Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirba on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit FBRLST. Make
sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and of
course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Richard Corcoran, former Speaker of the
Florida House the Sunshine States, former Education Commissioner, and now
President of New College of Florida. Richard's new books, Storming
the Ivory Tower, How of Florida College became ground Zero
in the struggle to take back our Campuses, is a
first hand account of how he successfully took on powerful
progressive interest groups, broke their monopoly, and paved the way
for higher education reform across America. Thank you, sir for
joining us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Oh it's a pleasure to be on, Matt. Thank you
for having me.
Speaker 1: This is your journey, but it is America's journey as well.
And this is not something that started a few years ago.
It's not something that started during the Biden Harris administration,
although it got exceedingly worse during that time. Take us
back to before you began the battle for common sense
on our campuses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I know, the short version of my involvement
in politics really comes from my parents. Both my parents
were older, they both lived through the Great Depression, and
they both fought in World War Two. My mom was British,
so she fought in Woman's Auxiliary Force and in the
Blitz during London and so they basically just said, hey,
you ought to know your philosophy. You ought to know
what you believe, and you ought to have a philosophy
for everything, whether you're raising children, whether you're working in
a job, because if you don't, someone's going to have
a philosophy and they're going to move you. They're going
to affect your life, as theirs were by horrible philosophies
that affected them in the Great Depression and in World
War Two. So we were always kind of politically active,
and that led me to get politically active and basically volunteered,
you know, all that kind of stuff. Became a staffer
in the legislature. I was chief of staffer for Marco Rubio,
then ran for office myself and became Speaker, and then
after that I launched a starting of a governor's bid.
Governor DeSantis was sort of the eight hundred pound guerrilla,
so I got out of the race, and then he
asked me to be on his transition team. And it's
kind of an interesting story there because he actually I
got out and endorsed his opponent. I didn't think the
governor could win. And then I was in a debate
with Matt Gates in a green room and I said
that Governor de Santa's had a bulldog mouth and a
Chihuahua ass and he still called me that. He still
called and asked me, and in fact, when he called
me right after the primary, I said, hey, you know
then I was calling him Ron. I said, hey, Ron,
you did hear what I said to you in the
green room. And He's like, I don't care. I just
want to assemble the best people. And because I wish
I was there to watch you and Gates go at it,
but I want to know assemble the best people, sort
of like you know, the old Lincoln team of rivals.
And it shows in his leadership style. But from there
I did the transition and then he asked me to
be a Commissioner of Education. So I did that for
four years and then ultimately came to New College to
be the president. And his point there was, here's this
public institution. It's probably one of the most liberal in
the entire country, and it's paid for by the taxpayers.
And we're not going to have that. We're not going
to have one sided indoctrination on either side. We're going
to have a balanced liberal arts university that's going to
teach kids how to think about what to think. And
so he changed the entire board. He put on just
great people, Christopher Rufo's, Matthew Spalding's, Mark bauerlines, Charles Kessel's,
all these great people. They had some great board members
already there, and then they chose me to be the
president and we went to work. That's the short version.
Speaker 1: Christopher Rufo, of course, one of the most well known
defenders of speech and basic First Amendment liberties. He writes
the forward for this book. It should be noted as well,
this is again a generational thing. That is to say,
the indoctrination that has been going on from the left,
the Marxist movement to indoctrinate our kids from preschool through
institutions of higher education. It's been going on for a
long time. I remember as an undergraduate at the University
of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in the early nineteen nineties, you know,
having to take you know, I don't know what they
called it, some sort of diversity class at the time.
And the sort of stuff that we have been hearing
about with critical race theory and all of that kind
of thing that was really beginning to take shape in
the late eight nineteen eighties. I don't go back that
far the eighteen eighties, I feel like I do sometimes,
but in the late mid to late nineteen eighties, this
was all taking shape on college campuses. Again, it has
exploded exponentially, but we really saw this. Parents really saw
this firsthand, didn't they. They got a first hand view
during COVID in the lockdowns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, to your point, Matt and I talk
about it a lot. This isn't a new piece of
you know, groundbreaking revelation that we put in the in
the book. What we're saying is it's a continuation of
a story and something has to be done, and so
I talk a lot about to your point, William F.
