FEATURED
Center will launch ‘one-stop shopping resource for anybody interested in the American founding,’ director says
The Clemson University board of trustees recently voted to approve the Clemson Center for the Study of the American Founding to teach students about the history and principles of the nation’s founding.
The center will be part of the Snow Institute for the Study of Capitalism, which explores the moral foundations of capitalism, according to Clemson News.
C. Bradley Thompson, executive director of SISC, said the group has developed a new approach to education that emphasizes interdisciplinary learning.
Using the Socratic method, SISC programs encourage students to think critically and translate theory into practice.
Thompson said he saw a critical gap in American civics education and moved to bridge it.
“There is… a dearth of university courses on the history, principles, and institutions of the American founding,” he said.
Although many public universities are opening civic thought centers, there is a lack of scholars to staff them, he added.
Thompson hopes that the center will have a larger impact on civics education as a whole, training the next generation of political theorists and professors.
Additionally, Thompson hopes to expand course offerings at Clemson to allow more students to learn about the American founding.
The center’s flagship cohort, the John Adams Fellows Program, launched this summer. The two-week intensive in August welcomed 12 students selected from more than 100 applicants.
Serving as an “intellectual boot camp,” the program focused “…on the history, principles, and institutions of the American Revolution and the American Founding,” Thompson said.
SISC also aims to start a smaller program, called the George Washington Fellows, selecting a couple of students from the larger talent pool to spend a year at Clemson writing a book or dissertation.
From this research and literature, the center will be able to create a digital collection of resources for K-12 teachers.
“We’re going to create a website, and that website will be a kind of one-stop shopping resource for anybody interested in the American founding,” Thompson said.
Not only does he hope to impact Clemson, but also the entire country, by promoting engagement with the history and ideals of the American founding.
“Why not make Clemson University the place where everybody in America goes to and recognizes as America’s premier research and teaching center for the study of the American founding,” Thompson said.
Clemson University is guided by a set of core values, including patriotism, defined as a “commitment to duty, service, leadership, tradition and civic responsibility,” according to its website.
Other large, public universities, such as the University of Florida, the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, and Rutgers University have also launched civic thought centers.
UMich’s Center for American Dialogue opened this year to “challenge issues faced by society in an era dominated by polarization and eroding civic trust,” a news release states.
However, a professor emeritus from the University of Michigan-Flint is skeptical of the center given the school’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Most of the faculty, staff and students and the University of Michigan are what I would call ‘true believers’ in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and they remain fiercely committed to promoting their DEI trinity with religious zeal,” Professor Mark Perry previously told The College Fix.
These civic thought centers offer a multidisciplinary approach to the study of American public life through engagement with core texts and practice in civic discourse, according to a report from Heterodox Academy.
Proponents of such programs argue that they offer enrichment opportunities, foster viewpoint diversity and fill gaps in civic education. However, some critics find these civics centers to be politically polarizing because faculty often skew conservative, the report found.
