A documentary that serves as a both a warning and a call to arms
First They Came for My College invokes the famous postwar poem by Martin Niemöller, one that reflects on how authoritarianism advances incrementally, targeting one demographic after another while others look on in silence. The documentary applies that warning to higher education in the USA by chronicling the political takeover of New College, Florida. A public college that for over six decades served as a bastion of liberal arts education. That is until politics got involved.
The film opens with glimpses of a sunlit campus, students in discussion, teachers holding court in classrooms. These are intercut with newsreels and soundbites, drawn from mid-century America, where public figures and politicians frame education as the engine of national progress and college campuses as the training ground for a generation that will shape the future. It’s hopeful, even a little nostalgic. Then the visual language shifts. The warm, aspirational tone gives way to the immediacy of the present day. The contrast is stark, and intentional. What was once celebrated as conducive to the public good is now is framed as an ideological threat.
For decades, New College functioned as a small but distinctive institution within Florida’s public university system. With fewer than 800 students, it emphasized independent study, close faculty mentorship, and an unconventional academic structure designed to encourage intellectual risk-taking. The documentary establishes the personal growth such surrounds brings, through shot footage as well as more intimate home-video from the students, capturing the rhythms of their lives, conversations about classes, debates about politics, anxieties over grades, and the quieter reflections about what they hope their futures might look like. The students are not abstractions in the culture war that comes, they are just people trying to learn.
Over the past few years there has been a political shift with figures on the right seizing upon a perception that the public believes efforts encircling diversity, equity, and inclusion have gone too far. In 2023, the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis replaced the college’s board of trustees in a move intended to transform the school into a conservative institution and eradicate “wokeness”. Programs were eliminated. Administrative leadership was replaced. The tenure process and protections were challenged. Funding priorities shifted dramatically. Political moves that fundamentally changed a successful institution and came with a very real human cost.
First They Came for My College captures these developments through the town halls, board meetings, and open forums where students and professors protest the changes. These sequences are among the film’s most powerful. The anger is palpable, but so is the eloquence of the rebuttal. Faculty speak about academic freedom. Students describe the community they came to build. Parents investigate the backgrounds and suspect motivations of the new leadership. Arguments grounded in evidence and experience are dismissed as emotional appeals, and decisions appear predetermined. What emerges is a portrait of institutional power wielded with little regard for the people who built the school’s culture and success. We see how resources are redirected toward recruiting new students, particularly athletes, offered scholarships, laptops, and premium housing in an effort to rapidly reshape the campus demographic. Meanwhile, existing students face program cuts, housing restrictions, and increasing pressure to transfer. New and old, these kids are impacted by the damage of disruptive and divisive decisions.
At times, the film broadens its scope to show the wider context of educational policy in Florida, debates over curriculum, the removal of diversity programs, and the reshaping of how history and race are taught in schools. These developments suggest that New College may be less an isolated case than a test run. The implication is difficult to ignore. If this can happen here, it can happen elsewhere. Here in Texas alone, we have seen major shifts on campuses and in our curricular, where Governor appointed Regents and University Presidents bring their power and politics into the arena of education.
As you’d expect, moments of resistance punctuate the story. Students organize. The campus newspaper documents developments and disseminates information. Faculty challenge decisions in public forums. One particularly fiery speaker tears into the board of trustees with moral clarity that electrifies the room. These acts of protest are noble, but the film does not pretend they are likely to succeed. The machinery of political power appears largely indifferent to dissent. A commencement ceremony near the films close serves as microcosm of the generational contrast and the defiance of these students.
Director Patrick Bresnan, who has captured the emotional dynamics of communities in previous works such as Naked Gardens and Pahokee again brings that focus to bear here by showcasing a spectrum of students to craft a mosaic of the characters within this college. We bear witness to their conversations and concerns, revealing a generation grappling in real time with questions about democracy, power, and the purpose of education itself. This intimacy makes the power play all the more stark. The sheer scale of the effort to transform this small institution is staggering, with enormous political capital, legislative attention, and state resources were deployed to remake it. It hints at an obsessive focus, and to a neutral observer you have to wonder how Florida might benefit were the energies directed at a campus of just over 700 students directed at something that might tangibly impact people positively.
In one sense, the film is deeply pessimistic. It shows an institution battered by an ideological wrecking ball. Yet there is also a quieter note of hope. Watching these students argue, organize, and articulate what education means to them, the viewer is reminded that political awakenings often begin in these moments of challenge and confrontation. Their recognition of injustice, and their unwillingness to challenge it, suggests a generation unlikely to go quietly into the night.
The film closes somewhat abruptly, but there is inference and available information of the aftermath, including the loss of over 40% of the faculty, and the college seeing plummeting numbers in both test scores and College rankings. The lack of a full epilogue may frustrate some audiences, but it also reinforces the documentary’s central point. The fight isn’t over.