Buckley wrote god Man in Yale in the early nineteen
fifty saying, Hey, I'm being indoctrinate. They're telling me that
capitalism isn't good, you know. And then you have Alan
Bloom writing in the late eighties, you know, the closing
of the American mind and an example after example of
the indoctrination's going on campus. What we tried to do
here and I wanted to say, and when I say we,
I'm talking about because it really it's a story about
the entire board, the governor and how this was overhauled.
And so what we tried to say, I put it
into words of what was done by all of us,
is that you have to put it in action. Enough
is enough. We can't have seventy years of just constantly
saying this is going on, this is going on, this
is going on. We all know what you experienced at Wisconsin.
I experienced it. What we need to do is have
a plan of attack. And I think that it's what
Christopher talks about in the forward is enough is enough?
Need to get to work. And so I think the
book is a continuation of that story. But it's actually
a plan on how you can change this, and you
can change it really really fast. And to your point
on the COVID, I think, just like we had. You know,
these are catastrophic events. So I don't want to minimalize
the catastrophe of a government taking away all our freedoms
in a so called declared emergency or what happened on
October seventh in Israel. But a silver lining, if there
could be one. In COVID, parents saw, wait a second,
I cannot believe what I'm hearing my kids being taught
on these zoom calls, and it radically changed K twelve education.
And in October seventh we saw these presidents and these
administrations actually defending students being assaulted and battered because of
who they were, and that was okay. And the rhetoric
and the testimony before Congress. I think people are like,
oh my gosh, this is gotten out of control. So
both of those I think COVID in K twelve October seventh,
Higher ED a perfect example of COVID. I mean of
Higher ED is is Bill Ackman. This is a guy
who is donating to aiding to Obama. He graduated from Harvard,
He had a child at Harvard who graduated from Harvard,
and he goes and he figures out real fast, Hey,
this DEIB. They don't just call a DEI diversity equity inclusion.
They added belonging, the irony of the titles that I mean,
they're fantastic, the progressive left of choosing words that we
all will agree with and sound great, and they long
and U seeing them to do the exact opposite. The
only people who belonged in there were if you were
in the club. I always quote George Rowell from My
Animal Farm, all of us are equal. I want everyone
to know we're all equal, but some more equal than others.
And we'll let you know who that is. And that's
really what DEI be, whatever you want to call it.
And the acmens of the world everyone, because of the
October seventh, just catastrophic event, had the veil ripped off,
that this indoctrination on university campuses has hit a level
of national secure already. Arguably, Yeah, no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I just think about what we have
gone through, particularly over the last several years in this country.
You know, I spoke with some leaders in the Moms
for Liberty movement this week, and we were talking about
some of the recent successes they've had, and certainly with
this Sea change election, those elections are those, you know,
successes are very clear becoming much more clear. But they
were talking about the early days of their movement and
what a lonely space it was. You know, there were
a lot of parents in this country going through exactly
what we were just talking about, seeing their kids being
indoctrinated live on zoom and you know, just didn't know
what to do. Shocked, stunned, but you know, paralyzed if
you will not to, not willing to or couldn't take
action because they were worried about the repercussions from burial
and left. But much has changed. You too, were a
lonely warrior when you began this in many respects. Let's
talk a little bit about what the times were like
when you started your campaign.
Speaker 2: Well to your point, obviously, Moms for Liberty was founded
in Florida, and all those folks are good friends. In fact,
most of them were school board members in those early days.
And then they got their veil ripped off way early
because they saw, hey, wait a second, how is this
coming Before I'm not approving any of this stuff, but
they were minorities because the school boards are just dominated
by the teachers Union. You know, basically, get on a
school board anywhere in this country. You go into you
graduate as a teacher from a College of Education, so
you've already been indoctrinated there. You go in and you teach,
and you join the teachers union, and you spend ten
years doing whatever the teachers Union really wants or advocates for,
and then they say, hey, why don't you run for
school board and they help you get elected to school board,
and then you spend the next of your time and
abeyance to the teachers Union. And that's really the you know,
school boards, that's the story, that's the mo And then
every now and then you get a Tiffany Justice, a
Tina Daskovich, you know, they get on these school boards
and they're like, wait a second, this is this is
unheard of. And then they pulled off and they started
this wonderful grassroots movement. So I was with them throughout
that entire process, and there were some of our greatest
advocates for all of the reforms that we were doing
on the state level under Governor DeSantis. They were just
an amazing force djure and to the point that it
went national and has become this phenomenal group. And it's
no different. And during that time of COVID and opening
up schools and empowering parents that they were so helpful with.
