“In his long and distinguished career as a scholar, teacher, humanist, and citizen of the academy, Professor Kors has exemplified the values and virtues on which true education rests,” said ACTA President Michael Poliakoff. “It is not accidental that the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment would also be the most consequential figure of our generation in the struggle to protect campus freedom of expression. He breathes the very spirit of the Enlightenment: an open mind, a commitment to human freedom, and a devotion to intellectual rigor. He has been a storied mentor to the students fortunate to be in his classroom and also to those beyond who have been inspired by his writing and his public lectures. ACTA is privileged to present to Alan Charles Kors the Philip Merrill Award.”

Dr. Kors joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, where he now holds the post of Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus of European History. He served as editor-in-chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment and has written several books and many articles on early modern French intellectual history. He served for six years on the National Council for the Humanities and has received fellowships from the American Council for Learned Societies, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, and the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University. In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded the National Humanities Medal to Dr. Kors for his dedication to the study of the humanities and the defense of academic freedom. Three years after accepting the National Humanities Medal, Dr. Kors also received the prestigious Bradley Prize. In 1999, Dr. Kors cofounded FIRE with Harvey Silverglate and later served as its pro bono codirector, president, and chairman.

Dr. Kors will accept the award and deliver remarks at ACTA’s Philip Merrill Award Gala on October 27, 2023, in Washington, DC. Tribute speakers will include Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University; C. Bradley Thompson, professor of political science at Clemson University and executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism; and American historian Allen C. Guelzo, who serves as senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

To see a full list of ACTA’s former Merrill Award winners, click here.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org

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ACTA president Michael Poliakoff and Higher Ed Now producer Doug Sprei interview Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan think tank and educational institution dedicated to being a resource to help people better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. Dr. Haass’s extensive government experience includes service as special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. From 2001 to 2003, he was director of policy planning for the Department of State, serving as a principal advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate to hold the rank of ambassador, he served as U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and U.S. envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process.  Dr. Haass is the author or editor of fourteen books on American foreign policy, one book on management, and one on American democracy. His latest book, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, was published by Penguin Press in January 2023 and became a New York Times best seller. 

Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

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Enter Jerry Cirino, a highly successful septuagenarian businessman with 37 (!) grandchildren, who a few years ago ventured into politics from the business C-suite and got elected to the Ohio Senate, where he chairs the higher-education committee. The Ohio budget signed by Gov. Mike DeWine contains some $24 million for five new institutes to promote traditional American values and culture at five of Ohio’s 13 bachelor-degree-granting state universities, including the flagship school — Ohio State University — as well as the University of Toledo College of Law, Miami University, Cleveland State University, and the University of Cincinnati. While other states like Tennessee, Texas, and Florida have created one or two such centers, for a state to create five at once is unprecedented.

Usually attempts to introduce relatively conservative think tanks or teaching-oriented institutes onto university campuses are thwarted by the faculty, student protesters, or other woke university groups. Cirino has adroitly stymied that by making the new institutes almost completely separate from the university budgetary and academic framework, with the university president recommending powerful advisory boards for each center — boards whose members require the approval of Cirino’s higher-education committee in addition to the university governing board. It reminds me a bit of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution — having a strong university presence, but not controlled by the usual progressive faculty and administrative types. The plan is to get scholars with a strong love for America’s constitutional framework, a deep knowledge and appreciation of our historical heritage, and a commitment to promoting intellectual diversity and a lively forum for a true marketplace of ideas. Cirino was joined in this legislation by state Senate Majority Leader Rob McColley.

Cirino cited research from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni that found that 45 percent of conservative students at Ohio State did not speak up on issues for fear that their comments would not be welcomed by others on campus — compared with a much smaller 16 percent of liberal students who felt the need to self-censor. The new institutes will offer courses on subjects that more conservative students should be able to attend without the fear associated with many other courses. It is an attempt to address the lopsided domination of liberals on the faculty of most Ohio public university campuses. It attacks the monopoly on ideas that woke faculty try to impose on campus communities.

