Don’t be fooled. This is a takeover.
Chronicle of Higher Education
December 19, 2024
By Jeremey C. Young and Amy B. Reid
On November 19, New College of Florida adopted a new core curriculum that dramatically reduced the number of courses in the faculty-recommended general-education curriculum. In the humanities, this restrictive approach went even further, requiring all students to meet the state’s general-ed humanities requirement by taking a single course on Homer’s Odyssey. Ostensibly designed to promote a “classical liberal arts” education, New College’s new curriculum in effect reduced the “great books” to just one.
Now Mark Bauerlein, a New College trustee who helped bring about this narrow model of general education, has joined with the Claremont Institute’s Scott Yenor to defend these drastic cuts. In a Chronicle essay, Bauerlein and Yenor argue that SB 266, Florida’s 2023 higher-education law that restricts curricula and DEI initiatives, is in fact an essential general-education reform. The current version of general ed at most universities, they argue, is “a mishmash of courses with no coherence or ‘generality,’” and should be replaced by courses with “specific and essential characteristics” that provide all students with “foundational knowledge.”
We wish this outdated and myopic perspective was limited to the political appointees who have taken over New College, where one of us taught for nearly three decades, and where Bauerlein voted last year to terminate the college’s gender-studies program on nakedly ideological grounds; or to the questionable judgment of Yenor, whose recently leaked emails feature a remarkable collection of offensive comments. But unfortunately, Bauerlein and Yenor are part of a broader national push for legislative restrictions on general-education offerings. This deeply pernicious trend has become a central focus of those who want to exert ideological control over college teaching, and it strikes at the heart of higher education’s goal of preparing students for engaged democratic citizenship.
In Florida, SB 266’s requirement that general-education humanities courses include “selections from the Western canon” was followed by the statewide removal of sociology from the public university system’s core curricula and the culling of many courses from its institutions (including over 400 at Florida State University alone). Similarly, lawmakers in Texas and Iowa have announced plans to root out and ban “DEI” material in course descriptions, syllabi, and core curricula. Utah, where one of us has also taught, is cutting the number of general-education credits required of students in its public universities.
These efforts to sanitize and censor public universities’ core curricula represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of general education as a mechanism for developing democratic citizens.
Bauerlein and Yenor argue that general-education courses should constitute “a body of knowledge that all students should absorb.” But while that might have been the rationale for core curricula last century, it is not the point of general education today, even those curricula focused on the great books or the “Western canon.” General education teaches students to think for themselves in structured and systematic ways, not to adopt particular shared ideas, beliefs, or understandings.
It does so by exposing students to a variety of disciplines, helping them understand that serious thinkers in fields such as economics and sociology approach the same set of facts using different methodologies and develop markedly different insights about the world around them. Such an approach ensures that higher education is more than just work-force training, and teaches intellectual rigor, information literacy, and an appreciation for the different ways scholars go about finding truth — exactly the framework tomorrow’s voters and leaders need in order to navigate the marketplace of ideas that defines adult life in a democracy. This foundational instruction in pluralism is at the core of the core curriculum. When we talk about colleges being a place where students learn to become democratic citizens, we are talking, at root, about general education.
In this view, the specific content of a general-education course is less important than the disciplinary methodologies it reveals to students. You can learn the principles of historical thinking in an introduction to Western civilization, but you can learn them just as easily in a class on Russian military history, women’s social movements, or African American thought. The prevailing general-education system gives students an abundance of choice, letting them follow their interests as they navigate the disciplines. But even in a great books curriculum such as that at St. John’s College, students encounter a variety of perspectives, methodologies, and ideas, and emerge with a broad and varied understanding of the world they live in.
Perhaps Bauerlein and Yenor disagree with this approach to general education. But the appropriate forum to debate the question is the university faculty, not the State Legislature. The 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, developed jointly by the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education, and what is now the American Association of Colleges and Universities, lays out a model of shared governance in which “The faculty has primary responsibility for … curriculum, subject matter and methods of instruction.”
For decades, faculty at most universities nationwide have embraced a student-choice-centered approach to general education. Unwilling to concede that they have lost the intellectual debate among faculty over what general education should look like — they describe their own position as “inarguable” — Bauerlein and Yenor instead accuse faculty nationwide of “systemic corruption” and charge that they have “let gen ed decay into an elective mess.” As a result, they believe themselves justified in empowering politicians to overrule faculty decisions about what can and should be taught in general-ed courses, using raw government power to suppress ideas they don’t like.
Even a cursory look at what’s happening in Florida makes clear that the proponents of restricting general education are not interested in reasoned intellectual debate among faculty; they prefer censorship and viewpoint discrimination instead. This motivation is on clear display in Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr.’s complaint that sociology has “been hijacked by left-wing activists,” and in the long list of race, gender, and identity-focused courses Bauerlein and Yenor list as insufficiently “foundational” for general education (including “History of Women in the United States”!).
Indeed, what’s striking about Bauerlein and Yenor’s recommendations, and the whole raft of curricular restrictions being proposed and enacted in state legislatures, is how adamantly opposed to the real project of general education they are. Instead of encouraging representation from more disciplines and viewpoints (including, perhaps especially, conservative viewpoints), or teaching students to examine and articulate their own views with discipline and rigor, they seek to constrain the ideological space and types of knowledge available to students. Instead of allowing faculty to debate what ideas should be included in general education, they place the power to censor in the hands of legislators. This is a recipe for indoctrination, not education.
What is happening to general education in Florida is not a model for the country, but a cautionary tale. The fights brewing in state capitols over general education have serious repercussions for the ability of students to access an education that encourages critical thinking and the open exchange of ideas. Yet these are precisely the skills that ensure the health of our democracy. Higher-education advocates cannot stand idly by as legislatures wipe out the pluralistic promise of general education, retaining only those course offerings that fit within the narrow imaginations of politicians and ideologues. Standing up for freedom of expression means standing up for students’ freedom to learn.