Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording. The views expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of ACTA.

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“The PPE Program focuses on understanding how social, political, and economic institutions, as well as considerations of justice, rights, and liberty, have, do, and should interact and shape one another. At its heart is the recognition that philosophy, political science, and economics are each individually important to understanding the world in which we live—but that bringing the three disciplines together illuminates issues that otherwise are obscured by the shadows cast by relying solely on one or the other,” says Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, founding director of the PPE program. “We are proud, to say the least, to counted among ACTA’s Hidden Gems.”

Gabriella Hsu, ACTA’s Senior Program Manager for Curricular Improvement says, “ACTA’s Hidden Gems program highlights major, minor, and certificate programs that offer students an unparalleled education in the liberal arts. Hidden Gems programs are so named for the high caliber of their faculty, thoughtfully structured curricula, and commitment both to the challenges and rewards of liberal education. Students enrolled in Hidden Gems programs are drawn into community and discussion rooted in the rich interdisciplinary study of the liberal arts and sciences. In its mission to support academic excellence, ACTA believes that the Hidden Gems program is an invaluable resource for students seeking a robust, collegial, and enriching education.”

ACTA’s Hidden Gems initiative serves as a complement to our What Will They Learn?® (WWTL) project. WWTL rates the core curriculum requirements at over 1,100 schools to determine which institutions provide a rigorous, liberal arts-oriented general education. Programs designated as Hidden Gems offer a robust liberal arts education regardless of their home institution’s core curriculum. WWTL and Hidden Gems help prospective students locate universities and programs that will prepare them for successful careers, informed citizenship, and human flourishing.

See a comprehensive list of all Hidden Gems here.

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

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We are not alone in monitoring this trend. The issues that HB 1213 seeks to remedy are a matter of bipartisan concern, and we enthusiastically support the proposed legislation because it provides a commonsense solution to this problem.

Few have articulated the imperative better than President John F. Kennedy:

“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.”

Those words went unheeded. In a 1987 survey, about half of the American citizens polled thought that the phrase, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” came from the U.S. Constitution. Regardless of what one thinks of that sentiment, it would improve political discourse to identify it correctly as classic Karl Marx. Flash forward 34 years, a 2021 Newsweek poll revealed that 24% of college students had a positive view of capitalism while 32% favored socialism. Given these survey results, it is no wonder that 3% of the 1,100 schools ACTA surveys through our What Will They Learn?^® project require a foundational economics course and only 18% require a foundational course in American history.

To further illustrate the necessity of House Bill 1213, I would like to point out that Black Hills State University does not require a foundational course in U.S. government or history.

In March 2022, a Quinnipiac University poll asked adults across America if they would stay and fight if Russia invaded our borders. Only 45% of men between the ages of 18 and 34 said they would stand and fight, instead of leaving the country. President Kennedy was right: “defenseless before the world.” Let us be clear: ignorance and contempt for our freedoms and civic institutions go hand in hand. Those who do not understand the value of freedom, or the price paid to guard it will not have the will to foster and defend it. 

Derek Bok, who served as Harvard’s 25^th president, diagnosed the problem in a 2020 interview:

“It is widely agreed that an informed and engaged citizenry is important, many would say essential, in order for democracy to flourish or even survive. There is also abundant evidence from national assessments of civic knowledge and from studies of the attitudes and behavior of college-age adults that large numbers of students are neither very knowledgeable nor convinced that government and politics are worth much of their time and attention.”

We have not seen remedies coming from existing university departments. Thus, it falls to legislators and governors to bring new resources and new voices to campus. Not infrequently, new institutes and centers pride themselves on providing the intellectual diversity that is so often lacking on the contemporary campus. In 2021, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called for an institute committed to “informed patriotism.” The website for the nascent center at University of Tennessee tells us: “Lawmakers from both parties spoke in favor of the Institute’s mission to strengthen civic education and participation while reviving thoughtfulness, civility and respect for opposing viewpoints in national discourse.” The University of Florida’s Hamilton Center, “will highlight the value of debate and disagreement based on a core commitment to the search for truth and will resist the current push to ‘deplatform,’ ‘cancel,’ or professionally destroy those with whom we may disagree.” Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership’s website reads: “The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership is dedicated to fostering a culture of intellectual diversity to facilitate the open and free contest of ideas that are a foundation to a healthy constitutional democracy.”

