‘State legislatures have the power to set general education requirements at public universities. There are numerous precedents for this, but there is no doubt that Utah SB 334 breaks new ground’
Gov. Spencer Cox on Monday signed a law that will establish the Center for Civic Excellence at Utah State University, calling it one of the “most important bills of the 2025 legislative session.”
The law essentially requires “every student at Utah State University to take a full year-and-a-half course in Western civilization and an additional one-semester course in American civics,” according to Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who helped formulate the model legislation behind the bill.
Cox said in a statement Monday that “I’m thrilled Utah State University is taking the lead to pilot a redesign of general education through the new center for civics excellence.”
“This center will be tasked with building out a general education curriculum focused on viewpoint diversity, civil discourse and helping our students develop the analytical skills necessary to contribute in the public square. This curriculum will be a model for all our public institutions in Utah and nationally.”
The center is expected to develop a core curriculum on western and world civilizations, economics, science, and U.S. history, government and literature, as The College Fix previously reported.
Kurtz has noted students will study topics “like ancient Israel, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the rise of Christianity, medieval Europe, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the post-Enlightenment. The listed exemplary texts include Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Shakespeare, and such.”
According to the law, the center will develop a general education that replaces the existing “distribution model” with a “coherent curriculum” grounded in “civil and rigorous intellectual inquiry, across ideological differences, with a commitment to intellectual freedom in the pursuit of truth.”
The goal is to address “big questions, great debates, and enduring ideas” relevant to society, the American experience, and the modern world, with an emphasis on “civil discourse, critical thinking about enduring questions, wise decision-making, and durable skills,” the bill states.
The law, SB 334, is slated to go into effect May 7.
Kurtz previously reported on some of the details of the legislation for National Review, calling it a “game changer nationally.”
“I have argued that state legislatures have the power to set general education requirements at public universities. There are numerous precedents for this, but there is no doubt that Utah SB 334 breaks new ground,” Kurtz wrote.
“…SB 334 not only describes and requires classic general education courses, but it also entrusts the teaching of those courses to an independent academic unit (the Center for Civic Excellence) dedicated to a traditional ‘great books’ approach. After a year or so of pilot study, the bill would extend this approach to every public university student in the state,” he wrote.
The bill did not pass on its first attempt, but Utah legislators took advantage of a curriculum revamp underway at Utah State University to get it passed this session, Kurtz reported.
In a previous interview with The College Fix, Kurtz has predicted this new approach to curriculum oversight will effectively force the eventual termination of some professors.
“Any university that adopts this bill needs to hire a substantial new faculty with the sort of expertise and teaching philosophy suited to traditional general education,” Kurtz has said.
“But once you hire a large number of new faculty members you are going to be in a financially untenable situation without dismissing an equivalent number of existing faculty,” he said.
He added that esoteric humanities course enrollments would plummet since students are required to take the new core curriculum classes.
MORE: Pro-Western Civ curriculum reform bill falters at first. Its proponents aren’t giving up.
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A statue of Plato / Shutterstock
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