{"id":2703310,"date":"2026-11-09T08:47:57","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T13:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignleft-wing-academias-newest-phobia-is-the-western-canon\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T08:54:47","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T13:54:47","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignleft-wing-academias-newest-phobia-is-the-western-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignleft-wing-academias-newest-phobia-is-the-western-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"Left-Wing Academia&#8217;s Newest Phobia Is The Western Canon"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignleft-wing-academias-newest-phobia-is-the-western-canon%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2703310&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Across the U.S.,many universities-frequently enough with state support-are opening civics schools to restore higher education\u2019s civic purpose by teaching the Western canon and Great Books. Critics warn of a conservative takeover and chilling campus discourse, while supporters cite programs like UT Austin\u2019s School of Civic Leadership and Florida\u2019s Hamilton School as efforts to <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >rebuild civic formation amid declining public trust<\/a> in colleges.Advocates say a classical curriculum is urgently needed to form responsible citizens and leaders; opponents call it politically motivated and label it right\u2011wing.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Universities across the country,\u00a0often\u00a0with the\u00a0help\u00a0of state legislatures, are attempting\u00a0to\u00a0recover some of\u00a0the actual purpose of higher education, with\u00a0many\u00a0doing\u00a0so by\u00a0establishing\u00a0new\u00a0civics schools\u00a0on their campuses.<\/p>\n<p>The University of Texas at Austin, according to a new cover <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/news-politics\/university-of-texas-conservative-takeover\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">story<\/a> from Texas Monthly, is experiencing a \u201cconservative takeover\u201d of unfathomable proportion. Tales are told about a \u201cdegree of fear\u201d that has seeped into every classroom and how the university leaders \u201ccontribute to authoritarianism and white supremacy.\u201d A UT film professor moved out of the country because the school was, in the author\u2019s telling, \u201cno longer a place that supported marginalized people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These lamentations are just the latest in the grand scale of brooding and warning about the ejection of far-left nonsense that has fully taken root in higher education. Whether it be Texas Monthly reporting on professors who believe they\u2019re living under \u201cMcCarthysim,\u201d Vanity Fair weeping about the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2023\/02\/ron-desantis-new-college-florida\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">beginning of the right\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-right-is-giving-gen-z-what-theyve-been-denied\/\" title=\"The Right is giving Gen Z what they\u2019ve been denied\">higher ed crusade<\/a><\/a>,\u201d or The Chronicle of Higher Education dedicating a few hundred words to how new schools of civics are a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/civics-is-a-right-wing-plot-and-theyre-not-even-hiding-it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">right-wing plot<\/a>,\u201d one begins to suspect the quarrel is less about education than about who gets to decide which books, questions, and traditions are still worthy of study.<\/p>\n<p>New civics schools on college campuses are attempting to recover what\u2019s long been lost. In Texas, it\u2019s the <a href=\"https:\/\/civicleadership.utexas.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">School of Civic Leadership<\/a> at UT Austin that will prepare students to take on \u201cthe enduring questions of the human condition and American constitutional tradition.\u201d At the University of Florida, it\u2019s the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education that proudly <a href=\"https:\/\/hamilton.ufl.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">proclaims<\/a> it is \u201cleading a higher education revolution.\u201d More than a dozen other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecollegefix.com\/from-war-strategy-to-love-and-friendship-civics-schools-expand-programs-as-interest-grows\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">new schools and centers<\/a> across the country are making similar promises.<\/p>\n<p>The very idea of offering students an opportunity to study the \u201cGreat Books,\u201d or what\u2019s commonly known as the Western canon, would, on the surface, appear to be a universally accepted good. But not to some. <\/p>\n<p>Plato begins the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/classics.mit.edu\/Plato\/meno.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Meno<\/a><\/em>  with a seemingly simple question: \u201cCan you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor by practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?\u201d For more than 2,000 years, this simple query has refused to die, despite what the modern leftist academy would prefer you to believe. Again, while higher education was supposedly a way station on the path toward wisdom, it has made a dogma of skepticism and, in turn, become saturated with the motives and appetites of a particular flavor of intellectual intransigence.