Transformative Legislation for Higher Education

American higher education has traveled far down a dangerous path. Decades ago, our colleges and universities repudiated the study of the Western tradition. Yet it was the West that birthed the academy’s highest aspiration—the free search for truth. In abandoning the West, our educational institutions made it impossible to comprehend the structure and rationale of our system of government, as well as the nature and meaning of our most central cultural traditions, including liberal education itself. Since that repudiation of the West, free speech on campus has been under assault. And since 2020, the illiberal spirits that choked off freedom on campus for decades have poured into the bloodstream of society at large, turning us against one another and ourselves.

It has seemed next to impossible to remedy this situation. Insulated from outside influence by academic freedom, illiberal academics abused the tenure system to entrench a political and intellectual monopoly. Protections designed to nurture a marketplace of ideas have been converted into xxxxxxs of orthodoxy. How can we break this monopoly without destroying the very principles of freedom that we hope to restore?

There is a way. The General Education Act (GEA) model legislation I co-authored with Jenna Robinson, the president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, and David Randall, the director of research at the National Association of Scholars, will transform public higher education in any state that draws upon its method.