Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow of the Future of Democracy Project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and founder of the AHA Foundation, and Niall Ferguson, senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, received the 2016 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education on October 28. Ms. Ali lamented the declining presence of Western Civilization in college curriula, while Dr. Ferguson emphasized the flagging numbers of history majors and the reduced quality of course offerings. Dr. Ferguson called upon trustees and alumni to restore the meaningful study of history to its rightful place in the curriculum.
Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, passionately conveyed the role our nation’s founding principles played in advancing justice and freedom, and stressed how important it is that college students understand these principles. Mirrer has dedicated her life to teaching Americans about America’s exceptional history. Her remarks were given upon accepting […]
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., president of Purdue University, paid tribute to the transformative nature of the liberal arts when studied rigorously and in an atmosphere where the robust clash of ideas is allowed to flourish. He gave this speech upon accepting ACTA’s 2018 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education on October […]
When pop star Taylor Swift posted on Instagram last month her support for two Tennessee Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, the number of voter registrations on Vote.org skyrocketed, outpacing in just 24 hours the total number for all of August. There’s a lot that’s remarkable here, but one aspect stands out: In adding to the civic […]
There is a crisis of civic education in America today. For the last 20 years, study after study has shown that most Americans lack a basic understanding of the country’s history and political institutions. America’s Knowledge Crisis: A Survey of Civic Literacy, shows that college-educated Americans do only slightly better than those without a four-year […]
In a bit of good news for this Thanksgiving, it appears that many would-be shapers of education policy are plugging for the return of civics to the curricula of schools and colleges. The bad news is that many of the prime movers and shakers behind a “new civics” still cling to the old progressive hostility […]
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