Reviving the Study of American Government

“We understand and recognize what is worthy, but we do not see it through, some through sloth, others putting pleasure above what is noble. There are many pleasures in life: long conversations and leisure, a pleasant vice. And then there is shameful indecisiveness.” 

– Euripides, Hippolytus, 380-84 

As I read Professor Carrese’s fine essay, a certain elegiac feeling settled over me. We have been here before, shocked at the level of civic illiteracy. It is clear why, finally, we must act efficiently and effectively and what actions we should take. The solutions are before us. 

Most importantly, we must revive the study of history and government, fostering an understanding of the institutions that constitute our free society and the often bumpy path of their development. Civic education must be, in the majestic words of Deuteronomy 30:14, “very nigh unto thee.” It is an urgent task. The gravamen of our work to save our campuses and our country does not at this critical moment lie in the construction of new academic disciplines, with journals and conferences. It does, however, rest absolutely in developing new and independent centers, institutes, and schools, adapting the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership model of which Professor Carrese was the founding director. These entities have the courage and vision—and the funding and hiring authority—to do this work. 

Sadly, the study of America’s founding principles and history is already on life-support at top universities: a glance at the American Historical Association’s directory of dissertations shows that political, economic, military, and legal history is vastly overshadowed by different types of social history. Especially in envisioning the growth of new, independent institutes, it is our history in its full richness that will illuminate and invigorate our understanding of civics in the twenty-first century. 

Thankfully, dedicated individuals and institutions are working to address this problem. Steven Smith properly drew attention to the importance of history and collective memory in his 2021 book Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes. The very name of Professor Carrese’s new home institution, the Jack Miller Center For Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History, properly anchors its approach to civic education in the extraordinary and radical moment when a group of extraordinary people redefined the very nature of political and social community and wrote the first pages of our nation’s still-unfolding story. Young Americans today must learn about this great moment and others that have shaped our history. The enabling legislation for Ohio State University’s Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society agrees, focusing on “historical ideas, traditions, and texts that have shaped the American constitutional order and society.” 

In 2016, my organization, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), issued A Crisis in Civic Education, which used survey data to illustrate just how distressing the state of civic ignorance had become. On that basis, we critiqued several high-profile (and expensive) civic education initiatives that had appeared in the preceding six years. In 2010, the Department of Education commissioned the National Task Force of Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, which aimed at increasing civic literacy among college students. It generated a report entitled, A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future. Then, in 2012, a bipartisan group of senators and congressmen commissioned a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for a report on how “to achieve long-term national goals for our intellectual and economic well-being. That resulted in a study named, The Heart of the Matter. In 2014, Lumina Foundation’s Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP) called for higher education to meet requirements in “Civic and Global Learning.”

Despite all this work and expense, we have seen dispiritingly low and flat eighth-grade NAEP scores on both the civics and the history assessments, essentially level with 1994 scores, and we have seen consistently appalling results from college students on surveys of civic knowledge. I hope gentle readers will forgive me for judging such projects as those in the preceding paragraph to be full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. The recent drift into “action civics,” i.e. community activities and political action, too often in lieu of any real understanding of American history and government, is enabled when affect replaces intellect and the engagement with the American story is not an explicit goal. (And that goal, once made explicit, needs to be monitored by objective assessments.) 

We issued an acerbic response to the American Association of Colleges and Universities when it celebrated its role in producing A Crucible Moment. We argued that this higher education association, hardly the only one, “could do immensely more good for civic literacy by encouraging the AAC&U membership, in the clearest of terms, to walk the walk of civic literacy. Make it a required course. Simply require it.” 

Wise thinkers throughout our history have understood the imperative behind civic education. Thomas Jefferson’s 1818 Report for the Commissioners for the University of Virginia, for instance, was clear about the purpose of higher education. Among those purposes is: “To form the statesmen, legislators, and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend; To expound the principles and structure of government.” 

John F. Kennedy also saw such knowledge as integral to domestic and international strength:

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 our own from the cumulative experience of the past and a cumulative vision of the future.

Civic literacy was a signature proposal in Harvard’s 1945 report on general education, General Education in a Free Society, often known simply as “The Redbook.” It recognized, “as a preparation for the responsibilities of citizenship, one of the most suitable courses which could be devised for general education would be one to which the title “American Democracy” might be given.” Coming full circle, in 2020, Harvard’s 25th president, Derek Bok, expressed his exasperation at the decline in this civic attitude: “One looks in vain on most college campuses for signs of a well-considered program of civic education. Rarely does a college catalog contain a mandatory set of courses to inform students about their government and the importance of an engaged citizenry. Faculties seldom even engage in a serious discussion of the topic.” 