One unique, and in our view necessary, characteristic of newly established centers is the ability for the center to be overseen by an independent, intellectually diverse board of advisors chosen from the nation’s leading scholars of American history and government. ACTA recommends that statutory language, moreover, should specify that the new center will have independent hiring authority, to ensure that it not merely replicate the focus of departments already existing at Black Hills State University. This feature, as created by similar legislation in Ohio (2023) and Tennessee (2022), would strengthen HB 1213 by ensuring that the hiring of center leadership and faculty reflects the intellectual diversity that is increasingly disappearing at institutions of higher education across the country. 

I would like to leave you with a quote from former President George W. Bush:

“Our history is not a story of perfection. It’s a story of imperfect people working toward great ideals. This flawed nation is also a really good nation, and the principles we hold are the hope of all mankind. When children are given the real history of America, they will also learn to love America. Our Founders believed the study of history and citizenship should be at the core of every American’s education.”

Members of the committee, I need hardly rehearse the devastating reports of de-platformings and shout-downs from Yale to Stanford that have received national attention, just in the last 12 months. Nor do I need to repeat the disheartening statistics of civic illiteracy mentioned earlier in my testimony. We have before us a strong remedy. Representative Scott Odenbach has done a great service in crafting HB 1213, and ACTA enthusiastically supports this legislation.

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The Jerry L. Martin Prize was established to honor “trustees who have shown exceptional courage and effectiveness in challenging the groupthink and status quo mentality that threatens the future of higher education,” according to ACTA’s website.

Accomplishments of the board referenced during the ceremony included adopting a resolution on institutional neutrality, adopting the Chicago Principles, prohibiting compelled speech and establishing the UNC School of Civic Life and Leadership. The Chicago Principles, created at the University of Chicago in 2014, affirm that free, robust and uninhibited expression is essential to university culture.

UNC-CH Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer, past Chair David Boliek and Member Marty Kotis accepted the prize on behalf of the board. Board of trustees members Ramsey White, Robert Bryan and Perrin Jones were also in attendance as was Sen. Amy Galey.

The board was presented an original newspaper published in 1824 celebrating the contributions to science by UNC’s first chemistry professor, Dr. Denison Olmsted. The same newspaper also included a letter from then General Andrew Jackson to President James Monroe. Quotes from their correspondence were included by ACTA to reflect the virtue and integrity with which the UNC-CH Board of Trustees has served.

“Virtue being the main pillar of a Republican government, unless virtuous men shall be drawn into its administration, the fabric must tremble,” wrote Jackson. “…a truly pure man will be without disguise, verifying, as he passes along, the old adage, that the tree is best known by its fruit.”

“High achievements are meaningless without virtue,” said Michael Poliakoff, president and CEO of ACTA. “We are in the middle of a crisis, not just in higher education, but in our country…The Chapel Hill Trustees walk in honor.”

Poliakoff congratulated the board for being the first full board to be awarded the Jerry L. Martin Prize in its eight-year history.

During her speech, Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, credited the board for improving the culture of UNC through adopting measures that protected free speech. Robinson also highlighted the hiring of the first nine faculty members of the UNC School of Civic Life and Leadership.

“As new trustees, we were told to ‘trust the chancellor,’” said David Boliek, past chair of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees. “But my obligation would always be to the institution and what was best.” Boliek described the culture of UNC when he was a new trustee as not sustainable. “If our university wanted to stay vibrant, the pendulum would have to swing towards the middle.”

In contrast, Boliek described the UNC-CH Board of Trustees as courageous. “It takes courage to challenge the status quo,” he said. “It is no longer enough for trustees to nod in agreement, we must ask why.”

Boliek explained other changes made by the current UNC-CH Board of Trustees. These included returning hiring approval authority back to the board, requiring justification for openings and hires and consolidating the university’s 16 budgets to one uniform, balanced budget.

In his closing remarks, Poliakoff described the UNC-CH Board of Trustees as an example for others across the country. “The clock is ticking in higher education and in this country to turn things around,” he said. “But there is hope, there is leadership.”

The American Council of Trustee and Alumni (ACTA) was founded in 1995. It is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities. ACTA works with donors, trustees and alumni to support liberal arts education and safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, according to its website.

This post appeared on The Carolina Journal on November 3, 2023.

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

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