Moderator: Douglas Sprei, Vice President of Multimedia & Campus Partnerships, ACTA.

Panelists: Ilana Redstone, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Faculty Director of the Mill Institute at the University of Austin; Pamela Paresky, Senior Research Fellow, Network Contagion Research Institute; and Molly Brigid McGrath, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University.

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The focus of this panel is the Enlightenment, a historical period that saw the birth of modern science, the creation of free markets, and the Founding of the United States of America. Our panelists will consider what made this flowering of intellectual freedom and progress possible, how it influences us today, and whether we are losing the Enlightenment values that gave rise to the modern world.

Moderator: Bradley Jackson, Vice President of Policy, ACTA.

Panelists: Alan Charles Kors, Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of European History, University of Pennsylvania; Thomas Merrill, Associate Professor in the Department of Government, American University; and Peter McNamara, Professor of Practice, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University.

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The legislation defines several important goals for the Hamilton Center at the intersection of liberal and civic education. Its central mission is “to support teaching and research concerning the ideas, traditions, and texts” of Western Civilization and the American political order. The center will educate Florida’s brightest students about the “great debates of Western civilization,” fostering an awareness of the wider intellectual and historical backdrop against which our nation was founded. 

Honest, critical engagement with Founding principles and the western intellectual tradition will also advance a practical purpose: to prepare students for “responsible leadership and informed citizenship” in a self-governing republic. In addition to curricular offerings, the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education will provide community-wide programming and training related to “the values of open inquiry and civil discourse”—values that are desperately needed in a pluralistic democracy and in every institution of higher learning. 

ACTA welcomes this initiative as a constructive response to our country’s urgent crisis of civic illiteracy. As former Harvard University president Derek Bok has argued, our great universities have a responsibility to offer more thoughtful and robust civic education. In the same spirit, James Madison wrote that “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge . . . is the only guardian of true liberty.” This bipartisan move by Florida’s lawmakers marks a commitment to a critically important effort.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org
PHONE: (260) 609-3486

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Part of the problem is that, according to a 2019 survey by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a mere 18 percent of colleges require coursework in U.S. history and government. It isn’t just that civics are being taught poorly—it’s that they’re hardly being taught at all.

That lack of focus on America presents a notable problem in some academic fields. In strategic studies, net assessment—the art of comparing the strengths of two adversarial states—is of utmost importance, rooted in Thucydides and popularized by Sun Tzu’s quip, “Know thyself and know thy enemy, and you will not be defeated in a hundred battles.” But net assessment should begin not simply by assessing one’s hard power capabilities, but rather by a thorough understanding of oneself.

The little instruction in American government that graduate students have received forces them to learn about civics outside the classroom. Their education has taught them to craft foreign policy solely through a geopolitical understanding of the world, omitting domestic trends and political factions that affect the formulation of policy.

International relations departments offer a product lacking something fundamental.

Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. Prospective U.S. strategists should study American politics, history, and civics so they understand American exceptionalism and its tremendous effect on U.S. foreign policy. Americans have a romantic view of themselves that they bring to engagements with the world. Throughout U.S. history, American statesmen have used such rhetoric to justify foreign interventions and they will continue to do so.

As Samuel Huntington remarks in The Soldier and the State, Americans hate war but love a crusade precisely because of their romantic self-perception.

Without understanding the roots of that romanticism, policymakers and strategists can’t make decisions that garner the support of the American people, a necessary ingredient for them to succeed. Instead, they may advocate policies that only a minority would support.

Primary sources in which statesmen, intellectuals, and leaders have harnessed this romanticism are a good place to start to understand America. The Federalist Papers, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are a few foundational texts that every strategist should study. This corrective would enhance the existing international relations canon, which includes luminaries like Thucydides, Clausewitz, and Mahan.

No less important is the history of the United States—both its national and regional history. The coasts, the Midwest, and the South are all unique in their politics and attitudes toward foreign policy. Understanding these differences and their roots is crucial for getting the approval of the American people.

International relations programs do a poor job of teaching how the American people understand foreign policy. Talk of “realist” and “liberal” statecraft has little practical value when students don’t know the challenges of getting the American people on board with each school.

Henry Kissinger notes that problem in his book Diplomacy. He writes that the challenge of Richard Nixon’s “realist” administration was that it governed a liberal people who rejected realpolitik, be it good strategy or not.