You know, we opened up schools all we said, Matt
was in COVID. We did an emergency order that said,
you must this is public, taxpayer funded institutions. You must
open up and have a seat for any child or
student who wants to be in that classroom. And you
would have thought we had people doing mock grave sites
out in front of the department. We had protests, we
had lawsuits. Now they've all found religion in the sense
that you know, the head of the teachers and Randy
Wingarden says, we were demanding schools being opened in March
of twenty twenty, and let's said, well, you sued me
in July of twenty twenty to not do it, so
I don't react the case. But it's the same thing
with New College. You know, New College. We came down
and that's why one of the ideas I have in
the first one I talk about in chapter nine is
Leadership is everything. If Governor DeSantis doesn't say we're taking
over this, we're not allowing in doctrination factories. Any appoints
an amazing group of leaders, and those leaders are just
they've been tested by fire. They're not going to be
pushed around or bullied. They know exactly what we need
to do. And then they bought me on to be
on the ground. And again it's a firestorm. You know,
the school was sixty three years old, Matt. We hadn't
had a single faculty grievance. I think we're on faculty
grievance number fourteen. We had litigation from federal government, litigation
in the state government, auditors from the Department of Education,
inquiries from the sacks of creditors. They came at us
with sixty right now we count them, but about sixty
four different legal machinations and we haven't lost one of
them because at the end of but that's what they do,
that's how they fight, and you have to. I think
I was talking to Christopherufoon and I was saying that
you know more than anything. I think the book is
about fighting and if you fight and you can prove
you can do it. At a public liberal arts institution.
You can do this anywhere, And I think that's what
has them so frightened about a school that's got eight
hundred kids or eight hundred students, because if we can
do it at New College, you can do it at
every university in the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really have written the blueprint for it. You know,
Florida was in many ways at the vanguard of the
successes that we're talking about, first and foremost the liberty
successes of just opening up schools, of you know, making
sure that the powers that be weren't able to control
absolutely everything through COVID fear and you know, and let's
face it, it was easy enough for all kinds of politicians
to say, this is too big. We're just going to
have to trust all of the experts. We found out
what that god is, of course, but you've kind of
described this. But why was Florida on the leading edge
of fighting back against this historic incursion on liberty?
Speaker 2: One? It goes to that point again, it's just leadership.
But here's what we did. You know, it's funny how
the progressive left gaslight us for what they claim we're
not doing when they're the ones that aren't doing it.
A perfect example is how many times have we heard,
you know, follow the science, follow the science. You guys
are ignoring the science. Who ignored the science from top
to bottom in COVID where the progressive left, it's the
Gavin Nussoms, it's the Randy Winegartens, it's the talking heads,
it's the Anthony Fougis. They ignored the science. What we
did as soon as it was like middle of February
and it was starting to explode in China, in Wulan,
and I immediately got, you know, our staff together. I said, hey,
I want one or two of our best guys. I
want them to research every single thing every day, scour
any study, any outbreak, any news of what is happening
on COVID. The governor did the you know, the governor
put together a whole force. He put one of his
staffers in charge of it. And what we did was
intensely study the data over and over and over every
aspect of it. I was on phone calls with epidemiologists
from SWE, I was on phone checking on outbreaks in Israel.
We called everybody and talked to everybody, and the governor
was just you know, if he has a multiple uh
spidey senses. One of his is his ability to just
read that data and see the trends. And and then
what happened is we got with the right people. You know,
Scott Atless, you know, was bought into the White House.
We talked because now we're getting sued on the opening
of schools. Then he hooked us up with Jay Botichara,
and Jay Bodichara helped write our affidavit defending our right
to open up the scientific reasoning for opening up schools.
But we just followed the data. And when you looked
at the data, you knew that when it came to
school children, there wasn't a uh any kind of extravagant
or even a real threat to life for health. Uh,
it was they they definitely, and they weren't as much
of a They weren't super spreaders. It was there weren't
as viralent and so okay, well, you know, we lost
I think twenty kids the year before to the seasonal flu,
and we knew from looking at the data, we're not
going to and we didn't shut down schools for the
seasonal flu. And we also knew the ramifications of shutting
down school we saw in the data from schools that
immediately did that spikes and suicides, spikes in drug use,
spikes in isolation and depression and anxiety. You every single
metric didn't go up one percent, two percent, or ten percent.
