Born in antiquity, nurtured in the creative anarchy of the Middle Ages, and brought to maturity through long political struggle in Europe and the Americas, free institutions have now blossomed worldwide, to be increasingly enriched by the contributions of many peoples and cultures. It can now be truly said that they provide the foundation for an emerging global civilization - the very first in the history of our species - liberating human talent and energy to an unparalleled degree.
But the institutions of freedom also face fierce and continuing opposition from forces that would curtail liberty, deny tolerance, and suppress reasoned discourse. Indeed, freedom's enemies have lately born witness to the awful lengths they will to go to smash the confidence of the free, reminding us that each generation must vindicate afresh the liberties bequeathed it by its forbears. Yet freedom cannot be effectively defended unless it is adequately understood, and such understanding demands determined educational effort. Free institutions have not been the human norm, and in the absence of a serious effort to transmit the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind on which they depend, they are likely to prove ephemeral.
There are few subjects of study more integrally related to the mission of liberal education than the nature, history, basis, and prospects of free institutions. Indeed, in its classic conception liberal education is literarily a preparation for freedom, designed to cultivate the frame of mind and fund of learning upon which citizens must draw in making well-reasoned public and private choices.
As an academic subject the study of free institutions includes more than an examination of the constitutional, political, and economic arrangements that allow people to control their own lives. It also encompasses an exploration of the ideas, cultural values, and social and psychological structures that underpin these arrangements. And it is certainly not uncritical. Freedom has its costs as well as benefits, and there are a wide range of views about the worth of its specific instantiations, and the trade offs that accompany its exercise. Moreover, even the most unqualified intellectual opponents of freedom have things of real value to teach us.
Free institutions, and the ideals and practices to which they give rise, are, of course, currently objects of research and teaching in many academic departments and courses. A large number of individual scholars in political science, history, law, economics, philosophy, and other fields already have a keen interest in them. But there are very few venues on our campuses through which teaching and research about free institutions is coordinated and concentrated across interdisciplinary lines. This represents a serious gap in the organizational chart of academe, especially when so many subjects of a narrower nature have numerous and well-funded campus anchorages. It is certainly appropriate that our colleges and universities afford sites where the particularities of human experience can be explored. But there should also be institutional representation for programs concerned with matters of common interest and aspiration, such as the desire to live a life of freedom. The development of programs dealing with freedom will also add an important new dimension of intellectual diversity to the campuses of their host institutions.
The movement to create and multiply "freedom studies" programs has several specific objectives. It seeks to encourage and support faculty members and administrators who wish to establish new programs by putting them into communication with one another. It aims to provide them with information about model programs and to sponsor fora within which the challenges and opportunities involved in developing programs on free institutions can be discussed. And it seeks to generate the financial resources by which new programs can be launched or expanded. The Association for the Study of Free Institutions exists to encourage and mediate such activities.
ASFI Letter sent to Senators Chris Coons and John Cornyn supporting the U.S. Civics Act
The
Association for the Study of Free Institutions
16 Stockton Street, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540 609-462-7217
July 30, 2019
The Honorable Chris Coons
218 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
The Honorable John Cornyn
517 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senators Coons and Cornyn:
We are writing to endorse the Understanding and Studying American Civics Act (U.S.A. Civics Act; S. 2024) which you have jointly introduced in the Senate. Each of us directs a higher education program that could take part in this program should it be signed into law. Nonetheless, our reason for joining our names to this letter is to highlight the benefits the bill’s enactment would have nationwide for the study of the ideals, practices and origins of American freedom.
Numerous studies have shown how little American undergraduates, even at our country’s most prestigious universities and colleges, tend to know about our democratic institutions, the struggles that created and enhanced them, and the great thinkers and ideas that shaped their development.
This ignorance has become a serious national problem. As these students move through life they will have the responsibility of preserving our institutions and ideals. Their ability to do so, to guarantee that America’s commitment to freedom is continually renewed and not squandered or deformed, requires a stronger national effort to overcome this general lack of knowledge.
America’s colleges and universities provide homes to many fine programs, but teaching about the nature and evolution of our free institutions is frequently slighted within them – a pattern reflected in our elementary and secondary schools as well. Programs having this special mission are typically small and insufficiently funded. With greater resources, such as those the U.S.A. Civics Act could provide, these programs would not only begin to reach more students but attract more private philanthropy due to heightened activity and visibility.