The new institutes come on the heels of a much publicized and attacked Cirino-led effort to adopt a comprehensive new set of rules governing public university behavior. His Senate Bill 83 was approved in the Senate but did not get adopted as law in the haste to complete the state budget on time. Cirino is predicting fall adoption of the legislation after modest revision. The bill prohibits mandatory diversity loyalty oaths or training for members of university communities, imposes a mandatory history/civics course requirement for all public university bachelor-degree recipients, prohibits faculty under contract from striking, shortens terms for university trustees, promotes a more serious post-tenure review procedure for faculty, and requires universities to adopt mission statements affirming commitment to free speech and expression.

This is just the beginning of the battle in Ohio, I predict. Already, a major teachers union, the Ohio American Association of University Professors (AAUP), has expressed “dee[p] concern.” An Ohio State representative said, “The university is working to develop this center in accordance with the law and applicable university rules and policies.” That sounds fine, but you can be sure “applicable … rules and policies” includes heavy faculty involvement — outlawed by the legislation. Hints that the new centers might violate accreditation rules have been suggested. Cirino expects the state will fight any accreditation challenges aggressively.

When a large majority of the American public responding to a recent Gallup poll indicated that they did not have high confidence in American universities, it is not surprising, and it is indeed appropriate, that outsiders intervene somewhat to restore balance and confidence.

This was featured on The American Spectator on July 17, 2023.

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If it becomes law, House Bill 96, the Reclaiming College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage (REACH) Act, would require that all students who seek to graduate from a North Carolina public university or community college — that is approximately 360,000 students per year — complete a course that includes study of America’s foundational documents.  

This benign and reasonable answer to the growing problem of civic illiteracy, modeled closely on the law that South Carolina passed in 2021, has provoked a virulent storm of opposition, which really is Exhibit A for why this proposed law is so urgently needed as a higher education course correction. 

Fortunately, despite a faculty petition with 700 signatures opposing the proposed legislation, and a flurry of behind-the-scenes efforts by university legislative liaisons to spike the bill, the legislature so far has lined up behind the measure. The House passed it 69-47. It will next be taken up by the Senate. 

Chapel Hill professors hyperventilate on their petition that the REACH Act, “violates core principles of academic freedom,” substituting “ideological force-feeding for the intellectual expertise of faculty.” But the gravamen of the legislation is simply that, at a minimum, undergraduates take a course in which they study: the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, at least five essays from the Federalist Papers, to be chosen by the instructor, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, and the Gettysburg Address. An examination on these documents will count for 20% of the final grade.  

That’s what the school’s petition-signers are hyperventilating over? Such animus toward founding American ideals is all the more shocking when one considers that UNC, which was established in 1789, was the first public institution in America to grant degrees. How did a school with that pedigree devolve to the point where hundreds of current faculty feel that our founding documents need a trigger warning? 

It is, fortunately, totally within the prerogatives of a state legislature to establish the curricular topics that taxpayer funds support at a public university.

State Rep. Jon Hardister, the chairman of the North Carolina House Education-Universities Committee, told the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), “Some people claim that the legislature is overstepping its boundaries by requiring a particular subject to be taught at the college level. This argument is simply not true. The North Carolina General Assembly created the UNC System and provides billions of dollars in funding to operate it. It is therefore reasonable and proper for the legislature to take this action, especially when we are only talking about three credit hours out of 120 for undergraduate students.”  

South Carolina provided the model for North Carolina when it passed its own REACH Act in 2021. Florida adopted similar civic education requirements in 2019, as did the Arizona Board of Regents in 2021. In all, 11 states set strong higher education requirements for American civics. The requirements of H.B. 96 hardly invade the classrooms of N.C. professors, but it does fulfill the duty of legislators to help ensure an informed electorate. 

In uncovered emails, one highly paid Chapel Hill legislative liaison smugly dismissed this important legislation as a “wrap yourself in the flag” type of bill and as “red meat theater.” But not a single UNC System school requires a foundational course in American history or government. Chapel Hill, ironically, does require a course in “global understanding,” but nothing to ensure understanding of the operating principles of our nation. 

The president of the state chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a tenured professor of history at Chapel Hill, claims the bill is “a blatant show of disrespect for the expertise of faculty at UNC schools.”