They were going up in the hundreds of percent. It
was far, far riskier for our school children to have
schools closed than to have them opened. And that was
all scientific and all from the data. In fact, when
Gavin Newsom and Randy Weingarten tweeted, and I want to say,
in the last six months, they're like, you know, we
all thought, you know, Hindsight's twenty twenty was Gavenusom. You
know we didn't know what we didn't know. And it's like, no,
you did. You did not care about the science. You
didn't care about the data. It was a moment of
control and to affect people's lives for your agenda, and
you seize it and don't try to pretend that the
scientific data wasn't there because we saw it and we
opened up schools.
Speaker 1: Well, you knew, you knew, Richard, I mean you and
others in Florida. You were public officials. Gavin Newsom's a
public official. You know, the governor of New York who
was whose policies were killing elderly people and senior citizens
in nursing homes because of these lockdown sort of practices.
They all knew, but you knew again that the dangers
with COVID for young people were significantly less than all
of the things that we've seen. We're paying as a
society for those lockdown practices, those practices that we saw
from the so called leading by the so called experts,
and we found that so much of that has just
been absolute lies. Somebody has got to be held accountable.
But while you were going through this, of course you heard,
as you said, you have the protesters out there, you
had stinging criticism from the left and the accomplished media.
How did you deal with all of them?
Speaker 2: You just stay focused. You know, there's a chapter in
the book when it comes to New College skipping from
COVID back to and I talk about COVID at length
in the book, just because it is a parallel universe
when you're dealing with the media and to your point,
the lies and how you combat that. But you know,
I have a chapter in the book I call it
Barking Dogs, and I stole it from Winston Churchill, and
his point was, if you know what the mission is,
the mission is what did the governor care about? What
did I care about? We cared about the school children.
We cared about the health and safety of people of
our state. We cared about printal rights. And those were
the things. That's what we were driving down the road saying,
we want to get these kids a world class education,
we want to keep them safe, we want to empower parents,
and so everything on the side of the road. Uh,
you know, Churchill would say, if you're going to stop
your car on the way to that great destination, which
is the right destination, and kick every barking dog, you're
never getting there. And so I think one thing that
the governor does does very well that we did very well,
where we never stopped the car for the marking dogs.
You guys can say all you want, we know, we
know the data, we studied the data, and we're going
to accomplish this. And the irony is we would have
never closed schools at all because the data was there
by you know, by the end of March, we were confident.
We took an extra spring break because that was going
on at the time, So we added a spring break
on the back or the forward for some of our
school districts, which gave us two weeks. And then we
looked at the data and we knew we were good.
And guess who really was the driving impetus of shutting
down schools and Florida just for that you know, six
week period. Were the universities, the liberal universities, the progressive universities,
the indoctrinating universities, basically, you know, all of them rust
of leftists that we're leading the charge. You know, the
whole world is coming to an end. Everyone's going to die.
We're shutting down. Kids are coming back from their spring break,
they're going to from Europe. They're going to infect the
entire campus. We're all going to die. And they shut
down universities. And when they did that, it's we were
in a position which I talked about, where now all
the superintendents, sixty seven superintendents I was on the call
with them on a daily basis, are twenty eight colleges
telling them to stay open. And they're like, you know,
the local university right next to me just closed, and
they said it's a health and safety issue and kids
could die. Now. I got parents, you know, lining the doors,
saying why are we leaving K twelve schools open? Why
are we leaving the college community colleges and the colleges open?
And really they would just put us in a rock
and a hard place, and so I said, you know what,
let's now. What we had to do is basically convince
the Floridian public that hey, we know the data, we
know the safety issues, we know the damages of closing.
And we immediately opened six weeks later for summer school,
and then we also opened in the fall too. But
it was led by the universities. If the universities didn't
do their progressive left this is, you know, unscientific belief
that this was going to be the end of the
world and close, we would have never shut down at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the people of Florida were definitely behind you,
as the results of the subsequent elections would show. They
got it, and they got it before the so called
experts got it as well.
Speaker 3: If you don't have great credit credit, Trump policy, cancel
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Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between
politics and the economy and how it.
Speaker 2: Affects your wile.
Speaker 3: Trump and Bernie, you want to collaborate on capping credit
card interest rates, but credit card dead as a non
recourse loan. They can't repossess your dinner or your vacation.