Regional and national quirks will also remind students that America is not Europe. As Kissinger notes, the American understanding of national interest is fundamentally different from the European one and goes beyond material interest and security. Material self-interest is never enough to get Americans to rally behind a foreign policy. Rather, they seek a compromise among their values, material interests, and security. Better yet, they look for a foreign policy that encompasses all of their priorities.

Domestic forces undoubtedly shape U.S. foreign policy. Vietnam and Iraq are cautionary tales for how quickly the American people can turn on a war. But interventions in Cuba, the two World Wars, and Iraq serve as reminders that Americans support foreign interventions out of romantic dedication to American ideals and their objection to tyranny.

American foreign policy cannot be divorced from American history. Harry Truman sparred with Henry Wallace over foreign affairs as president, while his successor Dwight Eisenhower did the same with Robert Taft. As the Right and the Left are once again battling with their own over foreign engagements and America’s global role, all sides are rehashing old arguments. Understanding the policy battles of the past is critical knowledge for international relations students.

Conversely, America’s role abroad has had an extraordinary influence on its domestic affairs. The success of the Civil Rights Movement was mainly due to the heroic leadership of the movement’s leaders, but another factor was that American statesmen needed to deny the Soviets their whataboutism when they cited injustices in the American South as justification for their injustices in the gulag.

To hone their craft better, would-be practitioners should not overlook the domestic side of foreign policymaking, especially Congress’s role in foreign affairs and its shared authority with the president over the military.

The international relations field spends so much time studying other countries that it often omits the more important work of studying America.

Those who will one day lead U.S. foreign policy should know what sets this country apart: The zealous commitment to natural rights and self-government that is central to American identity.

American universities do their students and the American people a disservice by not stressing America’s exceptional nature, a valuable tool of foreign policy. Other nations appreciate the exceptionalism of America and look up to it, even when our foreign policy fails to live up to our ideals.

No other than Barack Obama’s favorite phrase was “we are better than this,” appealing to the better angels that have made this country exceptional. He often said that his story was only possible in this country because he had studied American civics and understood America’s uniqueness.

“To be an American is an ideal, while to be a Frenchman is a fact,” the political scientist Carl J. Friedrich said. Now that the holiday from history is over and the United States has retooled its statecraft for an era of great power competition, American strategists need to understand the American ideal as well as our adversaries. This means discarding policies that haven’t worked and doubling down on those that have. But what should not get lost in the shuffle is civics so that students know what America is all about.

Your country is the United States, Secretary of State George Shultz repeatedly reminded new ambassadors. International relations scholars must bear this in mind as they educate the next generation of strategists. Reviving American civics will help revive American foreign policy.

Shay Khatiri is a foreign affairs columnist and a graduate student in Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.

Daniel J. Samet is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Texas at Austin.

The original source can be found here»

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However, it is not just free speech that is under question—the very core of educational institutions is in jeopardy. The disappearance of a rigorous liberal arts curriculum has contributed to the decline of the free exchange of ideas on college and university campuses today. Renewing the study of the liberal arts is essential to resolving the free speech crisis.

Founded on the medieval European university model, the initial concept of the liberal arts was based upon the trivium and quadrivium. By studying the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy), students developed foundational knowledge and critical thinking abilities. Current liberal arts curricula include literature, languages, philosophy, mathematics, history, and science. The combination of these studies, according to one scholar, “contribute to the formation and ordering of the soul.”

The liberal arts tradition, derived from the Latin phrase liberalis ars (“free art or principled practice”), would become the foundation of the curriculum as colleges and universities sprouted across the United States, including Harvard University, the College of William & Mary, and Yale University.

Thomas Jefferson, founder of the University of Virginia, emphasized the importance of the trivium and quadrivium. In his 1818 Report of the Board of Commissioners, he explained the goal of higher education to cultivate well-informed citizens: “to improve by reading, his morals and faculties. To understand his duties to his neighbours, & country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either. . . . And, in general, to observe with intelligence & faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.” With these goals in mind, President Jefferson proposed that the University of Virginia incorporate “reading, writing & numerical arithmetic, the elements of mensuration . . . and the outlines of geography and history” in their curricula. These subjects were to develop “the statesmen, legislators & judges, on whom public prosperity, & individual happiness are so much to depend.”

