The discovery and dissemination of higher forms of knowledge can take place in many non-university settings, and personally, my work for the American Enterprise Institute, Independent Institute, Unleash Prosperity, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, the Cato Institute, and this fine site constitutes a big part of my meager contributions to higher learning in America. Yet universities still have a dominant market share in the higher learning business. At the same time, our colleges and universities have mostly become sanctuaries for modern far-left thinking, with little appreciation shown for the accomplishments of past generations, especially the critical role our forefathers played in developing an enlightened, prosperous, and orderly society, particularly in the United States. The huge, yearlong mass-lecture survey course on Western civilization that I was fortunate to take generations ago at Northwestern University is now a thing of the past. To partially right this wrong, new civic institutes have sprung up at many American universities.

I enthusiastically welcomed this development initially. Early developments dating back more than two decades, such as the James Madison Program in American Ideals at Princeton and the John Ashbrook Center at a private institute closely associated with Ohio’s Ashland University, had achieved noteworthy accomplishments. Some private schools, such as Hillsdale and Grove City College, largely maintained a traditional emphasis on showing respect and gratitude for the outstanding contributions of Western civilization. Additionally, starting a few years ago, politicians successfully lobbied for creating new centers in such prominent state universities as the University of Florida (Hamilton Center), Ohio State (Salmon P. Chase Center), and the University of North Carolina (School of Civic Life and Leadership), as well as in other flagship universities in Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Utah and other states.

Some of these institutes have impressive faculties, offer interesting courses, and sponsor provocative visiting lecturers. The Hamilton Center, for example, has recently lured very eminent historians from Harvard and Princeton—faculty who this semester are providing students with needed knowledge and appreciation of the contributions of Western civilization. With the financial support of the Republican-controlled legislature and governor, Ohio created five new civic institutes at Miami University, Wright State, Cleveland State, the University of Toledo, and Ohio State.

Yet my assessment of the early progress at these Ohio centers so far is pretty negative. One of them seems to be straying far from the original intent of promoting the intellectual foundations of American exceptionalism, while another appears to have a good deal of administrative bloat and possibly even nepotism—curses common in higher education generally. Worse, in a highly publicized incident, one Ohio State Chase Center professor was placed on administrative leave after physically attacking a news reporter.

But I am particularly appalled at the Ohio centers’ treatment of Scott Gerber. Professor Gerber is a respected legal scholar, especially known for his work on colonial America, having recently published a book with Cambridge University Press on legislation regarding religious freedom in three colonies. Additionally, Gerber is a better-than-decent novelist, having recently written an absorbing page-turner, The Trafficker, which is about the sordid business of human trafficking. A senior tenured professor at Ohio Northern University with a strong reputation as a teacher, Gerber was hauled out of his classroom by police about three years ago and then fired by his dean. His sin? Being a determined and principled scholar who challenged his school’s anti-meritorious and debilitating pro–”diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) stances. He was apparently dismissed for exercising the very First Amendment rights that universities should be championing.

Despite his superior scholarly accomplishments, Gerber did not even receive a job interview at any of the five centers at which he applied. Academic politics and cowardice seem to trump scholarly excellence and a quest for robust discourse in the Ohio centers. It is also interesting that, despite being one of the most robust and well-known advocates for the Ohio centers prior to their creation, I was not invited to join the academic advisory boards of any of them—perhaps I was perceived as being too feisty (too much like Gerber?). We want a little intellectual diversity, but not too much.

My opinion of the new civic center movement may well be excessively influenced by these Ohio woes. The experience in states like Utah, Texas, or Arizona may be altogether different. Yet there is still another problem with civic centers at taxpayer-funded state universities. They are very vulnerable to attack when the political winds change. When leftist politicians take over states like Florida or Ohio—as history suggests they probably will sometime, perhaps someday soon—they may try to gut the funding of the civic centers or change their mission radically.

Universities have enough trouble being run by their own paid administrators; be wary of legislators operating in an often-changing political milieu, fiddling directly with academic programs and staffing. Courses on the wisdom of America’s founding fathers or on the contributions of the ancient Greeks may be replaced by ones on, say, the perceived systematic racism of white male Americans. DEI reborn.