo if you want. He’s an anti-woke grifter/influencer who rode the now dead “Moms 4 Threesomes” moment to brief Internet fame and a DeSantis appointment to the New College Board of Trustees. Here is Rufo with Bridget Ziegler, the number #1 “M4T” herself. Traditional manhood indeed.

For a dirty lib, I have a perhaps surprising “conservative” streak when it comes to male behavior, especially toward women. It revolves around responsibility and respect and fear of my mother, who would have reduced me to ashes with her eyes and icy disapproval if I ever behaved like Rufo does in that clip I showed you.

By contrast, I’m sure Rufo has already clipped his own Trustee meeting smack talk and posted it in his Twitch stream — or wherever — for his bros. It’s kinda like porn for the groyper set.

And I wonder if courtly billionaire Ricketts has manhood standards less classical than my mom’s. I wonder if Ricketts would endorse Rufo’s grifter vaudeville on his behalf.

More importantly for a guy like Ricketts, Rufo, like DeSantis, is on the downhill slope; and this act has diminishing returns. I would expect him to bail on New College soon for some greener pasture grift of reinvention.

But for now, Rufo openly claims he is responsible for the “collaboration” agreement with Joe Ricketts for the Great Books College product that may or may not exist. And he calls Ricketts a “friend.” You can see all that in the meeting video. I wonder if Ricketts would say the same about Rufo.

Maybe they really do go kick puppies together for fun — or maybe Ricketts would prefer Rufo “shut up” and stop trying to social climb by name-dropping him.

Somebody more interested than me should ask him.

Let me get specific, New College bros

The Trustee bros — and the bro-enabling chair — cut off Amy Reid after demanding she answer them. So let me get specific about some questions I would ask the New College grifters if I were her at the next meeting:

• Trustee Rufo, do you receive any income from your “friend” Joe Ricketts? Do you have any equity in any product he’s selling or donating? Is your regular behavior during trustee meetings consistent with Joe Ricketts’ conception of classical western manhood?

• Will Ricketts’ alliance partner “Academica” have any role in the new New College on-line offering?

• If so, is it a conflict that records from Academica (through its subsidiary Somerset) have been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating the bid-rigging scandal that emerged in its aftermath of the failed charter grifting of Jefferson County? (See annotated grand jury subpoena posted at the start of this article.) Even state investigators acknowledged that New College President Corcoran oversaw that entire bid process:

This is a screenshot from official state investigative records. More on the much larger document this is part of in a later article.

Does Academica potentially have leverage over Corcoran, or vice-versa, in any New College business deal because of the grand jury? Is that a conflict in a legal sense or a a moral sense? What does “conflict” even mean in Florida where nothing is enforced?

• President Corcoran, do you expect someone to be indicted by the Jefferson County federal grand jury in connection with the failed Academica takeover and the bid-rigging scandal that emerged in its aftermath?

• How would a Jefferson-related indictment of anyone affect your New College presidency?

• Do you agree with state investigators that you had “the final say” over the bid process?

• Have you retained personal legal counsel to represent you in connection with the Jefferson grand jury? Have federal investigators sought to interview you in the Jefferson matter? If so, have you been interviewed?

• Oh, and Trustee Bauerlein, why don’t you just go ahead and tell the public what your conflict is? You seem pretty eager to brag about it. LOL.

Is that specific enough for you, Chris?