After the 2024 presidential election, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough decried Trump supporters as “Americans who didn’t go to civics class, didn’t learn the basics of this Constitution.” Ironically, this barb echoes a longstanding conservative complaint that Americans have lost touch with the fundamentals of our constitutional system.
Both left and right seem to worry about civic illiteracy. They disagree, however, about who’s failing the test.
New academic initiatives are sweeping America’s public universities to address these concerns. From Florida to Utah, flagship institutions are establishing centers dedicated to constitutional principles, civic leadership, and American and Western political thought.
The University of Florida’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education and Arizona State’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership are already operational, joined by similar ventures at Utah Valley University, Ole Miss, and UT Austin.
The momentum shows no signs of slowing. More than half a dozen additional programs are developing, including ambitious projects at Ohio State University, UNC Chapel Hill, and Florida State. These centers profess a similar mission: rekindling student engagement with America’s founding principles and civic traditions within the broader context of Western intellectual heritage.
Notably, many are taking root in large state universities across the South and Midwest, suggesting a grassroots demand for civic education that transcends regional boundaries.
What of Alabama?
Though laudably conceived, the nascent Shelby Institute for Policy and Leadership at the University of Alabama resembles a promising adolescent who lacks sufficient protein. Its commendable emphasis on contemporary government is, without more, inadequate. The Institute’s programming – heavy on guest speakers from today’s political firmament – suggests a curious reluctance to acknowledge that politics didn’t begin in the last few decades.
What’s needed is not mere genuflection to those in positions of power but a rigorous engagement with the intellectual legacy that differentiated Western civilization and the American experience from their competitors. The Institute would do well to remember that princes did not impart their insights on leadership to Machiavelli; rather, he instructed them, drawing from extensive study of the ancients.
Aspiring leaders require more than handshakes with sitting politicians; they need sustained communion with Aristotle’s Politics, the forensic brilliance of the Federalist Papers, and the capacious wisdom of Homer, Aeschylus, Plato, Aquinas, Grotius, Shakespeare, Milton, Blackstone, or Adam Smith, who understood that the challenges of governance are perennial, not merely contemporary.
As currently constituted, the Shelby Institute risks sliding into academic irrelevance. Providing students with a direct line to political careers is counterproductive if it merely perpetuates the dysfunction and cronyism that should be scrutinized. Without reform or a creative change in direction, this Institute will be a pale shadow of its peer institutions, which have attracted distinguished faculties with sterling credentials and scholarly gravitas.
There’s a reason the Shelby Institute isn’t recognized among the civics centers emerging nationwide. Rather than a center of serious learning, the Shelby Institute seems in danger of devolving into another glorified practicum, dispensing titular positions to students more interested in padding their resumés than pursuing genuine intellectual growth. The absence of renowned scholars and striking lack of emphasis on foundations – philosophy, history, theology – is telling because these fields animate political thought and action even as politicians remain unconscious of their profound influence on governance and public life.
Although these civics centers in other states sprung from legislative mandates, private-sector funding would be preferable.
Alabama desperately needs an institution dedicated to serious civic scholarship, but who will take up this mantle? Auburn University could enter the void, or an ambitious regional institution like Troy University (my employer) might seize the opportunity. Regardless, the Yellowhammer State seems content to watch from the sidelines while other states forge ahead with innovative solutions to our civic education crisis.
It’s a familiar story: Alabama perpetually plays catch-up rather than leading the charge toward excellence. As other states take bold strides in civic education, Alabama stands at a critical juncture: either remain mired in inertia or embrace the rigor and sophistication that our times demand.
The optimal civics education center would combine timeless insights with modern issues to reposition Alabama as a beacon of educational preeminence in the South. Our students deserve better than insipid mingle sessions that merely skim the surface of politics while neglecting the more profound theories and paradigms that have guided human civilization for millennia.
Politicians are soon forgotten; ideas shape centuries. We should teach the timeless, not the trending. Why settle for mediocrity when greatness is within our reach?
Allen Mendenhall is Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University and Executive Director of the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy. Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.
