Storming the Ivory Tower: How a Florida College Became Ground Zero in the Struggle to Take Back Our Campuses

A firsthand account of how Richard Corcoran, former education commissioner of Florida, successfully took on powerful progressive interest groups, broke their monopoly, and paved the way for higher education reform across America.

Covid alerted the nation to the reality that K-12 schools--private and public alike--were infested with ideologues bent on indoctrinating children. Then, three years after the beginning of the pandemic, the shocking response to Hamas's genocidal assault on Israel made Americans aware that the same tumor had wholly sickened our country's colleges and universities. Now, conservatives--and increasingly, moderates and old-school liberals--want to know exactly how the radical left captured higher education.

Florida has been the vanguard in the war to restore sanity to higher education. And Richard Corcoran has been one of its commanding generals--and racking up wins.

When Corcoran was Florida's education commissioner, he was the point person for reopening schools and banning mask mandates. He triumphed. Then, he was given a herculean task: remaking a college overrun by radicalism and cancel culture. In 2023, he moved into the president's office in Sarasota, took on a campus mob, and challenged a media firestorm.

Just a year later, Corcoran achieved the seemingly impossible. He turned around New College of Florida. Now, free speech is protected. Violence and anti-Semitism are abolished. DEI bureaucracy is eliminated. And, already, enrollment records are being broken. Storming the Ivory Tower is the story of how Corcoran is winning the fight for freedom in hostile territory, and how others can join the battle.


About the Author
Richard Corcoran is an attorney and president of New College of Florida. From 2016 to 2018, he served as speaker of the Florida House, passing crucial ethics reforms. In in 2018, he was chosen by Governor Ron DeSantis to be the state's 27th Education Commissioner. In that role, he worked side-by-side with Tallahassee during the pandemic to reopen--and keep open--schools and eliminate mask mandates for children. He also supported the Governor's efforts to improve Florida public education by abolishing Common Core, expanding civics instruction, and ensuring parental rights were respected in classrooms. Corcoran lives in Sarasota with his wife and six children.