Step Outside the Ivory Tower, Professors. Your Democracy May Depend on It.
The Alliance for Civics in the Academy is bringing together a nationwide network of college faculty devoted to teaching citizenship.
As 7 million people across America were out in the streets chanting “No Kings” in the autumn sunshine, a group of professors sat in a conference room sharing stories, insights, and doubts about supporting civic engagement in higher education. Our focus was quite different–not on immediate politics but on the long term health of our civic culture, but we too discovered a sense of solidarity and shared purpose that day.
We were gathering to find answers to important questions: what role can we play as academics in building a healthy democratic society beyond the ivory tower?
Our gathering on October 18 was the the first-ever meeting at a public university of the Alliance for Civics in the Academy, an organization founded in 2024. Alliance members believe it’s not enough to see students graduate as competent young professionals. We also want them to enter the world with habits of good citizenship. In any space, at work or in their communities, we want them to be confident in talking and deliberating with others, savvy in navigating institutions and the information ecosystem to pursue better policies, and committed to reflective patriotism.
Classical historian Josiah Ober’s turn from ancient history to modern democracy was born in an outburst of indignation, an angry letter he and several colleagues sent to the Stanford University administration protesting a lack of investment in civic education. “Stanford was really derelict in its duties to the citizens of the United States, to its citizens, and in fact was in violation of its founding charter, which calls for civic education or something very like it,” he pointed out. So in addition to creating Stanford’s first-year seminar “Citizenship in the 21st Century,” Ober connected with scholars including Tufts’ Peter Levine, the University of Denver’s Mary Clark, and Arizona State’s Paul Carrese, leaders in the field of civic education, to form the ACA in 2024.
First and foremost, the Alliance is a cross-ideological community of practice for higher education instructors. The primary emphasis is on coursework – namely, the day-to-day practice of teaching students the knowledge and skills, and helping them to develop the dispositions, that will enable them to participate effectively in their communities, their states, and their nation.
The need for rethinking curricula is dire. Civic education has been steadily starved of resources in the U.S. for more than 50 years. At our gathering, Minh Ly, a political scientist at the University of Vermont, shared a sobering photo of the civics section of the 1912 Eighth Grade Examination for Bullitt County Schools south of Louisville, Kentucky:
13- and 14-year-olds were expected to answer each of these items more than 100 years ago, but many adults would struggle to do so today.
It’s safe to say, however, that no one who was at the meeting thinks today’s civic education should begin and end with preparing students to answer questions like these. Thanks to the research of many of the Alliance’s founding members, we know that students learn good citizenship through practice, experience, and inquiry-based content learning, not rote memorization. We also know that facts about government are only one facet of the civic knowledge needed to participate effectively in constitutional democracy. Still, this 1912 document pushes us to take action: Past generations of American citizens were better prepared to sustain democracy, and that is the consequence of a policy choice.
The University of New Hampshire’s Scott Smith, the convener of the meeting, echoed others in warning that “curriculum is only one part of the equation—a fundamental part, but one that will have less impact if the culture of a university as a whole is not also demonstrating the importance of civic life.” If students don’t feel empowered, don’t feel that their voice matters, or worse, don’t feel that they have any obligation to uphold pluralism and civility in their campus community, then the campus climate itself can undermine any civic education that happens in classrooms.
Many of the presentations focused on the challenge of fulfilling the university’s obligation to the public good with limited budgets, and sometimes without support from state legislatures. It was appropriate that we convened at UNH, a public land grant university (actually triple-designated as a Land, Sea and Space Grant university). Land grant institutions were created when Senator Justin Morrill of Vermont sponsored what became the Morrill Act of 1862, granting land to universities so that they could use the proceeds to support education in agriculture and “the mechanic arts, …in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” In other words, land grant universities were created toserve the working people of their communities, by sharing knowledge and new technologies. This was a contrast to earlier colleges and universities founded to train scholars and clergy. Land-grants have a clear public mission, or should. But so too should all institutions, including those originating from those earlier traditions or from the 19th century research university tradition. In 2021, Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels wrote a book about What Universities Owe Democracy. The Alliance is working to find the answers, and to make good on that obligation.
For those of us who come from a traditional academic background, a shift toward civic education can be a leap into the unknown, and a labor of love – emphasis on labor. We were trained as scholars, not democracy renovators. Our traditional pedagogical approaches don’t suffice here, so we have to broaden our horizons. Each of us has had to learn to open up the gates to the ivory tower and walk out, or at least stand in the doorway. We, too, are citizens, and there’s no question that the fate of our own educational institutions depends on the health of our constitutional democracy. It’s time to take that leap. Members of the Alliance are ready to lend a hand.
I hope we’ll be sharing ideas and success stories from the ACA community here soon — subscribe to The Renovator to keep up to date, and make sure you’re subscribed to our “Democracy 101” section and civic education news roundups!
Great title for this article.