Whatever that expertise may be, it hasn’t done much for civic literacy in the state, considering 61% of North Carolinians would fail the U.S. Citizenship Test.

State Rep. Hardister reacted by telling ACTA, “H.B. 96 represents good policy that will benefit students and prepare them to be productive members of society. I hope these folks will reconsider their stance and embrace this legislation as an effort to enrich the learning experience for students in our university system.” 

Meanwhile, however, students at Chapel Hill can fulfill their requirement for “Engagement with the Human Past” with such courses as “Game of Thrones and the Worlds of the European Middle Ages,” “Italian Food and Culture,” or “Art and Sports in the Americas.” 

North Carolina’s elected representatives need to give H.B. 96 speedy passage into law. 

This post appeared in The Carolina Journal on July 10, 2023.

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Shortly before his death, President John F. Kennedy wrote: “There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country. Without such knowledge, he stands uncertain and defenseless before the world, knowing neither where he has come from nor where he is going. With such knowledge, he is no longer alone but draws a strength far greater than his own from the cumulative experience of the past and a cumulative vision of the future.”

But we have fallen grievously short of our obligation to cultivate what President Ronald Reagan in his farewell address called, “informed patriotism.” What is encouraging, however, is a growing movement of lawmakers and scholars to do something about it.

Since only 19.5% of the colleges and universities that have a stated liberal arts mission require even a single one-semester course on American history or government, legislatures are stepping into the breach that college faculty and administrators have left. This year, Ohio Senator Jerry Cirino presented Senate Bill 83, which prescribes, at a minimum, that every undergraduate complete a course that covers the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, at least five essays from the Federalist Papers, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and the Gettysburg Address. Before the North Carolina General Assembly at this moment is House Bill 96, the “Reclaiming College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage Act” (REACH Act), which prescribes the same texts: Both bills take their cue from South Carolina, which passed its REACH Act in 2021. In 2022, the Arizona Board of Regents mandated a similarly detailed list of minimum requirements for the American Institutions course that all undergraduates must complete. This followed upon Florida’s strong civic education legislation of 2017 and 2022.

Cultural change is ultimately more difficult, but here, too, there are promising signs even from within the academy. Witness three recent publications. Steven Smith, Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science at Yale University, published Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes in 2021, and in the same year, Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels’s book, What Universities Owe Democracy, appeared. And in 2022, Dr. Richard Haass published The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.

What these books have in common is an intense commitment to the liberal democracy that gives us the right to participate in it, indeed to criticize it. And, with that, the absolute obligation to instill the values and principles of our free society. Dr. Haass and President Daniels call not only for better K-12 civic education, but, like past president of Harvard University Derek Bok, for a required college course on American history and government.

The Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote, “who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.” Those in our nation who do not understand the blessing of freedom and the price past generations paid for it are likely to scorn that heritage. We need look no further than the poll taken by Quinnipiac University shortly after Russian troops invaded Ukraine. In response to being asked if they would stay and fight if Russia invaded America, only 45% of Americans aged 18–34 answered they would fight rather than flee. It is a sign of a deep cultural weakness and an egregious failure of our education system.

Dr. Haass and Professor Smith also call us back to the civic virtue and civic understanding that we must recover or, to use Abraham Lincoln’s words, we “meanly lose the last best hope on earth.” Both, interestingly, endorse the idea of mandatory national service, military or civilian. Dr. Haass bids us to “put the country and American democracy before party and person.” Professor Smith goes further and calls on Americans to embrace their patriotism—yes, he uses the “p” word over and over. With due circumspection about how the term “exceptionalism” can be abused, he asks us to remember that the United States is uniquely a nation founded on a creed that includes equality, liberty, individuality, and pluralism. He does not hesitate to encourage our emotional bond with our nation.

Professor Smith ironically described the reaction of his faculty colleagues to his announcement that he was writing a book about patriotism as ranging from shock and disbelief to horror and disgust. We need to change that mindset, and President Reagan once told us how:

We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.

And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ‘em know and nail ‘em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

This article appeared on Forbes on June 29, 2023

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He teaches in the Department of Political Science at American University. Prior to this, he taught at both Eastern Michigan University and Hillsdale College. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Michigan State University, specializing in Political Theory and American Government. He has published academic work on Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith, as well as essays on higher education. 