The entire landscape of higher education has changed dramatically since Thomas Jefferson’s 1818 report. Colleges and universities are facing an identity crisis. For decades, institutions such as Yale vowed to “hire the best faculty, establish strong curricula, reward teaching and research excellence, and foster a free and open marketplace of ideas.” Today, however, university education, once marked by rigorous study and deep thought, is now more often defined by the quality of dormitories and the luster of the facilities. A focus on career readiness has elevated STEM disciplines and led to budget cuts in academic departments that teach the fundamental skills which most effectively prepare students for the workplace and informed citizenship.

According to a 2019 study of 1,123 general education programs, only 32% have literature requirements, 12% require intermediate foreign language study, 18% require United States history and government, and a meager 3% require economics. If the purpose of the university is to “foster a free and open marketplace of ideas,” where are the ideas taught? If universities claim to be committed to diversity, why do so few require foreign language study—the best tool for cultural engagement? The once-robust liberal arts curriculum has been stripped and rebuilt with new requirements, such as ethnic and social justice studies. Gender studies and pop culture classes have replaced basic philosophy, economics, and writing courses.

The results of the erosion of the liberal arts are manifested in the free speech crisis. A robust liberal arts curriculum challenges students to explore diverse ideas and learn how to evaluate different perspectives, even ones they disagree with. America’s college students lack these essential skills. Students shout down and attack invited speakers with impunity, and those who claim offense at hearing opposing views demand their administration to guest speakers. Professors and teachers who promote the study of Western Civilization and its contributions to democracy and prosperity are fired for promoting “racist ideologies” and “harmful rhetoric,” with others claiming that the study of Western literature marginalizes authors of other countries and reinforces “white supremacy in our classrooms.” This “cancel culture” stifles any type of dissent, discussion, or debate and threatens to replace the culture of free expression that universities have historically defended.

It is in this hostile climate of cancel culture that the liberal arts are needed more than ever. The university was not intended to be an echo chamber of comfortable ideas and opinions. It was created for one core process: questioning. According to Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, this questioning should involve “challenging assumptions, arguments and conclusions. It calls for multiple and diverse perspectives and listening to the views of others. It requires understanding the power and limitations of arguments” and “demands an ability to rethink one’s own assumptions.” How will the views of a young, maturing adult ever develop if they are never challenged? How will the next generation of leaders learn to respectfully and graciously engage with others if their professors and fellow students cannot question them for fear of causing offense?

If the liberal arts are not quickly revived in higher education curricula, the worst is yet to come. We cannot move forward as a country without thoughtful, conscientious citizens who can question established ideas, conduct civil, well-reasoned debate, and listen respectfully to their countrymen. We need citizens that have a deep understanding of American government and history, which equips them with the knowledge to lead and inspire future generations. We need problem solvers, whose study of mathematics, science, and economics can help them tackle our nation’s most difficult problems. By renewing the study of the liberal arts, colleges and universities can once again live up to their intended purpose, forming well-rounded citizens who are prepared to serve their communities, families, and country.

Leah Schnyders is a graduate of the Heritage Foundation Academy and the American Enterprise Institute Summer Honors Program.

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Unfortunately, as of late, something has gone wrong. Recent examples suddenly abound of intolerant and vicious college-educated individuals participating in the movement to destroy American democracy. These contemporary collegiate revolutionaries do not hail from North Korea or the People’s Republic of China but from well-respected U.S. universities. How is it possible that American higher education, the envy of the modern world, has become instrumental in producing the intolerant undemocratic citizen?

For answers, The Vanishing West, a National Association of Scholars’ report, observed that in the early 1960s, 10 of the “top” 50 U.S. universities mandated a Western Civilization course; by 2011, none of these schools and only one of the 75 public universities mandated such a course. The authors also discovered that American History courses had virtually disappeared from general education requirements. Recent studies from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni confirm and alarmingly expand the findings of the NAS study. American higher education has become one of the leading culprits in the miseducation of today’s students and the corrosion of US democracy. If students are not learning about the development, strengths, and frailties of Western Civilization and the United States, then how can they nourish democracy and cultivate the requisite virtues to protect it? What are these students learning?

