New Law Requires All Students at Utah State U. to Study Western Civilization

New Law Requires All Students at Utah State U. to Study Western Civilization

This is great. Studying Western Civ should be a core requirement everywhere, shouldn’t it?

The College Fix reports:

New law requires all Utah State U. students study Western Civ in general ed revamp

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.

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