A quiet but significant shift is underway in American higher education as a growing number of conservatives seek to reshape the humanities landscape by establishing new “centres” and “institutes” across university campuses. Often backed by outside donors or state governments, these programs — with names such as “civic”, “classical” or “freedom” centres — aim to challenge what their backers perceive as the left-leaning dominance of the academy and reinvigorate instruction in the western canon, Christianity and the founding ideas of the United States.
These hubs are emerging at a time when traditional humanities departments are under pressure: budget cuts, declining enrolment and a broader questioning of the economic utility of fields such as literature, philosophy and the classics. Yet, in contrast, these new centres are flourishing, offering courses in ancient Greek philosophy, Shakespeare, the Enlightenment, “just war” theory and the rule of law. At University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, for example, students this semester could take classes including “What is the Common Good?”, “Great Books of the Ancient World” and “Liberty and Order”.
The motive behind the surge is clear: conservative policymakers and academics argue that major universities have drifted from the “fundamental values” of the nation. Some administrations and state legislatures are embracing these programmes as a way to introduce alternative voices inside institutions perceived as politically homogeneous. As one academic, William Inboden of University of Texas at Austin, put it: there is a “sense that American universities … have deviated from, or even turned against, the fundamental values of the nation.”
One notable example occurred in Utah, where state law established a Centre for Civic Excellence at Utah State University with statutory control over the university’s general-education curriculum. Under legislation, students will be required to study “foundational primary texts” such as Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Chinua Achebe. Another high-profile instance is the award of a $10.4 million grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Tikvah Fund for new western-civilization BA programmes.
While the new centres are formally part of universities, their placement is strategic. They often bypass existing departments, which may resist reform, enabling administrations to create “conservative-coded spaces” without direct conflict. That said, the critics argue this risks producing a new form of conformity. Sociologist Musa al‑Gharbi warns that “you could end up with the same kind of groupthink that they were concerned about, just going in the other direction.”
Nevertheless, some defence of the movement comes from across the ideological spectrum. Professors in classical studies note that students attracted to “great books” curricula aren’t necessarily conservative by politics or background. As Charles McNamara of the University of Minnesota observes, the student body in such programmes is diverse: “Some classics undergraduates wear Oxford shirts, some… wear cutoff shorts.”
Despite the fanfare, however, the actual impact on job prospects in the humanities remains modest. McNamara cautions that the appearance of a few extra posts at one university doesn’t signal a broader revival of the field. “One swallow does not make a summer,” he quipped.
