New civics schools restore higher education's proper purpose against a left-wing academy hostile to the Western canon
Source: Cameron Abrams. "Left-Wing Academia's Newest Phobia Is The Western Canon." November 9, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author says new civics schools at public universities are trying to bring back the study of classic works like Plato and the Founders, which should be uncontroversial. He argues left-leaning academics oppose them because they want to keep control over what students learn, and that this has damaged universities and public trust. He concludes that if defending these books is called 'right-wing,' so be it, since the country needs them to survive.
Conclusion
Universities should embrace civics schools and Great Books education as a recovery of higher education's proper function, because leftist orthodoxy has corrupted the academy and only the effort to preserve the Western canon can sustain American civilization.
Premises
- Studying the Western canon (the 'Great Books') addresses enduring questions of human existence and the American constitutional tradition, and should appear to be a universally accepted good.
- Critics in media and academia react to new civics schools with alarm, framing them as a 'conservative takeover,' 'McCarthyism,' or a 'right-wing plot,' which suggests the dispute is about who controls what is worthy of study rather than about education itself.
- Higher education has been captured by leftist orthodoxy and skepticism-as-dogma, which has made universities ideologically rotten and has left canonical authors branded as insufficiently modern.
- Public confidence in higher education is falling (Gallup: only 38 percent have a great deal of confidence, and 25 percent have very little or none), indicating that the institutions are failing.
- Education inherently shapes character and the political order, as Jefferson's idea of a 'natural aristocracy' formed by universities suggests, so control of universities determines which virtues and traditions shape the next generation of elites.
- America cannot sustain itself without an educated people steeped in its civilizational inheritance, and only the side promoting the canon and civics education is willing to preserve it.
Assumptions
- The Western canon is the proper core of higher education and is not itself an ideologically contested selection.
- Opposition to civics schools is motivated by a desire for ideological control rather than by good-faith disagreement over curricula, academic freedom, or political intervention.
- Declining public trust in higher education is caused by leftist ideology rather than by cost, student debt, job outcomes, or partisan polarization.
- Contemporary universities have in fact abandoned the canon, and the claim that canonical authors are 'found guilty' of insufficient modernity is representative.
- Education has a political purpose in forming civic character, and it is legitimate for state legislatures and policy groups to direct that purpose.
- American greatness depends on transmitting the canon, and no other educational approach could sustain the country.