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The NAEP history test has questions that assess student competence in various themes from U.S. history, including democracy, culture, technology, and America’s role in the world. The test shows students declining in every category. In a time when polarization is up, social trust is down, and political tumult is increasing, it is imperative that young people are educated adequately to engage constructively in American democracy. We desperately need citizens who are more knowledgeable about our nation’s history and institutions, but we are failing these students and creating another generation that cannot distinguish between Justice Kagan and Judge Judy. Our students deserve better, and our country needs better.  ACTA has long held that colleges and universities must do much more to educate the next generation of American citizens. Results such as these show how difficult this job really is.

We need a national reawakening in history and civics education. Some universities are already leading the way, including the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University and the planned School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

Projects such as these can go a long way in making up the deficits for students who attend such flagship campuses, but for the many millions of Americans who do not attend college, much more must be done at the primary and secondary levels to improve this sorry state of affairs.

ACTA has a 27-year legacy of promoting civics and history education at American institutions of higher education. And its curricular tool, What Will They Learn?, provides a unique resource that grades colleges and universities on their core requirements in seven areas of knowledge, including civics and American history.

Colleges and universities must honor their obligations to reverse this dysfunction, so dangerous to democracy. It falls to higher education to train schoolteachers who will be competent to help our children understand the institutions of a free society and the history of the nation. We must demand no less of them.

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabrielle Anglin
EMAIL: ganglin@goacta.org
PHONE: (202) 798-5425

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Prior to joining Governor Wilson’s senior staff, Judge Brown was an associate at Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor, a government and political law firm. Before joining the firm, Brown served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for the state’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, working primarily with business regulatory departments. She came to BT&H after eight years in the Attorney General’s Office, where she worked in both the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions. She also worked for two years for the Legislative Counsel and previously served as an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. 

Brown served as a member of the Independent Advisory Board to the Institute for Legislative Practice at the McGeorge School of Law, and is a former member of the Judicial Council of California, having served on the Judgeship Needs Advisory Committee and the 2020 Vision Commission on the Future of the California Courts.  She chaired California’s White Collar Crime Task Force and is affiliated with the American Judges Association, the American Judicature Society and the Federalist Society. She also sits on the Board of Regents for both Pepperdine University and the University of the Pacific. 

Janice Brown is the recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from Pepperdine University and Southwestern School of Law, and received the UCLA School of Law Alumnus of the Year award in 1998 and UCLA’s 2004 Award for Excellence in Public Service.  She also has been honored with the Jurisprudence Award of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Georgetown University Chapter of the Federalist Society, a Distinguished Service Award from the California State University, Sacramento, Alumni Association, as well as a Distinguished Jurist Award from the California Lincoln Club. 

Judge Brown is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law and California State University, Sacramento, where she majored in Economics. In 2004, Judge Brown received a Master of Laws degree in Judicial Process after completing the Graduate Program for Judges at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Brown retired from the bench in 2017.

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From requiring all high school seniors to pass the same test immigrants must take to become U.S. citizens, to the establishment of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) at Arizona State University, the state has set a tremendous example for others to follow.

Taking inspiration from SCETL, the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Board of Trustees just voted to create a new center, the School of Civic Life and Leadership. Universities in Florida, Tennessee and Texas have also followed the SCETL model. 

Despite the influence SCETL is having, Arizona’s new governor has proposed a budget that would reallocate funding for the school and deposit it in the lump sum allocated for university.

This would jeopardize SCETL’s funding by placing it up for grabs during the internal university budgeting process.

Few students are proficient in civics

As a nation diverse in our origins, ethnicities and religious beliefs, our future rests on understanding the idea of America, and that, sadly, is in short supply in our education system.

Surely, the governor recognizes how troubling the data documenting civic illiteracy are.

According to the most recent report card issued by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 24% of eighth graders are proficient or above in civics. The last time the NAEP tested 12^th graders, which was in 2010, the results were the same: Only 24% demonstrated proficiency or above.

This is hardly encouraging, especially when trust in many of our institutions is at or near all-time lows.