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out Watched Out on Wall Street podcast with Christmercowski
on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Richard Gorker, and former Speaker of
the Florida House, the Sunshine State's former education Commissioner, and
now president of the New College of Florida. His new books,
Storming the Ivory Tower, How a Florida College Became Round Zero,
and the Struggle to take Back Our Campuses is a
first hand account of how he successfully took on powerful
progressive interest groups, broke their monopoly, and paved the way
for higher education reform across America. Let's get to the
cultural aspects of this now, Because you were were you
there's the term happy warrior. It seems to me you
were a happy warrior taking on the identity politics that's
so entrenched in our institutions of higher education and now
in our public rules in particular, did you go into
the battle against critical race theory and you know safe spaces,
you know the lefts silencing and killing a free speech
all of that. Did you go into that as a
happy warrior?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean war, war, war as hell, I mean
any kind of I mean, and I'm gonna tell you
that that was in reference to actual people physically dying.
You know, I've never really felt like I was going
to physically die, so so I don't mean to say it,
you know, to rob from the honor of our fallen
soldiers in any sense. But what I'm saying is it's
never comfortable. But but you know you're doing something, you know,
as we say, that is true and good and beautiful
and it's and it's we have an exceptional country with
an amazing history, and it needs it needs fighting for,
it needs preserving. And so when you have these types
of movements that are quasi again, the these are strong words.
I'm a lawyer, but our quasi treeson treason is I
always say, what's more threat threatening? Is it? Where we at? Threat?
Is it?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Russia? Is it? China? Is it radical jihatism. No, The
biggest threat to our country is our educational system has
failed for sixty or seventy years, engaged in this indoctrination
to the point that people don't believe in a in
a free market, people don't believe they believe in socialistic
countries should be the way in the future for America.
And it's and we have to protect it. We have
to fight back and protect it. And it starts in education.
It starts from birth to universities. We have to get
education right. And they've become for all intents and purposes
and doctrination factories for way too long. And so it's
never easy, Matt. It's not something you wake up and say, Okay,
I can't wait for the two more lawsuits they're coming
my way, or whatever it might be. But you know
you're doing something that is so vitally important for the
few sure of our country, let alone for the lives
of our citizens.
Speaker 1: I think you touched upon it. There's a quote that
is often wrongly attributed to Abraham Lincoln. He has said
things similar to this, but the direct quote is America
will never be destroyed from the outside if we falter
and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
That's something I think that a lot of Americans have
awakened to. You want to talk about woke.
Speaker 3: A lot of.
Speaker 1: Americans got woke about the woke movement in America and
what it is fundamentally doing to tear down the foundational
or to strike at the foundational premises of this exceptional nation,
this glorious city on the hill, as Ronald Reagan talked about.
But yeah, I think you're absolutely right, and I think
that's why a lot of Americans voted the way they did.
They saw really very serious, if not an existential threat
to this republic and for all it stands for now
reading the results of this election, are you at all
concerned of complacency? Because it's happened so often, and you know,
the thought that well, we won, victory is ours and
you know that's where the left really really lurks in
the shadows of complacency. Are you concerned about that?
Speaker 2: You know? And I'll add to your point. I like
it a lot, Matt, where you're quoting Lincoln and we
say that too, is you know, you look at philosophers
of any ilk, at any different time, and they'll all
say something along the lines of show me how you're
educating your youth, and I'll tell you the future of
your country because it's that transparent, that it's that relatable.
Or you know, even Ben Franklin when he comes out
and they go, what kind of government did you go?
And he says, a republic if you can keep it,
meaning have to educate people. Well, it's not a natural
thing to have for two hundred and fifty years a
country that's self governing if people don't understand what it
takes to live and be a part of a self
governing society. And so I think those are really great
points that you made there. But I'm not fearful at all.
I think the early signs, the early rhetoric from President Trump,
his selections, he's choosing people who are absolute disruptors. He's
choosing people who are nowhere to go know that philosophy
that's so important, have the courage to get there and
live kind of by damn the consequences, full speed ahead.
And so I think it's going to I think he's
going to go in. I think he's going to blow
up the Department of Education from the top to the bottom.