This fall semester, Washington & Lee University, one of America’s oldest and most distinguished universities, is offering a freshman class titled “Writing Seminar for First-Years: How to Overthrow the State,” which “places each student at the head of a popular revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow a sitting government and forge a better society” and requires a “manifesto” or an essay “rewriting history.”

Yale University has eliminated courses in art history and English literature to “decolonize” degree requirements with others colleges and universities offering courses in “The Power of Whiteness” (Providence College), “Racial Capitalism” (Williams College), “Queering God” (Swarthmore College) — not even God is exempt from a revolutionary makeover — and “How to Stage a Revolution” (MIT). The department of English at the prestigious University of Chicago has announced that it will only accept graduate applicants who solely focus on Black studies. And The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, America’s most “innovative university,” removed its dean and the work of several of its journalists simply for publishing content deemed too friendly to police.

Joseph Epstein recently argued in the Wall Street Journal that today’s college classroom resembles the “pedagogical equivalent of psychotherapy,” where teaching focuses on creating therapeutic learning spaces. To this, we should add college classrooms that resemble an engineering laboratory for revolution, where teaching focuses on transforming students into radical, violent activists. These “classrooms” are the breeding grounds of intolerance where the other, any other, who does not pledge absolute, blind allegiance to the emerging revolutionary ethos is demonized, canceled, or destroyed. Colleges are subject to this same insidious ethos with an abolitionist movement afoot seeking to erase universities along with police and prisons.

These anti-democratic and anti-educational impulses must be resisted. It is critical that the essential value of our academic institutions be unearthed and championed. To sustain our democracy, this essential value resides in a university education that explores the eternally enduring true, beautiful, and good. Freedom is beautiful and good. But the thirst for freedom must always be justly tempered with the true. To thirst for freedom without the true leads inevitably to the catastrophes, atrocities, and wickedness of Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.

American higher education must be renewed so that it can reject the revolutionary impulses that will lead to its demise. This renewal begins when universities are held accountable to provide education that is truly tolerant — that fairly considers the breadth and depth of approaches to the true, beautiful and good, and is not myopically fixated on the perspectives of the “oppressed.”

Academic institutions that support the overthrow of American democracy should be defunded. Since public monies support most of higher education, these monies should not be provided to institutions that support the overthrow of a good, albeit imperfect, society. Renewal also means the revision of academic tenure. Universities should re-envision tenure as a sphere of social responsibility to advance the well-being of our democratic way of life, not a privileged safe space to advocate for its destruction.

Lastly, American higher education must be renewed to foster the moral formation of students as human beings worthy of love, not just socially constructed bearers of identity worthy of freedom. To love these students means to teach them how to be tolerant, democratic citizens who contribute to the flourishing of one and all. Renewed upon these pillars, Americans might once again find value in higher education. Our universities and colleges, our students, and our democracy need this renewal now more than ever.

The original source can be found here»

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Often misrepresented, the liberal arts have nothing to do with simplistic political labels; they are, in fact, realms of study that lay the groundwork for most human knowledge. With a comprehensive education in the traditional arts and sciences, an individual can expect to have some applicable frame of reference for understanding almost anything. Instead of the presumptive specialization that some see as the better focus of higher education, a liberal arts curriculum provides an interdisciplinary basis that allows for exceptional adaptability, instills critical thinking and communicating skills, and emphasizes continual lifelong personal and professional improvement.

With the great upheaval we have seen this year, it helps me rest easier to see these values borne out by students I talk to at USAO. The first Oklahoma Legislature created this school in 1908 to serve a particular need. Initially a women’s college, the university has become a special destination for bright and curious students of every gender, culture and creed who value individual initiative and self-reliance, celebrate community service in their quest to become informed citizens, and strive to develop creative competence as participants in the workplace.

I have seen USAO grow in reputation due to my extraordinary teaching colleagues who provide our students with a college experience especially designed to produce these ambitious learning outcomes. We are the only Oklahoma institution to receive an “A” rating for the quality and content of our required arts and sciences core curriculum in the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s national “What Will They Learn” annual survey. Additionally, our historic campus and small class sizes create a home-like atmosphere where students can forge lifelong relationships with their peers, professors and the wider community.

The motto of this nation is frequently understood as “from the many, one,” in the sense that the multiplicity and diversity of voices in a democratic republic learn to speak as one nation. This seemingly simple phrase also neatly sums up how a firm grounding in the diverse subjects that make up the liberal arts can help one develop into a truly whole human being. I remain confident in the critical importance of this type of education for effectively securing this country’s best place in the world.

