Alliance for Civics in the Academy

In the Search of Good Citizens and Civic Leaders? Don’t Overlook Students Enrolled at Non-Selective Institutions

J. Cherie Strachan (August 2025)

While much of the civic education resurgence centers on elite institutions, non-selective institutions (NSIs) play a vital and often overlooked role. Educating the majority of U.S. college students, NSIs serve socioeconomically and politically diverse populations, and their social science departments emphasize subjects central to American democracy–producing graduates more likely to engage in state and local public service.

DeepDive: Canada’s Universities are Failing to Provide Proper Civic Education. Here’s How Alberta Can Correct Course

John von Heyking and Geoffrey Sigalet in The Hub (June 30, 2025)

In response to growing sectarianism and declining public trust in Canadian universities, von Heyking and Sigalet propose a plan for the Government of Alberta to reestablish its universities’ core mission: educating Albertans in the civic ideas and principles essential to Canadian democracy.

A Both/And Revolution in College Civic Education

Brooke Manfield in The Civic Bargain (June 29, 2025)

Mansfield and Jenna Storey discuss the nascent movement to renew civic education–one rooted in both societal and personal need, driven by a desire for a constructive approach to civic life, and animated by the prospect of reuniting fractured knowledge through the institutionalization of civic thought as its own field of study.

Teaching Civics in Kyiv

Peter Levine, Kettering Foundation (June 20, 2025)

Peter Levine discusses his experience teaching a Civic Studies course at the Kyiv School of Economics in June 2025. His experience illustrates the resilience of the Ukrainians, the power of civic education amid disruption, and raises difficult questions about the role of dialogue, dissent, and nonviolence in times of national crisis.

Our Civics Deficit is a National Security Crisis

Paul Carrese in The Washington Examiner (April 19, 2025)

Carrese makes the case that America's declining civic knowledge and patriotism pose a national security threat, urging a renewed commitment to civic education to strengthen national unity and resilience.

America and its Universities Need a New Social Contract

Danielle Allen in The Atlantic (April 13, 2025)

Amid declining public trust and political attacks on universities, Allen calls for a new social contract between higher education and the American public, placing greater emphasis on civic education, pluralism, and viewpoint diversity to restore trust and uphold democratic responsibilities.

“You Will Be Good Citizens” 

General Jim Mattis in Hoover Institution Defining Ideas (March 31, 2025)

At the Civic Learning Week National Forum hosted by Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, Davies Family Distinguished Fellow General Jim Mattis spoke about civic knowledge and understanding from the perspective of someone serving in the US military. 

Reading Boethius in the Trumpocene

Lucian Staiano-Daniels in Liberal Currents (March 4, 2025)

Staiano-Daniels advocates for the value of reading classic texts during periods of political and personal turbulence–not as self-help guides or justifications for hero-worship and hierarchy, but as challenging and provocative works that encompass the full complexity of human experience.

Cooperation, Not Compromise in the Classroom

Josh Ober on Matters of Policy & Politics (January 9, 2025)

Does Stanford’s revival of a century-old American civics tradition signal a new direction for higher education? In this installment, Josiah Ober and education policy expert Checker Finn explore the future of citizenship education through the lens of the Stanford Civics Initiative.

Next Best Books: Resisting the War on History

Waller Newell in The Washington Free Beacon (July 2, 2016)

Responding to campus controversies, Waller Newell urges the revival of a historically grounded literary education–one that supplements the “Great Books” with fifteen influential works spanning history, biography, literature, and memoir–to cultivate informed, historically literate citizens.