There’s much in American civic life today that anyone, of whatever political persuasion, could find to deplore. The most important place to start reversing the deterioration of our civic culture is in higher education. This is because it is precisely from higher education that the lower educational levels take their cues. For that reason we enthusiastically applaud the bipartisan effort that you both are making to rebuild the study of America’s free institutions via sponsorship of the U.S.A. Civics Act.*
Sincerely,
Stephen H. Balch, Director, Texas Tech University Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, and Chairman of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions
Patrick N. Allitt, Director, Emory University Voluntary Core Curriculum
Daniel Asia, Coordinator, University of Arizona American Culture and Ideas Initiative
Richard Avramenko, Director, University of Wisconsin Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy
Jeremy D. Bailey, Director, University of Houston “Phronesis” Minor in Politics and Ethics
Shilo Brooks, Faculty Director, University of Colorado Engineering Leadership Program
Paul Carrese, Director, Arizona State University School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
James W. Ceaser, Director, University of Virginia Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy
Kody Cooper, Director, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga C.S. Lewis Lecture Series
David Clinton, Chair, Baylor University Department of Political Science
Justin Dyer, Director, University of Missouri Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy
Lucien Ellington, Director, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Center on Reflective Citizenship
Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Director, The University of Pennsylvania Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets
Joseph Fornieri, Director, Rochester Institute of Technology Center for Statesmanship
David Fott, Director, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Great Works Academy Certificate Program
Robert P. George, Director, Princeton University James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions
Kenneth Grasso, Chair, Texas State University Political Science Department
Jay Greene, Head, University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform
Mark David Hall, Director, George Fox University John Dickinson Forum for the Study of America’s Founding Principles
Stephen Hicks, Executive Director, Rockford University Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship
Mark Hijleh, Provost, The King’s College, NYC
Robert Ingram, Director, Ohio University George Washington Forum
Anita Johnson, Coordinator, Monterey College Great Books Program, and Paola Gilbert, Immediate Past Coordinator
Robert Kraynak, Co-Director, Colgate University Center for Freedom and Western Civilization
Alan Levine, Director, American University Political Theory Colloquium
Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Director, University of California, Los Angeles Center for Liberal Arts and Free Institutions
Harvey Mansfield, Director, Harvard University Program on Constitutional Government
Wilfred McClay, Director, University of Oklahoma Center for the History of Liberty
Allen Mendenhall, Executive Director, Faulkner University Blackstone and Burke Center for Law and Liberty
Montserrat Miller, Executive Director, Marshall University John Deaver Drinko Academy
Jeffrey S. Morton, Director, Florida Atlantic University Jack Miller Forum for Civic Education
James Murphy, Director, Dartmouth College Daniel Webster Project
J. Judd Owen, Director, Emory University Program in Democracy and Citizenship
Thomas L. Pangle, Executive Director, University of Texas Thomas Jefferson Program for the Study of Core Texts and Courses
Robert Paquette, Director, Alexander Hamilton Institute, Clinton, New York
Anthony Peacock, Director, Utah State University Center for the Study of American Constitutionalism
Michael Petersen, Director, Wilbur Wright College’s Great Books Program
Patricia Proctor, Founding Director, Marshall University Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy
Charles Quigley, Executive Director, University of Delaware Center for Civic Education
Ronald J. Rychlak, Administrator, University of Mississippi Declaration of Independence Center
Robert Saldin, Director, University of Montana Project on American Democracy and Citizenship
Abbylin Sellars, Director, Azusa Pacific University Koch Fellows Program
Colleen A. Sheehan, Director, Villanova University Mathew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good
Andrew Spiropoulos, Director, Oklahoma City University Center for the Study of State Constitutional Law and Government
James Stoner, Director, Louisiana State University Eric Voegelin Institute
John Tomasi, Director, Brown University Political Theory Project
Candace Vogler, Director, University of Chicago Department of Philosophy Moral Philosophy Seminar
Bradley Watson, Co-Director, Saint Vincent College Center for Political and Economic Thought
Bradford P. Wilson, President, Association for the Study of Free Institutions and Executive Director Princeton University James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions
Christopher Wolfe, Professor of Politics University of Dallas and President of the American Public Policy Institute at the University of Dallas
Scott Yenor, Director, Boise State University American Founding Initiative
* Affiliations included for identification purposes only, which, unless otherwise indicated, are the main campuses of the institutions named.