According to Russell Kirk’s essay “Cultural Debris,” civilizations are held together not by force of arms, but by the subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle. The fabric of civilization is a complex tapestry woven from historical and philosophical threads, exemplified by its canon. As a conservative academic, Kirk was concerned with the state of the modern university, which he believed had moved away from the liberal arts and towards “career education,” undermining the purpose of education proper. Unfortunately, thirty years after Kirk’s death, the situation has not improved much. Liberal arts and the study of Western civilization have both withered away.
There are, however, glimmers of hope. Last summer, the University of Florida announced the launch of the Hamilton Center, a new program for civics education with the stated purpose of “developing a curriculum focusing on the Western intellectual tradition and the ideals of the American Founding.” The center has hired William Inboden, former director of the Clements Center for National Security at UT-Austin, as its founding director and has $13 million in total funding. The Hamilton Center is part of Florida’s infusion of higher education with traditional Western values. Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed adding Western Civ to the core curriculum for all Florida college students. The new center’s mission statement is to aid in developing this new curriculum.
Ventures such as the one being pursued at UF are much needed. As of 2020, only 17 percent of American universities require students to learn Western Civ, which has been replaced with a hodgepodge of progressive priorities. This shift has failed to generate interest in broader cultures or a more nuanced understanding of the West itself, and it has all but killed the humanities.
The reasons that students should study Western civilization are numerous. The West is the source of the modern world, and it follows that Americans should understand it. The West is also our inheritance. Maintaining continuity between generations requires a common foundation to build upon, both in material and philosophical terms. Handing down the history and literature that defines the West is necessary for the maintenance of civilization itself.
Universities should place Western Civ studies at the center of their curriculum because it is good and necessary for the university to do so. The original Western universities were erected to educate priests and monks, and the belief in God resided at their center. The demise of the metaphysical soul of the academy has produced institutions that hold a decidedly mechanical and utilitarian worldview. Universities require foundational dogmas, and if those dogmas are not rooted in the civilization the university exists in, the dogmas will tear away at the spirit of the university itself. In the West, those dogmas must be the cultural productions that our civilization has produced.
The Hamilton Center has a daunting challenge before it, but for the sake of the academy and the West itself, it must weave these subtle threads back into the academy’s soul. To return to our universities the spirit with which they were founded is necessary for the salvation of the West. Modern public universities may never be the home of Christian dogma, but they can be the home to the dogmas of the West.