John H. Feaver is president of USAO, the state’s only public liberal arts university.

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This essay is part of RealClearPublicAffairs’s 1776 Series, which explains the major themes that define the American mind.

In declaring their independence from Great Britain, Americans famously asserted their unalienable rights. Much less conspicuously, but no less tellingly, they listed ten moral responsibilities consonant with those rights.

In announcing their political separation, they begin by acknowledging a duty to observe “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind” by stating the causes for their decision. 1). “Decent” means fitting, appropriate; the opinions of mankind are fittingly respected because human beings possess the capacity for sociality, for understanding one another, for giving reasons for their conduct. Any important public action entails the responsibility to explain oneself, to justify that action before the bar of reasoning men and women.

To justify oneself, in turn, requires Americans to state their standard of justice. That standard is unalienable natural rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To justify oneself, in turn, requires Americans to state their standard of justice. That standard is unalienable natural rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 2). Justice numbers among the four cardinal classical virtues, defined and elaborated by Plato, Cicero, and other philosophers well known to the Declaration’s signers. Just conduct consists of actions defending natural rights in a civil society; to assert those rights, to separate oneself from those who would violate them, logically entails respecting those rights in all other persons, inasmuch as “all men are created equal,” all equally entitled to enjoy their natural rights undisturbed by tyrants.

Governments that secure such rights are established by the consent of the governed. This means that consent cannot mean mere assent or willingness. It can only mean reasoned assent. 3). Reasoned assent to natural right implies a modest degree of another classical virtue, wisdom. In this case, it is what Aristotle calls “theoretical” wisdom, understanding general or abstract principles. Americans recognize their duty to understand what human nature is—not only the nature of Americans, or the English, or the French, but of human beings as such.

4). Aristotle identifies a second kind of wisdom: practical or prudential wisdom, the ability to figure out commonsense ways to secure the rights of human nature established in theory. “Prudence,” the Declaration states, “will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Long-established governments have lasted a long time for some good reasons; they have stood the test of experience, of practice. Much of the Declaration of Independence is given over to showing why the causes for which the signers owe mankind an enumeration are not light and transient. They are profound and long-lasting, and to fail to foresee their likely results would be to fail to exercise the virtue of prudence.  

5). Closely related to prudence is a third classical virtue, moderation. Like all of mankind, Americans have exhibited patience in enduring “sufferable” evils as subjects of the British empire. Only “a long train of abuses” revealing an intention by the regime of that empire to “reduce them under an absolute Despotism” gives them not only the right but also the duty to “throw off” that regime and concomitantly to frame a new order that will secure their natural rights. Both prudence and moderation justify a right to revolution and, simultaneously, the duty to found a regime that will work better in practice.

6). The fourth classical virtue is courage. Without it, wisdom, justice, and moderation by themselves will leave you high and dry. As a baseball manager once said of a rival, “Nice guys finish last.” Accordingly, Americans announce their intention to defend their rights with “manly firmness.” It should be noted that manliness in their minds had no “gender.” Abigail Adams was no less “manly” in her firmness than her husband, John. He knew that and said it. Looking back on the American Revolution, he wrote that those were times that tried women’s souls as well as those of men, and that American women had exhibited no less courage than their husbands and sons. Several decades later, gallant Tocqueville went so far as to say that America owed much of its success in self-government to “the superiority of her women” to those seen in European ballrooms and salons, where the sterner virtues had gone out of fashion.

The virtue of civility treats naturally equal human beings as equal citizens in a regime designed to give every citizen representation in government—government by consent.

7). The signers also held up the virtue of civility against barbarism, by which they didn’t mean primitiveness. They meant Machiavellianism, the intention to rule by force and fraud or, in their own words, cruelty and perfidy. By this standard, the English monarch’s policies regarding the American colonists were barbaric, however “civilized” his pomp and circumstance may have made him seem. Aristotle understands human nature to be not only rational but also political or civil. By “political,” he means the capacity to rule and be ruled in turn, as good husbands and wives do in a justly ordered household, and as citizens do among themselves. Political or civil rule contrasts with parental rule—rule over children for “their own good.” The civic equivalent of this would be a kingship, one-man or one-woman rule for the good of the subjects, often described as the “children” of the monarch. Political or civil rule also contrasts with the rule of masters over slaves, which is established, Aristotle observes, for the good of the master, not the slave. The virtue of civility treats naturally equal human beings as equal citizens in a regime designed to give every citizen representation in government—government by consent. Civility animates the regime of republicanism, which will replace British tyranny.

