Featuring post-screening Q&As with the filmmakers on Friday, October 2 & Saturday, October 3. 

“Gripping.”
—The Guardian

“A rare insider’s look into the right-wing campaign to conquer higher education.”
—BOMB Magazine

“Harrowingly relevant FIRST THEY CAME FOR MY COLLEGE waves a flag against fascism.”
—The Maneater

Florida’s New College has been a bastion of progressive education for decades, a model laboratory of learning. Which is why it found itself in the crosshairs of an attack by knuckle-dragging reactionaries in state government. This compelling documentary shows the machinations of the crackdown and the way it is counteracted by the highly creative, highly motivated students and faculty.

Featuring post-screening panels with the following special guests:

Friday, October 2

Leah Marino, Editor
Holly Herrick, Producer and AFS Head of Film & Creative Media
Lauren Gutterman, Associate Professor of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at UT Austin
Mariana S. Perez-Isaza, scholar and student activist with Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT)
Moderated by KUT’s Jerry Quijano

Saturday, October 3

Patrick Bresnan, Director
Holly Herrick, Producer and AFS Head of Film & Creative Media
Karma R. Chávez, Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin and President of the American Association of University Professors at UT Austin
Julie Minich, Professor, Departments of English and Social & Cultural Analysis, University of Texas at Austin, and Secretary of the American Association of University Professors at UT Austin
Moderated by Laura Rice,  KUT journalist, and producer of The Texas Standard

Panelist Bios

Karma R. Chávez is Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at the University of Texas – Austin. She is author of Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities (University of Illinois Press, 2013); Palestine on the Air (University of Illinois Press, 2019); and The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance (University of Washington Press, 2021). Chávez edits the Intersectional Rhetorics series at the Ohio State University Press. She is a co-founder of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at UT Austin and president of the AAUP Chapter at UT Austin.

Julie Avril Minich is the author of Radical Health: Unwellness, Care, and Latinx Expressive Culture (Duke University Press, 2023) and Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico (Temple University Press, 2014), and a co-editor of Crip Genealogies (Duke University Press, 2023). Her research and teaching focus on Latinx literary and cultural studies, disability studies, the health humanities, and American literature. An advocate for the freedom to teach and learn without censorship, she is Secretary of the AAUP@UT chapter.

Mariana S. Perez-Isaza is a scholar and advocate studying Government and Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. A Mexican-Colombian immigrant, she bridges academic research with public policy, drawing on research fellowships and her work with the Texas Legislature during the 89th session. Her policy experience spans governance, immigration, environment, and civil rights, with a focus on protecting educational access and analyzing historical structures through Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality studies.