<\/p>\n<p>We now live in the ruins of this ideological rot of our universities and require a foundational demolition. But the American people have lost faith in that quasi-religious character ascribed to our educational institutions. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/712322\/confidence-higher-education-slips-back-slightly.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gallup<\/a>, just 38 percent of people have \u201ca great deal\u201d of confidence in higher education, while a growing number (25 percent) say they have \u201cvery little\u201d or no trust in how colleges are educating students.<\/p>\n<p>There are many debates about when it all began. One can simply peruse the cafeteria of explanations. Books such as <em>America\u2019s Cultural Revolution<\/em> and <em>The Origins of Woke<\/em> attempt to provide a framework for understanding today\u2019s leftward lurch. Each of them, in their own way, acknowledges that education is broken.\u00a0But often it\u2019s only those who oppose the resurgence of a classical paradigm on college campuses who are willing to say education has a political purpose. Ultimately, education forms a fundamentally deeper character for a person, a character that shapes the very political order it depends upon.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Jefferson, <a href=\"https:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/03-06-02-0446\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">writing<\/a> to John Adams in 1813, saw that the university had a true and honest purpose for America: an educational aim that would give rise to a \u201cnatural aristocracy\u201d to guide \u201cthe instruction, the trusts, and government of society.\u201d However, America has handed that formative power over to leftist orthodoxies that have swallowed our universities and, with them, the authority to decide which virtues, traditions, and truths shape the next generation of elites. <\/p>\n<p>The situation America faces with our university campuses is no longer one of mere contemplation. There is no longer time left to wonder \u201cwhat to do?\u201d and whether a few civics schools will be enough to turn the tide. The wave has already broken on shore. Plato, Locke, Shakespeare, Tocqueville, the founders \u2014 all have been found guilty of insufficient modernity. And the authors of current discourse are more than willing to label those nudging higher education back toward its proper function as far-right reactionaries, bigoted conservative ideologues, or even worse. As a recent Goldwater Institute report has forewarned, there is big money behind efforts to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.goldwaterinstitute.org\/policy-report\/educating-citizens-for-the-next-250-years-promoting-the-flourishing-of-civics-schools-at-public-universities\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">knock out<\/a>\u201d civics schools.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cGreat Books\u201d and classics are already labeled right-wing because their enemies, as Leo Strauss <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/LeoStraussWhatIsPoliticalPhilosophyOtherStudies1959.Integral\/Leo%20Strauss%20-%20%27%27What%20is%20Political%20Philosophy%2C%20%26%20other%20studies%27%27%20%5B1959.%20integral%5D_djvu.txt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">puts<\/a> it, \u201cdemand[] that each generation reinterpret the past on the basis of its own experience and with a view to its own future.\u201d The university is an \u201cactivistic\u201d entity that is hostile to the fundamental doctrines of civilized law that America, as we have come to know it today, has maintained despite its jealous opposition.<\/p>\n<p>America will not sustain itself without an educated people. Those who are willing to teach enforce the standards. There will be a need for the great men of this age who necessarily accept the harder duty, which is more than mere commentary. If the \u201cGreat Books\u201d and civics education are now \u201cright-wing,\u201d so be it. Only one side now is willing to inherit the charge of preserving and perpetuating our civilizational inheritance that made our country great in the first place. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Cameron Abrams is a policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Universities push civics schools; fear of conservatism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4487,"featured_media":2703311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Sunlit-Vintage-Books.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[5967,78253,5129,87653,87652],"class_list":["post-2703310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-academia","tag-culture-wars-2","tag-left-wing","tag-literary-criticism-2","tag-western-canon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Sunlit-Vintage-Books.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2703310"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2703317,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703310\/revisions\/2703317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2703311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2703310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2703310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2703310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}