8). Americans also esteem a virtue less classical than Biblical—namely, humility. They have petitioned the British monarch in “humble terms.” The Bible teaches that humility is a virtue because, while God created all men equal in their humanity, they are equal before God, and under God. In Hebrew, the word for humility, anav, appears frequently in association with the greatest of all Israelite founders, Moses, the great lawgiver. Moses’s humility enables him to bring forth the Ten Commandments not as his own laws, products of his own wisdom, but as God’s laws. In describing their right to independence as established by the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, the signers of the Declaration show a similar humility. They do not strut proudly before mankind as “exceptional” Americans. They announce their intention to claim their rights on the foundation of laws seen in the nature created by God. They are not divine creators but human receivers of God’s gifts.

While petitioning the monarch in humble terms, they also appeal to the “magnanimity” of their “British brethren,” the people of Great Britain. 9). Magnanimity—literally, greatness of soul—crowns and epitomizes the classical virtues. Aristotle describes the magnanimous man as one whose soul is big enough to endure the rigors of political life without resentment, without the petty retaliation exercised by men of micropsychia, smallness of soul. The Americans understand that their action will take the British people by surprise. Britain’s mighty empire, a source of understandable national pride, will be diminished. Having given up on showing humility before the king—humility isn’t groveling—Americans ask from his people nothing less than greatness of soul. They can demand no less from themselves, as well, and accordingly hold the British people “enemies in War” but “in Peace friends.” They see that a war of independence will provoke angry passions in their own hearts against that people, even as they now feel such passions against King George and the British parliament. They vow to greet former battlefield enemies with magnanimity, once peace has been restored.

. . . [Americans] understand humility as a virtue attendant to due deference—in civil society, to a monarch insofar as he adheres to the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God; in civil society and in nature, to God and His laws, to be obeyed by peoples and monarchs, commoners and aristocrats alike.

It has never been the case that Biblical humility and classical magnanimity comport easily with one another. The signers of the Declaration of Independence pair them. They can do so because they understand humility as a virtue attendant to due deference—in civil society, to a monarch insofar as he adheres to the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God; in civil society and in nature, to God and His laws, to be obeyed by peoples and monarchs, commoners and aristocrats alike.

10). Finally, to one another the Americans pledge “our sacred Honor.” If Americans owe a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, they owe honor to one another, particularly loyalty in a great and good shared action, the establishment of just self-government in their country. They will not betray one another. They will respect the opinions of others, but in this task each will deserve the good opinion of his countrymen.

“First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” George Washington served as the exemplary American to Americans. First in war, he showed courage on the battlefield, and civic courage, after the war, when he faced down a nascent military coup. First in peace, he showed a decent respect for mankind in his Farewell Address, avoiding military alliances in Europe (then a cauldron of war) and leading his countrymen to a constitution designed to secure justice for all American citizens. He proved to them that he possessed the wisdom to establish government by consent. And he won first place in the hearts of his countrymen with his unflagging civility, his humility in reprehending any suggestion that he be made a monarch (King George never thought he could resist the temptation), and perhaps above all in his greatness of soul and sense of honor—“aristocratic” virtues he humbly placed in the service of the republicanism that Americans had fought for, and won.

In all this, Washington became a living embodiment of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, their foremost practitioner, and the example for Americans of the virtues Americans esteemed. Throughout the soul-trials of revolutionary regime change and peaceful regime-building, Washington and his fellow Americans never considered these virtues uniquely American, but rather as the shared patrimony of all human beings, under the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.

Will Morrisey is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Hillsdale College and editor of  Will Morrisey Reviews, an online book review publication. He is author of  Self-Government, The American Theme: Presidents of the Founding and Civil War(Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003).

This essay originally appeared in RealClearPublicAffairs: American Civics.

