Over the last year, you may have heard about an exciting new concept: Schools and departments of Civic Thought.
These emerging institutions are academic units at public universities explicitly dedicated to bringing civic education into spaces of higher learning. Across the country, more and more state legislatures are establishing these Schools of Civic Thought, such as the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida or the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, to funnel new resources into the traditional liberal arts at public colleges and universities.
In other words, there’s a renaissance underway in higher education – and the media is taking note.
This August, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board hailed one of the newest Schools of Civic Thought, the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and its new director, Jed Atkins. They described its commitment “to free expression” as a “bright spot for traditional liberal education.”
In a letter to an editor the WSJ published shortly after the initial piece, I wrote that these public institutions “are reclaiming their civic missions and helping a new generation of college students to prepare for the responsibilities of leadership in our free society. In a time when higher education seems adrift, these emerging programs offer reasons for hope.” Schools of Civic Thought are giving us plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future of education.
Of course, it isn’t just the Journal that has noticed this growing renaissance. In September’s issue of National Review, Buckley Fellow Kayla Bartsch profiled one of the most outstanding Schools of Civic Thought: the Hamilton Center at UF. “As an independent academic unit, the center has the ability to design its own curricula and manage its own tenure appointments,” she noted. “This kind of institutional independence is key to building and maintaining an atmosphere of freethinking.”
JMC is proud to host one of this renaissance’s pioneers, Paul O. Carrese, as a senior fellow. He provides vital guidance and advice to the directors of these academic units. Most recently, he wrote the lead essay in a Law & Liberty Forum about how we can restore American higher education in the aftermath not only of last year’s campus chaos, but also decades of decay in traditional academic disciplines. Leading scholars James Hankins, Michael Poliakoff, and J. Michael Hoffpauir wrote thoughtful responses well worth a read.
Of course, this flurry of coverage in recent months is only the tip of the iceberg. Even more state legislatures are looking into establishing their own Schools of Civic Thought, and established programs are emerging as hubs for innovation and reform—they’re quickly becoming a source for new ideas and practices on the higher education landscape. It is an exciting time for civics reform in higher education, and I am so proud of the role the Jack Miller Center is playing in this renaissance.
Our work – and the work of all these Schools of Civic Thought – would not be possible without your support.
If you would like to invest in talent pipelines for scholars and leaders in new Schools of Civic Thought or help to build the mission-critical leadership support infrastructure for these programs, please join us with your financial support today. You can give online here, or mail your check to:
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Jack Miller Center
3 Bala Plaza West, Suite 401
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
Thank you!
Sincerely,
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Hans Zeiger
President, The Jack Miller Center
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Further reading:
- "Liberal Thought Returns to Campus," The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2024
- "Radical Scholarship at the University of Florida," Kayla Bartsch, National Review, August 22, 2024
- "The Restoration of Higher Learning," Paul O. Carrese, Law & Liberty, September 2, 2024
- "Learning Civics from History," James Hankins, Law & Liberty, September 11, 2024
- "Reviving the Study of American Government," Michael B. Poliakoff, Law & Liberty, September 18
- "A Liberal and Civic Education for All," J. Michael Hoffpauir, Law & Liberty, September 25
- "Restoring a Higher Civics in America’s Universities," Paul O. Carrese, Law & Liberty, September 30, 2024
- "UNC Tries to Create a ‘Free-Speech Culture,’" Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2024
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The Jack Miller Center is an educational venture committed to solving the crisis of uninformed citizenship by teaching America’s founding principles and history. We aim to expand the pipeline of scholars dedicated to teaching America’s founding principles and history, to seed and cultivate college campus centers for the study of the American political tradition, and to advance the teaching of American citizenship in K-12 schools centered around our history and foundational texts.
To learn more about our work, visit jackmillercenter.org.
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