Professor Carrese pulls our attention to the appalling campus behavior that the nation witnessed ever since the Hamas massacre on October 7. Before a single shot was fired against terrorists in Gaza, crowds of college students cheered the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Added to the virulent hatred they expressed for Israel was hatred for America and the West. What was the failure, the malfeasance that took us to this place? 

If not the principal cause, certainly one of the principal drivers was and is ignorance. Many of the students chanting “from the river to the sea” could not identify the Jordan River or the Mediterranean Sea. Their ignorance of geography and twentieth-century world history is matched by their ignorance of American institutions and their history. 

ACTA, in its 29-year existence, has sponsored nine surveys to determine the historical and civic literacy of college students. The results are apocalyptically alarming to anyone who cares about the future of our nation. Here is a sample from our most recent multiple-choice survey of over 3,000 college students 

• Almost one-third of students think senators serve a four-year term. Only 40 percent of students correctly answered that Senate terms last for six years and House of Representatives terms for two years. 
• Less than one in three can identify James Madison as the Father of the Constitution. 
• Just over one-quarter (27 percent) of students could correctly identify Vice President Kamala Harris as president of the Senate. 
• More than half of the students surveyed think the Constitution was written in 1776. Only 32 percent chose the correct answer, 1787. 

And then we come to the most terrifying of all the findings: 57 percent of these young people, when asked if they would stay and fight if Russia invaded the United States answered that they would prefer to flee the country. Allow me the irony of quoting Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko: “Who never knew the price of happiness will not be happy.” That is writ large in our findings, survey after survey.

Who is accountable for the cancer that is metastasizing through our colleges and on into society at large? ACTA’s annual analysis of core curriculum requirements at over 1,100 liberal arts colleges and universities shows that only 19 percent of these institutions require a single foundational course in United States history or government. The causal line seems self-evident. Faculty and administrators may resent it when legislators specify core requirements, but the prevailing concept of “shared governance,” which delegates academic affairs to the faculty, has clearly failed. 

In many instances, the failure seems deliberate. Witness the hyperventilation of 700 members of the Chapel Hill faculty over the Reclaiming College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage (REACH) Act. Passed into law in South Carolina and on the docket now in North Carolina, it would require, at a minimum, that undergraduates take a course in which they study: the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, at least five essays from the Federalist Papers, to be chosen by the instructor, plus one document foundational to the African American struggle, also chosen by the instructor. (North Carolina’s version would add to this minimum requirement Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.) An examination of these documents would count for 20 percent of the final grade. Emails uncovered through the efforts of Jameson Broggi revealed the animus, as staff dismissed the proposed bill as “red meat theater” and “wrap yourself in the flag” posturing. 

Among the most encouraging signs of a broad and bipartisan embrace of this new civic education, as Professor Carrese notes, are the recent urgings of major figures in higher education leadership. In addition to Harvard’s Bok, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas and Johns Hopkins president Ronald Daniels have called for a collegiate requirement that looks to foster true understanding of our democracy. 

The independent institutes created from West to East can play a role of extraordinary importance in these renewal efforts. They have the capacity, through their independence, to renew and rejuvenate the study of American history and government. Ohio offers a glimpse of what this can mean: thanks to the Ohio legislature’s SB 117, which quickly became part of House Bill 33, co-sponsored by state senators Jerry Cirino and Rob McColley, the state has allocated $24 million to create centers at five Ohio public universities. The Ohio State University has now appointed Professor Lee Strang as the inaugural director of the Salmon P. Chase Center; the others will soon follow. Simultaneously, in an important paradigm other states should follow, Cirino recently introduced further legislation including a provision for a required undergraduate course in American history and government, modeled on the REACH Act. This legislation has a high likelihood of adoption in the coming session. The new Ohio centers can take up the onerous, but crucial leadership in designing and providing the course that will introduce college students to the American story. That will be a gift to the nation. 

In August 2024, ACTA named a National Commission on American History and Civic Education, that includes eminent historians and political leaders, past presidents of major universities, and civic institute leadership. Our charge will be to analyze the crisis of historical and civic illiteracy and the urgency of addressing it. More importantly, we will also provide crucial guidance on the essential elements of a foundational course in US history and government, as well as how to implement these recommendations in higher education. 

I cannot resist one more Biblical allusion. As he viewed the devastation of Jerusalem, Nehemiah reported, “the remnant of those who are left are in great affliction and reproach.” He inspired that remnant, and they responded: “Let us rise up and build.” We are at that moment.

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This essay was published by Law & Liberty on September 18, 2024.