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The college campus is also one of the spaces that will be hardest to return to something resembling normalcy. Residential campuses are built to facilitate the continual engagement of dense and overlapping networks of students—studying, eating, sleeping, and recreating together in generally compact geographical spaces. They live and attend class alongside faculty, many of whom are in higher risk groups, as well as thousands of staff members who commute to campus from every neighborhood and walk of life. Few places are more susceptible to an initial outbreak, and fewer still present bigger challenges when it comes to mitigating the virus’s spread once community members start testing positive.

That leaves the sector facing “an unprecedented financial crisis,” a point acknowledged from the outset by Critical Care, a new report by the National Association of Scholars (NAS). The study also acknowledges that some kind of “bailout will be necessary”—words it cannot have been easy for NAS to write. American taxpayers have already provided $14 billion to higher education through the CARES Act, and Congress is working on new relief programs that are likely to include additional funding for the sector. NAS’s message for lawmakers, distilled to its essentials, is simple and compelling: If universities expect public money, they should concern themselves with advancing the public good.

Higher education leaders will grimace when they read those words, but concern for the common good was once a cornerstone priority graven into the mission statement of virtually every U.S. university. Peruse the founding charters of our oldest colleges, or the inaugural addresses of early presidents, and you will notice a well-nigh ubiquitous dedication to fostering civic-mindedness and developing public leaders. Many institutions, even elite privates, saw themselves (for most of their history, in fact) as essentially concerned with contributing to the betterment of country and community.

At their best, our universities advance some of our most important public goods: They cultivate a sense of common purpose among the citizenry by educating students about our country, its principles and history, and by acquainting them with our civilizational inheritance; they are centers of free thought and intellectual vitality, places that cultivate in graduates curiosity, viewpoint tolerance, and intellectual humility; and they drive the advancement of learning which supports the kind of economic growth and prosperity that made the American Century possible. Unfortunately, most universities abandoned these concerns decades ago—for reasons that NAS has labored to chronicle in several other volumes.  

Critical Care is not just calling on American universities to do better. (That would be like trying to herd cats with a feather). Rather, it is pointing legislators to an opportunity hiding in the COVID-19 crisis: With so many institutions teetering on the brink of insolvency, now is the moment to force the higher education sector to renew its commitment to core educative and research functions. By tying eligibility for public funding to the adoption of practices and policies that force campuses to deliver a better education at a better price—and in an environment that fosters intellectual vitality—the U.S. higher education system can restore its standing as the best in the world.  

Most of NAS’s recommendations are unobjectionable and long overdue. Absolutely, the next bailout should exclude institutions with endowments valued at more than $600 million. As the report notes, stimulus checks for American workers were means-tested. So why should Harvard University, with an endowment larger than many national economies ($40 billion equates to about $1.6 million per student!) be eligible for a bailout funded by taxpayers (and taxpayers yet to be born)—many of whom cannot even dream of sending their children to study in Cambridge? That it took several days of withering public criticism before Harvard’s leadership relented and announced the university would forego its $8.6 million share of the CARES Act bailout tells you everything you need to know about Harvard’s real priorities. It is no longer an institution dedicated to the education and character development of young people, but a corporation with corporate interests: to amass all the wealth, power, prestige, and influence it can. 

Another leading reason for declining confidence in higher education is that students are paying more every year, but, by all indications, they are learning less. One of the biggest drivers of rising costs is growth in administrative spending categories. NAS is right to suggest limiting eligibility for bailout funds to institutions that cut administrative spending dramatically. Their target is 50% for large colleges and universities, with “bonus relief funds” for institutions that “submit budget plans to reduce their administrative expenses by 70% or more.” Tracking this will not be easy. But it is worth the effort. ACTA’s HowCollegesSpendMoney.com, which aggregates federal data on higher education spending by functional category, is a good place to get a glimpse of the problem’s scope. Let us hope that the Department of Education is already working to formulate an ironclad definition of administrative expenses that creates incentives for higher education leaders to take a chainsaw to the bloated centers and offices that have overgrown the modern multiversity, so many of which are utterly extraneous to the university’s core purpose: the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Eligibility for relief funds can also be tied to academic rigor. NAS suggests institutions that provide academic credit for remedial courses need not apply. But they also suggest providing funds for community colleges, including “support for liberal arts instruction, which was never meant to be reserved for a wealthy elite.” That is an outstanding idea—reminiscent of the rationale for resisting pressures to turn historically black colleges and universities into narrow vocational training centers—and highly relevant to preparing students for a suddenly ultra-competitive labor market. Surveys of employers routinely show that the skills and abilities prized above all—clear and precise prose, a keen analytic mind, and the ability to learn new skills that bring value to the organization—are precisely those refined by a traditional liberal arts education. Unfortunately, precious few institutions deliver a rigorous and coherent collegiate education grounded in the traditional arts and sciences, a fact that the American Council of Trustees and Alumni underlines every year in our annual study of general education programs at over 1,100 U.S. colleges and universities.

