Book Review: “Storming the Ivory Tower” by Richard Corcoran

Book Review: “Storming the Ivory Tower” by Richard Corcoran

Storming the Ivory Tower: How a Florida College Became Ground Zero in the Struggle to Take Back Our Campuses offers an intriguing battle plan for restoring free speech to college campuses.

The engaging book is authored by Richard Corcoran, the former education commissioner of Florida. Storming the Ivory Tower provides a gripping firsthand account of his efforts to challenge and reform what he perceived as powerful progressive interest groups within the higher education system when he became President of New College of Florida (NCF).

When Corcoran took over, he had his work cut out for him. The campus was overrun by radicalism and cancel culture, and new student numbers were plummeting because young Floridians did not want to deal with a toxic educational environment.

The Art & Science Group report noted other issues with the social culture that were chasing away would-be students. Commissioned by NCF to research its market placement and issues, the firm found that admitted students (of whom many opted not to attend) indicated that adjectives strongly associated with New College social culture were “politically correct,” “druggies,” and “weirdoes.

…As one of the new trustees noted, it was a problem that needed to be addressed if the college was going to stop its downward trajectory. Needless to say, the “politically correct”/“druggie”/“ weirdo” niche is fairly narrow, the exact opposite of a slogan any rational organization would adopt if it was trying to appeal to a broad swath of students and parents.

Corcoran’s work focuses on his experiences and actions at NCF, especially as it became a focal point in the broader debate about the direction and values of American higher education. He vividly recounts the disinformation campaign and propaganda tactics used by the progressive press as it came to describing his plans and actions to transform NCF:

My conversations with reporters began to feel like they were following a page from the Ministry of Truth in 1984 that used slogans such as “freedom is slavery.” I would state our goal was to ensure free speech at a public college. The resulting articles or segments would state the complete opposite: that our goal was to destroy free speech at a public college. For the press, it was a simple task to find any of the “old New College” crowd that sat in the audience at board meetings to state unsupported opinions that tracked with the media’s preferred narrative.

Storming the Ivory Tower must now be considered an essential part of a larger conversation about the role of politics and ideology in American universities. Using the term “take back our campuses,” Corcoran offers a vibrant rallying cry in the battle against the woke policies and free-speech suppressing environment permeating today’s higher education.

Corcoran has had great success at NCF: Abolishing DEI and smashing enrollment records, to name two.  His final chapter is perhaps the most important, as he provides a battle strategy to bring the same wins to other institutions.  The key elements in this plan are summarized below:

• Leadership is everything.  To change an institution of public higher education, it is necessary to have alignment between strong leaders at three levels: governor, the board, and the president.
• Litigate, litigate, litigate. Fight back on leftist policies and rules, and respond to their legal warfare robustly.
• Ensure actual shared governance. Don’t let unions get in the way.
• Presidents should have CEO capabilities.  Universities are multibillion-dollar enterprises, so they should be headed by someone who can actually run a corporation or major organization.
• Enforce the rule of law.  Apply the Student Code of Conduct.
• Curriculum should teach students how to think, not what to think.
• Personnel are policy. Bring in people who share the same vision.
• Do not abolish the US Department of Education: Learn to use it.

Storming the Ivory Tower is a fascinating and heartening read. It shows that a university can be freed of its bonds of DEI and social justice policies without being transformed into an ultra-conservative equivalent. As an added bonus, the book has some fun stories, examples, and an abundance of wit.

I give the book 5 stars out of 5, and recommend it to anyone with an interest in higher education policy…especially those in places to effect meaningful change.

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