Perhaps Arizona’s new governor does not appreciate the contributions SCETL is making. This is plausible, since she does not seem to understand what the school does.

Hobbs mischaracterizes what the school does

Her proposed budget says it “teaches a combination of philosophy, history, economics, and political science based on libertarian free-market values,” but that is a poor caricature of the school’s mission.

SCETL offers a deep and broad preparation for citizenship and public life that transcends contemporary ideological and partisan divisions.

Giving students a “foundation to succeed as lifelong learners and future leaders in political, economic and social life,” its programs “blend transdisciplinary study of the liberal arts and classic texts with examination of American ideas, institutions, and civic culture.”

Students also receive “experiential learning in leadership and civic affairs” and are taught “the practice of civil discourse” – something that is sorely need in America today.

Although a relatively new program, in the last academic year, SCETL had a total enrollment of 1,200 students in its courses, and it currently has about 70 students majoring in its degrees plus 60 minors. We need more students to receive this kind of education, not fewer.

Why fix what’s not broken? Keep funding as is

SCETL also makes contributions beyond the classroom, as it “provides civic programming for the broader community and supports renewal of K-12 civic education.” Many of its events, including annual Constitution Day and Martin Luther King Day lectures and a Civic Discourse Project, are open to the public.

Off campus, SCETL produces a Civic Literacy Curriculum, provides workshops for members of the Arizona State Board of Education, and offers summer institutes on civics and leadership for high school students. These are important programs that leaven civic education and public life for all Arizonans.

Other than Arizona’s new governor, everyone seems happy with the existing arrangement, including ASU President Michael M. Crow, who told the House Appropriations Committee on Jan. 18 that the “school has become a pride and joy at ASU.”

When asked about its funding, he said, “we happen to like the way we get it,” adding that “a slightly separate budget allocation for it gives us the protective shields of advancing that school in a unique way, which we think is a net positive for ASU.”

This article was posted on AZcentral. on March, 1 2023

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I sat listening with 15 other fellows in Boston’s Old South Meeting House, a 250-year-old church that moonlighted as a town hall for rebellious British subjects. My cohort and I were selected by the Common Sense Society to study the Founders’ vision for America and their early foreign policy decisions, like George Washington’s “peace through strength” philosophy that led to a standing army and Alexander Hamilton’s advocacy for closer ties with England.

In five days, we traveled over 700 miles from presidential residences in Virginia to Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston, listening to 12 experts lecture about select Founders—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. These sons of the Enlightenment embedded classical views of human nature and the role of government into Founding documents. The principles of life, liberty, and property informed their leadership, decision-making, and strategy with foreign powers. 

My study of primary Founding documents with outstanding scholars gave me greater appreciation for our liberal democracy. I saw libraries brimming with Plato, John Locke, and Voltaire in the homes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. These men, like my cohort, sought out wisdom from earlier thinkers to guide them as they built a new political system.

Democracies are not the political norm in world history, nor are they sustained through half-hearted participation. At Montpelier, Dr. Tyson Reeder taught that early Americans “had political paranoia that they were not in charge of their own destiny.” Not content with feeling powerless, they took ownership over their political futures.

In New York City, my cohort ate at Fraunces Tavern where George Washington bid farewell to his troops in December 1783 before relinquishing power to the Continental Congress. There, 239 years ago, men who risked life and limb solemnly reflected on the reality that liberty comes at a price. This spirit of self-determination is America’s inheritance.

My time at the Founders’ Foreign Policy Fellowship reminded me of why my workplace, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), advocates for a strong core curriculum. Robust civic education in American history and government is paramount to sustaining our nation’s unique experiment in self-governance and upholding the principles of liberty and equality that those who came before us fought for. Without this foundational understanding of our heritage, we risk forfeiting control of our destiny.

On July 4^th, the United States celebrates 246 years of hard-won liberty. If we want another 246 years, we need to foster political will through education. I end where Common Sense Society President Marion Smith began in his opening remarks, “There is no inevitable march. We determine our path forward.”

Emily Burden Rees is the Program Coordinator for the Fund for Academic Renewal (FAR), working with FAR’s Director and Program Manager to help higher education donors craft gifts with enduring impact.

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