Requiring institutions that take bailout funds to absorb 30% of the value of defaulted student loans would force them to take responsibility for what they are teaching. This is a long overdue reform, even if it will take years to implement in practice. The cohort default rate for 2016 graduates ranges from 1–2% to over 30% at the worst performing universities. Institutions graduating students who cannot pay back their loans are admitting applicants who are clearly not college-ready, forcing them to take on too much debt relative to the education they provide, or offering academic programs that are not aligned to labor market demand (and in some cases, all of the above). Universities with a financial stake in graduates’ workforce success (or failure) will pay more attention to revising their program portfolios—and to raising admission and academic standards—so that they are educating students for rewarding careers and to succeed in a challenging job market. 

The third section of the report focuses on academic freedom and intellectual diversity. NAS puts it baldly: “Bailout funds should only go to colleges and universities that have incorporated strong new protections for intellectual freedom, due process rights, and intellectual diversity.” The reforms they propose are simple and straightforward: tie bailout eligibility to the incorporation of principles of academic freedom into governing bylaws; strict adherence to due process standards, including the presumption of innocence, in all adjudication processes; and the establishment of “procedures and institutions to encourage intellectual diversity.” The report also calls for governing boards to play an active role in certifying institutional compliance—a measure that just might prompt trustees and regents to exercise leadership and oversight. 

The reforms that NAS proposes will strike most readers as about as controversial as requiring a middle school cafeteria to serve milk. But then, those who have not spent significant time on a college campus in recent years would be surprised to learn how far the academy has drifted from the kind of commitments that were long considered bedrock priorities of any university worth its salt. Tying financial incentives to the adoption of better policies—whether the money is coming from donors and alumni, an emergency government bailout, or families seeking a rigorous education at a fair price—is probably the only way to begin to restore norms of academic freedom and free expression at today’s academy. Adopting these recommendations will not transform campus culture overnight. But provided the policies are implemented with due consideration for mission-oriented institutions (many of them, religiously affiliated), they will at least set universities on the road to rebuilding free and open marketplaces of ideas.

Critical Care sets out an ambitious vision for higher education reform, one that would force colleges and universities to recommit to basic tenets of the academy’s mission in exchange for an infusion of public funds. Taxpayers deserve at least that much. Federal lawmakers should take note of NAS’s bold vision and begin working on ways to implement the group’s policy proposals. Governing boards should also pay attention to the report and make it a priority to adopt many of the recommendations—even if federal funds are not ultimately attached. If only a small fraction of the ideas set forth in Critical Care are implemented in the coming months and years, U.S. colleges and universities will emerge from the pandemic truer to their guiding purposes and better prepared to weather a financial environment that will remain challenging for years to come.

Jonathan Pidluzny, Ph.D., is Vice President of Academic Affairs at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

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Abigail Thernstrom, political scientist and leading scholar on race relations, passed away on April 10 at the age of 83. Born in 1936 and raised on a collective farm in Westchester County, New York, Dr. Thernstrom went on to receive her Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 1975 and became one of the leading public intellectuals of the late 20th century.

Over the course of her distinguished career, Dr. Thernstrom served as an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and vice chair on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She received many honors throughout her career, including the 2007 Fordham Prize for Distinguished Scholarship, the 2004 Peter Shaw Memorial Award from the National Association of Scholars, and the 2007 Bradley Foundation Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement, along with her husband Stephan. Dr. Abigail Thernstrom and Dr. Stephan Thernstrom co-authored numerous books together, including America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible and No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning.

Those who knew Abigail remember a style that blended vision and warmth with an indefatigable will to pursue and share the truth, even knowing how fast the howls would come from the smug guardians of political orthodoxy. She never wavered, and we treasure her memory. Rest in peace after a life well-lived that will continue to inspire us all.

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