A Very Good Thing in Academe

Commentary

Over the months, I have grumbled about one bad trend in higher education after another, from grade inflation to general education to cost. There is, however, a very good thing happening on many campuses at the present time, some three dozen, in fact, and they deserve notice and praise.

At public universities from Florida to Arizona, Texas to Ohio, academic units have opened that in one way or another focus on the foundations of the American republic. That’s the advent, and the curricula of them prove the benefit. They are not extra-curricular add-ons or off-campus organizations open to students of a particular persuasion or politics. No, they are fully integrated into the institution. They have their own professors and undergraduate programs (a few run graduate programs as well). They offer courses on ancient ideas of democracy, the Revolution and the Founding, the Constitution and crucial Supreme Court decisions, profiles in American leadership, etc.

At the Alexander Hamilton Center at the University of Florida, renowned historian Allen Guelzo teaches students about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, the greatest crisis in our long history.

The Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi hosts reading groups and has an interdisciplinary minor (not yet a major) in freedom studies.

The School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin covers the English constitutional history and Enlightenment thinkers Locke and Montesquieu. The School of Economic and Civic Thought at Arizona State University in Tempe has a course on “Debating Capitalism” that has students read Aristotle, the Apostles, Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx. At the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, students can take “Religion, Liberty, and the Law,” a survey of church–state relations over time. There is much, much more.

Last year, the Ohio Legislature approved five centers of “intellectual diversity” in the state, housed at The Ohio State University in Columbus, the University of Toledo, Miami University, Cleveland State, and Wright State. Some have criticized these and other projects as an imposition of conservative ideology, but a glance at the courses offered in Ohio and elsewhere shows that the curricula look like mainstream liberal education. I’m at Ohio State’s initiative this semester, the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society. It’s a habitat that invites students of all kinds, the only stipulation being a curiosity about the nature and history of the country they occupy. One course on offer this spring examines the “pursuit of happiness” as an “inalienable right,” a topic broached through classical and modern thinkers, not just the Founders.

Another one covers love and friendship with a range of ancient and modern readings. Among the films shown on movie night are “Legally Blonde” and “All the President’s Men.” Danielle Allen, the distinguished Harvard professor and (I would say) center-left leader of national projects of civics education, spoke here last month.

This is to say that what students get at these centers is not a narrow vision of the American mores and Western heritage. Rather, they get the full breadth of civic thought and deed, serious books, and formative ideas. While the higher education curriculum outside the requirements of the major all too often appears in American universities a gigantic cafeteria line—a little of this, a dish of that—the Chase Center and the rest plant in students’ heads the ideas that inspired our statesmen, the events that shaped and advanced our nation, the people (good and bad) who made up what was once called the National Character. They focus on the essential, the enduring, the profound, and the brilliant.

More centers are on the way in Iowa, West Virginia, and South Carolina. (Disclosure: I am involved in the Iowa initiative.)

I predict they will thrive. I’ve met many of the leaders of these centers, and they impress me as models of liberal education and academic freedom. We need them badly. It is agreed on all sides, right and left, that civic understanding among millennials and Gen Z is poor. The basics of American citizenship, the First Amendment, the structure of government, and the high points of U.S. history are lacking. We see the results every time we check into X and begin scrolling, where illiberal notions and bad behavior are boastful and blatant.

Parents about to send their kids to college should check the civic centers out. They’re new, and they want students. These havens of civic discourse and civil debate are praiseworthy efforts to bring the young to the American way.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.