I think he's going to gut it, and just like
we did in Florida, I think he's going to use
that power of the purse, use the power of the
federal government to go in there and bring the Gavin Newsom's,
the Hocals, the Whitmyer's, all of those who are saying
we're going to stand up and fight them. They're well,
you're not going to get billions of dollars until you
end the indoctrination. You're not going to get these billions
of dollars until DEI is gone, and these are these
absolutely horrendous ideologies are taken out, and that the coursework
is balanced and all of these great things. I think
he's going to do that. And if you look at
educational history in this country during the four I would say,
during the four years of Donald Trump, where was there
anything bad regulatory past? Was there a bad policy? Was
there a bad law past? When he had the Department
of Education with Betsy Devost for that four years. The
answer is no. But in that same time, again, because
of the dominance of the union bosses at the local
level and even at the state level, how many bad policies,
regulations harassment of people who wanted to start a charter
school or or fight for essays for students or empower parents.
We're killed, stymied through statutes, through regulations, through policies, maybe
a million. And so I think President Trump gets that,
and I think his team gets it, and I think
they're going to use that power the first to go
in there and say you're going to change and eradicate
all of this to your point woke, pernicious ideologies, or
you're going to be out bands of dollars. And that's
how we did in Florida. We basically we're sort of
a microcosm for the country. You know, we're a big state.
We have our liberal counties. We have our New York's
and California's and Illinois. And basically we said to them,
you're not going to force masking of children, or we're
withholding funds. You're you're going to open up schools or
worth holding funds. And they fight, they kick, and screen,
they sue, they do all that stuff. But at the
end of the day, every single one of them was
complied and was bought to their needs, so to speak.
And I think that's what Donald Trump, if I always
Gavin Knews and Local Whitmyer and all these governors. I
think they're in for a world of hurt, because I
really do. I think he's not going to waste a
day and bringing about the education reform that saves our
country and saves our republic.
Speaker 1: I agree with you.
Speaker 2: Do you.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about the Department of Education? Do
you believe it should be disbanded?
Speaker 2: I think it needs to be gutted. I think I
don't know how that works, and I really think that's
what he means. And I think that's President Trump, because
you don't want to send it down to where the
union bosses control. You know, I talk in the book.
I'll give you a perfect example. You know, we had
the Little John's, their child's twelve middle school age was
being transgendered by the local school districts without even telling them,
and they had quote unquote the right not to tell them,
according to the you know, the superintendent's association. And it'sious atrocious,
changing her name, allowing her on overnight school trips to
stay in you know, boys rooms, just insane behavior. Now
where she abused by the federal government. Was that coming
down from the federal government. No that this is where
the union bosses at that school board level and at
that local of onun the state level have so much
control the same. There's another family I talked about called
the Preses, and their child tried to commit suicide twice,
and it was the local districts who said, we don't
need to tell them. They don't they don't have that right.
We don't need to, we don't need to. We're in
good stead. You can't send And really, where is the
teachers union right now? I wear these union bosses screaming,
please don't do that, Please don't send you know, close
it and send all the money down to the state
and locals. They're not saying there's crickets. I think that's
exactly what they want. I think President Trump knows it,
and I think what he's going to do is blow
up the department. You got to blow up the department,
send in a seal team, take over that old department,
and then use that power or the purse to bring
about these massive changes. Massive changes to our creditors, massive
changes to course curriculum, massive changes to colleges of education,
massive changes to DEI, critical gender theory. All of those
things can be effectuated and changed so much faster. And
he's a return on investment guy. He's a businessman. Where
do you spend the least amount of money and get
the highest return on investment? And that's using that department
as a hammer to bring down the union dominance that
exists in too many states and in way too many
local governments.
Speaker 1: Indeed, I think President Electrump his selections so far, his
nominees or cabinet post also speak to his focus. And
I'm very glad to see this and understand why he
is so focused on it. But his focus on the
First Amendment on speech, free speech, which has been under
absolute assault in this country for some time, but it
just went to an entirely different level under the current regime,
the Biden Harris regime. We have seen this in myriate examples,
but in particular, we have seen this on college campuses.
You have been on the front lines of fighting that
as well in your previous professional life, as well as
where you stand now as a president of the college.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another great example. I mean, all we talked about,
all the governor talked about, all Christopher Ruffo talked about,
was bringing about academic real academic freedom in real free speech.
Scott Outless. I opened the book and end the book
with the story of Scott Outless being our first commencement speaker,
where he was talking and praising the students for graduating
and surviving COVID and living through that kind of catastrophe
and talking about free speech and academic freedom and how
it's a part the fabric of our society and it's
integral to the future of our society. And while he's
doing that, he's getting shouted down and booed and cussed that.
And it's just such the progressive left. I don't know
how many articles have been written about New College shutting
down academic freedom and free speech, when the reality is
we came and landed at New College to allow free speech,
allow academic freedom. It was it was a college so
dominated by the progressive left. They had outside groups and
I quote in the book all the words of the outsiders.
None of it was us mad. It wasn't Christopher Rufe
or me or the governor Saint. It was their students,
their alumni, outside consulting group's former presidents, that it was
a toxic culture. Most kids, the highest in the state
left after being there for a semester a year because
they identified as liberal Democrats and they weren't liberal enough,
and they got canceled, they got bullied, they got you know,
literally chastise assaulted, all of those different things because there
was no free speech, there was no academic freedom, and
we come in and champion that, and they basically say
we're the ones taking it away when it was a
campus that had none had zero. We got rid of
DEI and it was a campus that had almost zero diversity,
it had zero uh inclusion. I mean it was it was.
It was a country club a progressive left people. If
you googled, hey, I'm a leftist or you know LGBTQ,
and I want to go to a campus where it's
it's just one ideology and one whatever new college came up,
it would be one of the first colleges it would
come up. We came in and said, no, we're going
to have balance, we're gonna have William F. Buckley's and
we're gonna have gorbidels, we're going to have great debates,
we're gonna have total freedom, civil discourse. And yet every
article chronicles Higher Ed inside Higher Ed. That's why I
dedicated the book to the media, because it's like, guys.
Without you, guys, not one chapter of this book would
be possible because everything you write to your point earlier
is just lies and uh and so yeah, it's the
fight for free speech is real though, and again it's
something has to be done on a day to day basis.
You can't relax for a moment.
Speaker 1: No doubt about it. But listen, they use the language
the leftists and Marxists try to use. That's the first
thing they go after, the language. They can control the language,
they control the message, they control the narrative, and let's
face it, they have done so quite successfully in a
lot of sectors of society for some time. This pushback,
this fight back is coming. I mean, take for example,
how they've tried to invoke the old classical liberal fight
against banning of books. What they're defending when they're accusing
school districts of banning books is that school districts are
taking pornography out of elementary schools. And that's a ridiculous
place to be in America. And I think a lot
of Americans so that and see that. Now, final question
for you, as we move forward in this most important battle,
do you see more parents getting involved because that was
that was such a critical element to this revolution, if
you will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I think that's probably. You couldn't ask
for a better proof of that than the November election.
I think that's parents from the top down, it's business people,
because this isn't just an infect universities. This isn't this
infected boardrooms, corporate, government buildings, affected everywhere. And I think
you had parents and everyone basically say enough is enough.
And that's really part of the reason I wrote the
book was because everyone gets the frustration. Everyone can see
what the problem is. Everyone knows that problem has existed
for a long time, but how do we fight? And
so what we wrote was basically, here is the fix.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: You know, if anyone just grabs the book and reads
just chapter nine, I very quickly synthesize nine things that
you have to do. You should demand as a parent
at your child school, you should demand in the K
twelve arena. These things have to happen. And if you
do them and you demand them, you'll get them, and
when you get them, you'll transform education. That's really what
we were trying to accomplish with the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really saw some exceptional people at the grassroots level.
And I know, as you note in the book and
we talked about on this podcast, you worked with them.
Speaker 2: You were.
Speaker 1: Both, i think, on all sides, receiving support and comfort
during some very difficult battles. And I think it's because
you had good people by your side, and you had
a vision and a mission, and like you said, you
weren't going to stop to kick both dogs. You are
going to get this done. And that's exactly what it
seems to me happened in Florida and what is taking
shape thankfully across this country. Thank you so much for
joining us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Really enjoy it, Matt.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me absolutely our guest today once again,
and we'd like to thank our guest.
Speaker 2: Today is Richard Corkoran.
Speaker 1: He is a former Speaker of the Florida House, the
Sunshine State's former education commissioner, and now president of New
College of Florida. His new book, Storming the Ivory Tower,
How a Florida college became ground zero in the struggle
to take back our campus. Is you've been listening to
another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle,
senior correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, say lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.
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